James Weddell

James Weddell (24 August 1787 in Ostend – 9 September 1834) was a British sailor, navigator and seal hunter who in February 1823 sailed to latitude of 74°15′S (a record 7.69 degrees or 532 statute miles south of the Antarctic Circle) and into a region of the Southern Ocean that later became known as the Weddell Sea.

He entered the merchant service very early in his life and was apparently bound to the master of a Newcastle collier (a coal transport vessel) for some years. About 1805 he shipped on board a merchantman trading to the West Indies, making several voyages there.

He was aboard the Hope when in 1813 in the English Channel she captured the True Blooded Yankee, an American privateer. With the end of the Napoleonic War he was laid off on half pay in February 1816, and for a while resumed merchant voyages to the West Indies. In 1820 he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy and subsequently served on several ships.

In 1819 Weddell was introduced to James Strachan, a shipbuilder of Leith, who together with James Mitchell, a London insurance broker, owned the 160-ton brig Jane, an American-built ship taken during the War of 1812 and re-fitted for sealing. News of the discovery of the South Shetland Islands had just broken, and Weddell suggested that fortunes might be made in the new sealing grounds. His first voyage as the captain of the Jane took him to the Falkland Islands and further south. He returned with the holds full, and the voyage was so profitable, that Strachan and Mitchell had a second ship, the Beaufoy, built.

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