The image of a huge southern continent has haunted the imaginations of geographers throughout history. Not until the second of his great voyages in 1773 did Captain James Cook lay the theory to rest. This book tells the story of British, American and Russian expeditions, from the astronomer Edmond Halley's voyage in the "Paramore" in 1699 to the sealer John Balleny's 1839 voyage in the "Eliza Scott", in search of land, fur and elephant seals. These voyages were taken for science, profit and national prestige. Life was incredibly harsh, and often the seamen had to make their own charts as they navigated the stormy waters below the Convergance. The book desribes their attempts to discover and exploit the new continent, which was not the verdant land imagined, but an inhospitable expanse of rock and ice, ringed by pack ice and icebergs - the land of Antarctica.