Tower Island was named in 1820 by Edward Bransfield of the British Royal Navy during a major exploration of the Southern Ocean. On January 30, 1820, Bransfield caught sight of the Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland. Two days earlier, unknown to Bransfield, Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen appears to have sighted the East Antarctica shoreline. On the basis of this sighting and the coordinates given in his logbook, Bellingshausen is usually credited with the discovery of the Antarctic continent.
