Possession Bay, South Georgia | Cook’s First Landing Site

Cook's historic landing

Cook arrived aboard HMS Resolution, accompanied by HMS Adventure, conducting the first survey and mapping of the island. He took possession for Britain, renaming it 'Isle of Georgia' for King George III. 

German naturalist Georg Forster, who accompanied Cook's party during three separate landings that day, recorded the ceremony: "Here Captain Cook displayed the British flag, and performed the ceremony of taking possession of those barren rocks, in the name of his Britannic Majesty, and his heirs forever. A volley of two or three muskets was fired into the air."

Cook's assessment was harsh. He described "wild rocks raised their lofty summits until they were lost in the clouds, and the valleys lay buried in everlasting snow. Not a tree was to be seen nor a shrub even big enough to make a tooth-pick." His expedition naturalist suggested such a desolate place could only serve as a penal colony.

From exploitation to recovery

Despite Cook's grim verdict, his reports on South Georgia's wildlife attracted sealers:

• 1786 – First recorded sealing expedition arrives

• Early 1800s – American ships ship fur seal pelts to China, hunt elephant seals for blubber oil

• 1823 – Explorer James Weddell notes at least 1.2 million fur seal skins exported from the island

• Within 50 years – Fur seals driven virtually to extinction

Wildlife of Possession Bay

Today, Possession Bay is anything but barren. Stepping ashore at Brighton Beach, visitors are met by a living, breathing illustration of South Georgia’s recovery - wildlife layered across the beach, the tussock edges, and the surf beyond.

King penguins dominate the scene, their tall silhouettes and constant movement forming the visual heart of the bay. Adults commute steadily between colony and sea, while others stand immobile in tight groups, their calls carrying across the beach. Mixed among them are Antarctic fur seals, once hunted to near extinction, now reclaiming the shoreline in astonishing numbers - bulls sprawled across the sand, juveniles weaving unpredictably between penguins and landing parties alike.

Encounters here unfold without warning. Walking close to the waterline, it is easy to forget how dynamic the beach truly is - until a shout carries across the wind, warning that a southern elephant seal has chosen precisely the stretch of sand you are crossing as its landing point. Within moments, tonnes of moving life surge out of the surf, a vivid reminder that at Possession Bay, humans are visitors negotiating space rather than observers standing apart.

At other times, the pace slows. A walk inland with an expedition guide draws the eye away from the crowded beach toward the glacier rising quietly behind the bay—its ice feeding the landscape that supports this dense concentration of life. In these moments, the past surfaces unexpectedly. Weathered whale bones, bleached and half-buried, sometimes emerge from the ground—silent remnants of the sealing era that once stripped these shores, now resting within a landscape reclaimed by living abundance.