Wilkins's discoveries

This map was published to accompany Hubert Wilkins's account of his aerial survey of Graham Land (Antarctic Peninsula) in 1928-29. It reveals the series of channels that he believed divided the peninsula into a number of islands.

Wilkins based his expedition on Deception Island in Bransfield Strait. Unusually light ice conditions that year hampered his operations: there was only roughly a depth of two feet (60 centimetres) of ice, instead of the six to eight feet anticipated. This meant there would be some difficulties with the plane's landing field. Overcoming this problem, Wilkins and his pilot Ben Eielson made the first flight in the Antarctic on 16 November 1928.

On 20 December they made the long flight down the length of Graham Land on which Wilkins observed and recorded the channels that divided the land: Crane, Casey, Lurabee and Stephansson Channels. He also named Hearst Land after his sponsor William Hearst, the American newspaper proprietor. A further flight was made on 10 January 1929 and these initial observations were confirmed. The aerial survey was not followed up by any ground based surveys. From this expedition it was assumed that Graham Land was separated from the Antarctic mainland and was a series of islands.

Wilkins's discoveries were at the time considered perhaps the most important in the Antarctic since Shackleton's discovery and ascent of the Beardmore Glacier to the Antarctic Plateau in 1909. H R Mill of the Royal Geographical Society and a noted Antarctic historian wrote that it would take years of laborious work on land and sea or months of systematic aerial surveys to test and verify or correct the interesting outline presented by Wilkins, but that it was nevertheless a "magnificent pioneer performance."

During 1934-37 John Rymill and the men of his British Graham Land Expedition showed that Wilkins' work was incorrect. By their own aerial reconnaissance, backed up by extensive ground based survey work along the western coast and by ascending to the mountains that ran the length of the peninsula, they proved that there were no channels and that Graham Land was a peninsula of the continent: the Antarctic Peninsula as it is known today.

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