The English
sealing captains
John Balleny and
Thomas Freeman first sighted the group in 1839. Balleny named the island group after himself and the individual islands after the London merchants whose financial backing had made the expedition possible. Freeman was the first person known to land on any of the islands on 9 February 1839, and this was the first recorded human landfall south of the
Antarctic Circle. Sealers sighted the islands in 1853 but did not land. In 1948, the islands were surveyed by the
Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions aboard . A small landing party led by
Stuart Campbell made landfall in a whaleboat on 29 February 1948, apparently the first people to set foot on the islands since their discovery in 1839. In February 2015 the islands were visited for three days by the
New Zealand-Australia Antarctic Ecosystems Voyage under the auspices of the New Zealand
National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research aboard the vessel
RV Tangaroa, with the objective of studying marine life ecosystems of the islands, especially with reference to the
humpback whale. This work followed up work done on a previous visit in 2010. On 3 February 2017, personnel from the
Swiss Polar Institute's
Antarctic Circumnavigation Expedition visited the islands and carried out considerable photographic and video survey work which was intended to contribute to the first accurate mapping of the main islands. Most of the work was done by helicopter, although at least one landfall was also made on the islands by this expedition, using
Zodiac inflatable boats. == Geology ==