Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic a gathering of VIPs and local people attended the unveiling of a stone memorial on the 25 January in the village of Ballinacurra in County Cork.

It commemorated local-man Edward Bransfield, a pioneering polar explorer who was the first person to formally record the discovery of Antarctica two centuries ago in 1820.

Relatives from Ireland were present and a descendant of Bransfield’s brother from Boston unveiled Ballinacurra’s limestone monument.

With the effects of global warming becoming frighteningly evident, Antarctica is increasingly highlighted in the media.

The lowest temperature ever recorded on the planet - minus 89.6 degrees Celsius - was noted at a Russian research station in Antarctica on 21 July 1983, but today, with the earth fast warming up, the ice is melting at an alarming rate.

And there’s a lot of it - with a surface area 1½ times that of the USA, the Antarctic boasts about 90 per cent of the world’s sheet ice, in some places over 5km (3 miles) thick!

Ireland boasts many Antarctic pioneers, like Banbridge’s Francis Crozier, Kildare’s Ernest Shackleton and Kerry’s Tom Crean, but until now Edward Bransfield remained virtually forgotten.

A ‘Remembering Edward Bransfield’ committee was formed in 2016 to commemorate his historic feat, and to organise the erection of the monument in Ballinacurra, coinciding with the 200th anniversary of his sighting of Antarctica.

Bransfield was born in 1785 in the little harbour-town near Middleton in Cork.

Probably educated at a hedge school he worked on his father’s fishing boat and in 1803 18-year-old Edward was press-ganged into the Royal Navy.

He rose quickly through the ranks, survived the wars with the French and became an officer and eventually a ship’s master.

When war ended in 1815 he was posted to Valparaiso in Chile.

After a British merchantman called The Williams reported sighting uncharted lands south of Cape Horn in 1819 the Royal Navy put Bransfield in command to investigate.

With a crew of about 30 men he sailed south from Valparaiso in December 1819.

The weather and sea conditions would have been particularly harsh and dangerous.

After sailing some 3,000km he sighted ‘two high mountains, covered in snow’ on 20 January 1820.

This was the northernmost point of Antarctica.

Bransfield sent diaries, charts and ship’s logs to his superiors in London hoping he’d be asked to lead a second voyage to investigate further.

But the Admiralty didn’t respond.

He left the Royal Navy, returned to sea on merchant ships, and died unacknowledged in Brighton on 31 October 1852 at the age of 67.

As well as the Ballinacurra memorial, a blue plaque has recently been placed in Brighton in his memory, though geographical reminders in Antarctica are abundant - Bransfield Rocks, Bransfield Island, Bransfield Trough, the Bransfield Strait and Mount Bransfield are all named after the plucky Irish pioneer.

The Belfast Newsletter of 20 October 1821 carried an account from Captain Bellingshausan, Commander of the Russian ‘voyage of discovery in the Antarctic Seas’.

The Captain’s narrative arrived in Petersburg in a letter dated May 1820, sent from Botany Bay, explaining that he’d previously “discovered three islands covered with snow and ice, on one of which there was a volcano.”

Bellingshausan added “there is no southern continent or should there be one, it must be inaccessible from being covered with perpetual snows, ice, etc.”

Unknown to Edward Bransfield when he made his historic sighting on 20 January 1820, the Russian had made sightings three days earlier!

The Russian expedition had two ships led by Captain Bellingshausen (later an Admiral) on the 985-ton Vostok (meaning ‘East’) with his second-in-command Captain Mikhail Lazarev on the 530-ton support vessel Mirny (meaning ‘Peaceful’)

But Bellingshausen wasn’t certain if he’d seen land or just another iceberg, nor had he formally recorded the sighting.

After Bransfield landed on an island on 22 January 1820 and named it King George, he sailed a further 60km south.

At 3pm on 30th January 1820 his Midshipman wrote in the ship’s log “We can positively assert that we saw land…immense mountains and crude crags, barren ridges with snow.”

Bellingshausen’s ‘no southern continent’ was thoroughly disproved with Bransfield’s discovery of the slopes of Antarctica’s Trinity Peninsula!

The Irishman proceeded across the Weddell Sea and sailed past Elephant Island, where Ernest Shackleton’s crew were marooned on the Endurance almost a century later.

Bransfield meticulously charted and recorded his observations.

Russia erected a monument, and issued a coin and postage stamps in memory of Bellingshausen’s expedition.

There’s a Royal Mail stamp in honour of Bransfield - lacking a portrait, nobody has ever found one - but bearing an image of the British Antarctic Survey ship RRS Bransfield, which was named after him.