Chilean Antarctic Territory

World Map by Abraham Ortelius (1570), where appears the Terra Australis Incognita

For many years, cartographers and European explorers speculated about the existence of the Terra Australis Incognita, a vast territory located in the south of the Strait of Magellan and Tierra del Fuego that reached the South Pole.

The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed on June 7, 1494, by Spain and Portugal (only) set their areas of global influence, west and east, respectively, according to a line running from pole to pole that was never demarcated (at 46° 37 'W in the Spanish classical interpretation, and further west, according to the Portuguese interpretation). Therefore, the areas of Antarctica claimed by Chile today, which were still unknown at that time, fell within the area of Spanish influence. The treaty, backed by the papal bull Ea quae pro bono pacis in 1506, was not recognized by European non-Catholic states nor even by some Catholic ones, like France. For Britain, Netherlands, Russia and other countries, the Antarctic areas were considered res nullius, no man's land subject to the occupation of any nation.[3]

In 1534, the Emperor Charles V divided the South American territory of Spain into three governorates:

• New Castile or Peru to Francisco Pizarro,
• New Toledo or Chile to Diego de Almagro and
• New León or Magellanic Lands for Simón de Alcazaba y Sotomayor, which was subsequently extended to the Strait of Magellan.[3]

In 1539, a new governorate was formed south of New León called Terra Australis to Pedro Sánchez de la Hoz.[3] In 1554, the conquistador Pedro de Valdivia, who led the Governorate of Chile, talked to the Council of the Indies to give the rights of New León and the Terra Australis to Jeronimo de Alderete, who, after the death of Valdivia the following year, became governor of Chile and annexed the Chilean colonial territory.

There are numerous historical documents proving this, among which include a Royal Decree of 1554:

Because it was personally consulted, we will grant, to the Captain Jeronimo de Alderete the land across the Magellan Strait

Later, in 1558, the Royal Decree of Brussels prompted the Chilean colonial government to take ownership in our name from the lands and provinces that fall in the demarcation of the Spanish crown in referring to the land across the Strait, because at that time it was thought that Tierra del Fuego was an integral part of the Terra Australis.[3]

One of the most important works of Spanish literature, the epic poem La Araucana by Alonso de Ercilla, is also considered by Chile as favorable to their argument, as shown in the seventh stanza of his Canto I:

Is Chile, North South, very long

New sea coast, of the south called
will from east to west, of wide
one hundred miles, so wider taken
under the Antarctic Pole height
Twenty-seven of prolonged degrees
until the Sea Ocean and Chilean

mix their waters within narrow

In the fourth stanza of his Canto III:

This was the one who found the sections
Indians of Antarctic regions

There are also stories and maps, both Chilean and European, indicating the membership of the Terra Australis Antarctica as part of the Captaincy General of Chile.

The Spanish navigator Gabriel de Castilla sailed from Valparaiso in March 1603 in command of three ships in an expedition entrusted by his brother cousin viceroy of Peru, Luis de Velasco y Castilla, to repress the incursions of Dutch privateers in the Southern Seas, reaching 64 degrees south latitude. No documents confirming the reached latitude and sighted land have been found in the Spanish archives; however, the story of the Dutch sailor Laurenz Claesz (date unknown, but probably after 1607), documents the latitude and time. Claesz said:

sailed under the Admiral don Gabriel of Castile with three ships along the coasts of Chile towards Valparaiso, and from there to the strait. In March of 1603, he reached 64 degrees and they had a lot of snow there. In the following April they returned back to the coast of Chile.

Another Dutch document, published in Amsterdam in three languages in 1622, says that at 64°S there are "very high and mountainous, snow cover, like the country of Norway, all white, land It seemed to extend to the Solomon Islands." This confirms a previous sighting of the lands would be the South Shetland Islands.

Other historians attribute the first sighting of Antarctic land to the Dutch marine Dirk Gerritsz, who would have found the islands now known as South Shetland. According to his account, his ship was diverted from course by a storm after transposing the Strait of Magellan, in the journey of a Dutch expedition to the East Indies in 1599. There are doubts about the veracity of Gerritsz.

