A century before Shackleton's party made the ‘historic crossing’ of South Georgia in 1915, sealers working on the island's southern coast attempted a similar feat. Wanting to collect letters waiting for them on a recently arrived ship anchored on the north coast, ‘a party of the crew … undertook a journey across the island’. They set out up one of the many South Georgia glaciers, but turned back after one of the party died in a crevasse.

Even if these sealers had made a successful crossing, it is highly unlikely they would have been feted by history in the way that Shackleton's party has been. This is partly because the matter of who became an ‘explorer’ in the eye of history was dependent on the immediate power relations in which Antarctic exploration took place. The sealers were not attached to an exploration master or expansive exploring objectives; even if they had been it was still unlikely that they themselves would be allowed a place in exploration history. In 1821 Benjamin Morrell was a young officer on board the Wasp searching for seals in the South Shetlands. He was yet to achieve the position of captain that would help write him into the annals of Antarctic exploration history. Yet his ambition to be an ‘explorer’ was already evident.