Edward Bransfield

Edward Bransfield was born in Ballinacurra, County Cork, around 1785, a quiet place that gave the Royal Navy one of its sharpest Antarctic explorers. He joined the fleet at eighteen after being taken from his father’s fishing boat, and he later helped reveal the Trinity Peninsula in January 1820. A respected Catholic family may have lived there, perhaps sending him to a hedge school before the sea claimed him.