The Falkland Islands Dependencies are divided into two main groups; the one consisting of South Georgia with its important whaling stations together with the South Orkneys and the South Sandwich Islands, and the other of the South Shetlands and the Graham Land peninsula. Coats Land and other large land areas in the Antarctic continent itself are also included. The Dependencies were the first part of Antarctica to be brought under British control, and are defined in Letters Patent of 1908 and 1917.

The lands discovered in the Antarctic regions, by Captain Smith, of Blythe, in the brig Williams, have been the subject of various papers in the different periodical works which pay attention to such subjects. The Literary Gazette furnished the first notice of this discovery, and, not long after, one of the Edinburgh Magazines supplied some farther particulars, which we copied into our pages. There has not yet, however, appeared any full and regular history of the new land, of which maps and charts are now selling in all the principal shops in London.

The following short account of this little-known voyage is mainly based on some letters from Messrs Enderby to the Admiralty, which are now in the Public Record Office (IN letters to Secretary, 1/4308).

Immediately on Biscoe's return from his Antarctic circumnavigation (January 1833) his employers, Messrs Enderby Bros., planned a voyage which should follow up his discoveries. On the previous voyage, however, the cutter Lively, Biscoe's consort, had been wrecked at the Falklands, and while the loss was partly covered by insurance it had been sufficiently heavy for her owners to look round for financial assistance in the new enterprise.