Arms of the British Antarctic Territory

Byers Peninsula

(Livingston Island)

British Antarctic Territory

Location: 62° 37' 59" S 61° 3' 58" W
W end of Livingston Island, was visited by nineteenth-century sealers as shown by at least one stone hut on the peninsula; photographed from the air by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition in 1956-57 and surveyed from the ground by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1957-58; named after James Byers, a New York shipowner, who tried unsuccessfully in August 1820 to induce the US Government to found a settlement in and take possession of the South Shetland Islands and who sent out a fleet of American sealers (Jane Maria, Aurora, Charity, Henry and Sarah) to the islands in 1820-21 to be based first at Rugged Island and later in Yankee Harbour, Greenwich Island. In 1967 the peninsula was designated SPA No. 10 under the Antarctic Treaty (FO, 1967, p.6-7). The peninsula was redesignated SSSI No.6 under the Antarctic Treaty in 1975.