Edward Bransfield (c. 1785 – 31 October 1852) was a Royal Navy officer who served as a master on several ships, after being impressed into service in Ireland at the age of 18.

[2] They may have had enough money to pay for Edward's education, but because of the Penal Laws, it is more likely that he attended a local hedge school.

On 2 June 1803, Bransfield, then eighteen years old, was removed by an press-gang from his father's fishing boat and impressed into the Royal Navy.

When news of his discovery reached Valparaíso, Captain Shirreff of the Royal Navy decided that the matter warranted further investigation.

He chartered William and appointed Bransfield, two midshipmen, and the surgeon from the ship HMS Slaney to survey the newly discovered islands.

Turning south, he crossed what is now known as the Bransfield Strait (named for him by James Weddell in 1822), and on 30 January 1820 sighted Trinity Peninsula, the northernmost point of the Antarctic mainland.

Unknown to Bransfield, two days earlier, on 28 January 1820, Russian explorer Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen may have caught sight of an icy shoreline now known to be part of East Antarctica.

On the basis of this sighting and the coordinates given in his logbook, Bellingshausen has been credited by some (e.g., British polar historian A. G. E. Jones) with the discovery of the continent.

In January 2020, on the 200th anniversary of his discovery of Antarctica, a commemorative monument was unveiled in his hometown of Ballinacurra, in County Cork, Ireland.