Earliest possible Antarctic territorial claims

Could 17th or 16th century Spaniards or Portuguese discover South Georgia (or any other Antarctic land mass) and lay a legitimate territorial claim?
 
Could 17th or 16th century Spaniards or Portuguese discover South Georgia (or any other Antarctic land mass) and lay a legitimate territorial claim?

Why? Seriously, why?
Except if the discoverer's king have of these weird, disgusting and sick festish that are used nowadays as memes and is really fascinated on penguins that he wants to keep for him and him alone, why?
 
I think it'd be cool if the Portuguese or Spanish could shoulder in on British/Scandinavian 18th and 19th century dominance over the whaling grounds in the South Atlantic. Granted, I don't think it'd take much for a Royal Navy squadron to wrest South Georgia from Spanish/Portuguese defenders, but if they can remain in Spanish/Portuguese hands until the Napoleonic Wars are concluded, I don't think the British could do much more than offer to buy them.
 
I plan to have Chile make a claim in the mid 19th Century in an upcoming work. They'll even have a failed colony on the Antarctica Peninsula (whaling, clubbing seals and other polar industries of the time). Sub-Antarctic islands will be annexed and used mostly by the whaling industry.
 
Could 17th or 16th century Spaniards or Portuguese discover South Georgia (or any other Antarctic land mass) and lay a legitimate territorial claim?

Technically that duo had already explicitly laid a claim to everything outside the then-known world that is yet to be discovered and that includes Antarctica. :cool:

But if they do come across any subantarctic island or the continent itself, they'll name it, they may mumble something that that land belongs to their king and they'll get the hell out of there not planing to ever return.

IOTL it's not unlikely that some Portuguese or Spanish found their death amongst the penguins...
 
It depends on your definitions of Antarctica and claim. A country with a general knowledge of the size of the continent and with a few posts on nearby islands could try to claim Antarctica without any ability to enforce it.
 
A quick glance at Google maps suggests that the Falklands are definitely on the South American plate, and that South Georgia/South H/a/w/a/i/i Sandwich Islands are on what LOOKS like the tail end of that plate.

Might want to get a second opinion on anything when using google's map. It doesn't know it's turn left from it's turn right.
 
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