At this time, there was already knowledge of the existence of a white continent in the south of the Drake Passage, separated from the Tierra del Fuego. In 1772, the British James Cook circumnavigated waters of the Southern Ocean.

German map of the Antarctica made in 1891 by Adolf Stielers Handatlas, published by Gotha: Justus Perthes

After the independence of the colonies in the Americas, the new Spanish republics agreed among themselves to recognize the principle of uti possidetis-- that is, new states would have as limits those inherited from the Spanish colonies from which they originated. Therefore, the Republic of Chile consisted of all lands formerly belonging to the Captaincy General of Chile and then assumed that these titles included rights over portions of Antarctica.

In 1815, the Argentine-Irish Admiral William Brown launched a campaign to harass the Spanish fleet in the Pacific Ocean and, when passing Cape Horn, was brought down to the Antarctic Sea beyond the parallel 65°S aboard the Argentine vessels Hércules and Trinidad. Brown's report indicated the presence of nearby ground, though he did not witness any portion of the continent and did not set foot on it.

On August 25, 1818, the Argentine government, then called the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata, granted the first concessions for hunting earless seals and penguins in the Antarctic continent to Juan Pedro de Aguirre, who operated the ship Espíritu Santo based on Deception Island.

Espíritu Santo was followed by the American brig Hercilia to Deception Island. The fact that these Argentine sealers were directed to the islands with fixed course is usually regarded as proof that it was previously known.

Between 1819 and 1821, the Russian ships Vostok and Mirny, under the command of the German Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen at the service of Russia, explored Antarctic waters. In 1821, at 69°W 53'S, he sighted an island which he called Land of Alexander I, after the Russian Tsar. Although von Bellingshausen circumnavigated the continent twice, not a single member of his crew ever set foot on Antarctic land.

In 1819, the mariner William Smith rediscovered the South Shetland Islands, including King George Island; the American Nathaniel Palmer spotted the Antarctic Peninsula that same year. Neither of them set foot on the actual continental land mass.

In 1821, the Connecticut seal hunter John Davis reported setting foot on a southern land that he believed was indeed a continent.

In 1823, the English James Weddell claimed to have discovered the sea that now bears his name, reaching up to 74°W 15'S and 34° 17'W.

On June 10, 1829, the Government of Buenos Aires issued a decree creating the Political-Military Command of the Malvinas Islands and adjacent to Cape Horn in the Atlantic Ocean, an act that is usually considered as Argentina including the Antarctic islands.

From those years, the hunting of baleen whales and South American sea lions began to increase in the zone.

In 1831, Chile's liberator Bernardo O'Higgins wrote to the Royal Navy, saying:

Old and new Chile extends, on the Pacific from the Mejillones Bay to New South Shetland, in latitude 65° South and on the Atlantic from San Jose Peninsula at latitude 42° to New South Shetland, that means, 23° with a glut of excellent ports on both oceans, and all of them wholesome in all seasons. A simple glance at the map of South America is sufficient to prove that Chile, as is described, holds the keys of that vast portion of the South Atlantic

In 1843, a Chilean expedition founded Fort Bulnes, taking possession of the Strait of Magellan, just days before British and French ships arrived for the same purpose.

In 1856, the treaty of friendship between Chile and Argentina that recognized boundaries was enacted uti possidetis juris, that is, those defined by the Spanish Empire until 1810.

The growth of the Chilean colony in Magallanes, and then in the city of Punta Arenas, allowed the founding of companies for hunting and exploitation of whales in Antarctic seas, which requested authorization from the Chilean government. In 1894, the power for the exploitation of marine resources in the south of the parallel 54°S was given to the Punta Arenas Municipality.

In the early years of the 20th century, the interest of studying the Antarctic territories increased. Some of these expeditions asked permission from the government of Chile to be performed, among which one can highlight the Swedish teacher Otto Nordenskjöld in 1902 and the British teacher Robert F. Scott in 1900. Chile also gave mining permits, as conferred on December 31, 1902, Decree No. 3310 by Pedro Pablo Benavides to lease the Diego Ramírez Islands and San Ildefonso, may extend fishing south indefinitely on condition to install a naval station in the islands.

