He sailed with Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld on the first voyage through the north-east passage, and later explored Tierra del Fuego and the Congo River.

[3] In 1878 Lieutenant Giacomo Bove was chosen to participate in the Vega expedition of Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld to search for the north-east passage.

Vega crossed the Barents sea, and accompanied by three cargo vessels sailed along the northern coast of Russia, arriving at Dikson on 6 August 1878.

The Vega continued onward, but was forced by worsening conditions to anchor on 28 September 1878 in Kolyuchinskaya Bay, only 130 miles (210 km) from the Bering Strait.

[2] Nordenskiöld records an account by Lieutenant Bove of a trip he made accompanied by the hunter Johnson on New Year's Day to check the condition of the ice towards the sea.

The deep loose snow made walking very fatiguing, and three rows of torosses[a] also contributed to this, mainly in consequence of the often snow-covered cracks, which crossed the ice-sheet in their neighborhood.

[3] Bove devoted his efforts to organizing an expedition to the Antarctic to continue the scientific observations that had been made by the English navigator James Clark Ross.

General Julio Argentino Roca, President of Argentina, assigned the corvettes Uruguay and Cabo de Horno to the expedition.

[11] Where Bove had wanted to stop at Tierra del Fuego, then explore the coast of Graham Land, circumnavigate Antarctica and return north to Cape Town, the modified plan for the Expedicion Austral Argentina had exploration of the coasts of Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego and Isla de los Estados (Staten Island) as its main goal.

[3] Bove's group left Buenos Aires on 17 December 1881 in the corvette Cabo de Hornos commanded by Luis Piedrabuena.

On this trip Decio Vinciguerra was officially both zoologist and botanist, but in fact Carlos Luigi Spegazzini from Buenos Aires handled the botanical work.

[2] The expedition stopped at Puerto Santa Cruz, and reached Port Roca on the north of the Isla de los Estados on 8 February 1882.

Bove became impatient with the corvette's slow progress and rode to Punta Arenas where he hired the San Jose, a smaller and more manoeuvrable vessel, more suitable for the local conditions.

[9] While in Argentina, Bove again tried to get backing for an Antarctic exploration voyage from members of the growing and prosperous Italian community in Buenos Aires, but did not manage to get an expedition organized.

[2] They made a leisurely voyage around West Africa, stopping at the Canary Islands, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Accra, Keta, Lagos and Fernando Po.

Wracked with fever contracted on the Congo trip, he resigned from the navy and was made a director of La Veloce, a shipping company.