French Antartic territory - Adélie Land.

Adélie Land /Terre Adélie

In mid-January 1840, the Astrolabe was back in Antarctic waters once again. On January 20, 1840, d'Urville succeeded in raising the French flag over land which he took in the name of the King of France, naming it the Adélie Coast after his wife Adèle. The visit proved to be short-lived, however. After a few days of intense scientific work, and driven out by the bad weather, the two boats set out towards Hobart (Tasmania), then returned to France. No one could have anticipated that another 110 years would pass before the French would once again set foot on the Adélie Coast.

In fact, it was nearly 50 years later, in 1897, that the Belgian explorer Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache and his crew on board the Belgica landed and — quite unintentionally — spent the first winter stranded there. More than a century after d'Urville's discovery, the French established their first base, Port-Martin (1950-1952), near the glacier of Zélée on the Adélie Coast. Terre Adélie, a narrow strip of land which runs from the coastline directly to the South Pole, is still a base for French scientists today. The Magnetic Pole — nearly 1700 miles (2700 km) away from the geographic South Pole — is located just offshore from Dumont d'Urville, a meterological station which has been manned since 1956.

The region of Terre Adélie is officially part of the French Southern and Antarctic Territories — Terres Australes et Antarctiques Françaises (TAAF), which also includes Kerguelen Island, the Crozet Archipelago, and the islands of Amsterdam/St-Paul.

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