On May 8, 1906, the Whaling Society of Magallanes was created with a base in Punta Arenas, which was authorized on December 1 to settle in the South Shetland Islands by Decree No. 1314 of the governor of Magallanes, which they did in Whalers Bay on Deception Island, there hoisted the Chilean flag and installing a coal deposit. That place was visited by Jean-Baptiste Charcot in December 1908 to replenish coal and continued to be inhabited in summer season until 1914.

From 1906, they began to be promulgated several decrees, even from the National Congress of Chile, for mining permits in the Antarctic area. The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile mentioned on September 18, Chilean national day, of that year, the Chilean Antarctic rights in a memory and said that the delimitation of the territory would be subject to preliminary investigations. Argentina formally protested the June 10, 1907, for these actions in Chile and a negotiation process began for the mutual recognition of Antarctic territories. A limit was to be set to define two different areas, but this treaty was never signed.

On July 21, 1908, the United Kingdom officially announced its claim to sovereignty over all lands within the meridians 20° and 80° south of parallel 50°, in 1917 was moved to 58° south and in 1962, to the parallel 60° south.

In 1914, the British Ernest Shackleton began an expedition to cross the South Pole from the Weddell Sea to Ross Sea. With two ships, Endurance and Aurora, he went to Antarctica, but the weather worsened dramatically until an iceberg sank the Endurance. Shackleton then sailed to Argentine ports, the Falklands and South Georgia Islands without finding anyone willing to join the expedition trapped on an Antarctic island. In Punta Arenas, however, he found the pilot Luis Pardo Villalón, who, while aboard the Yelcho, managed to rescue those shipwrecked on the Elephant Island. On September 4, 1916, they were received at the port of Punta Arenas as heroes. The Pilot Pardo feat, sailing with temperatures close to −30 °C (−22 °F) and a stormy sea of icebergs, made him win national and international recognition.

Penguins near President Gabriel González Videla Base (1957)

• Estación Polar Científica Conjunta "Glaciar Unión" 79°46′10″S 82°54′26″W; (Scientific Polar Station Joint "Union Glacier" in English ) Teniente Arturo Parodi Alister Base and Antonio Huneeus Antarctic Bases moved to the new location, it is ubicated in the Ellsworth Mountains, Union Glacier. The company Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions LLC is operating the airport on the Union Glacier since 2008.
• Dr. Guillermo Mann Base 62°27′11.7″S 60°47′16.5″W; summer base of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), under the Ministry of Foreign Relations, on Livingston Island. Weather and ecological research station. Archaeological research site about former sealers. Another former Chilean refuge also called "Dr. Guillermo Mann" (or Spring-INACH), located in P. Spring (Pen. Palmer), is in ruins.[9]
• Luis Risopatrón Base (formerly "Copper Mine Naval Refuge") 62°22′17″S 59°42′53″W; summer station of the Chilean Navy at Robert Island. Geodetic, geophysical and biological research station.
• Julio Ripamondi Base 62°12′37″S 58°56′7″W; little summer station of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH), located on Ardley Island, next to Frei Montalva Station and Professor Julio Escudero Base (nearby located in the King George Island). The Ripamondi Base conducts research on geodesy and cartography (since 1997), terrestrial biology (since 1988) and studies of penguins (since 1988). The base is located near a large colony of gentoo penguins.
• González Videla Antarctic Base 64°49′26″S 62°51′27″W; station of the Chilean Air Force on the Antarctic mainland's Waterboat Point in Paradise Bay. It is now an "inactive" base, it started to be repaired since 2003, with fuel and supplies in storage in the buildings for emergency use, or in case the base was to be reactivated in the future. Occasional summer visits are made by Chilean scientists and tourists. The base was recently used (2011) in researches of the Chilean Antarctic Institute (INACH)
• Yelcho Base 64°52′33″S 63°35′02″W (ex Sub Base Yelcho) is located in the south bay of Doumer Island, Palmer archipelago, was reopened in March 2015.
• Collins Base 62°10′09″S 58°51′07″W is located in the Fildes Peninsula, King George Island. It has a capacity of two persons in summer, it is used for scientific research and is administered by the INACH.