Arms of the British Antarctic Territory

Greenwich Island

(South Shetland Islands)

British Antarctic Territory

Location: 62° 30' S 59° 46' 59" W
separated from Livingston Island to the SW by McFarlane Strait and from Robert Island to the NE by English Strait, South Shetland Islands, was roughly charted by nineteenth-century sealers and, joined to Robert Island, Nelson Island and W King George Island, first indicated by Bransfield; probably included under Lloyd's Land by Foster (1820), but first shown as a separate island by Goddardin 1821; also charted by the Russian Antarctic Expedition and named Ostrov Berezino, after the River Berezina, near Minsk, where Russian forces defeated the French in November 1812. Named Greenwich Island, either after Greenwich in Kent or after Greenwich, Connecticut, from which many New England sealers came. The island was re-charted by Discovery Investigations in 1935. The island was photographed from the air by the Falkland Islands and Dependencies Aerial Survey Expedition, 1956-57.