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The violent wind that blows northward from the Adelie Coast of Antarctica has been a meteorological mystery since it was first studied by Sir Douglas Mawson in 1912.

While the wind is roaring on the Adelie Coast, the air may be almost calm in McMurdo Sound, just to the east.

Then, chart in hand, we returned to the deeds of the French navigator: his voyages to circumnavigate the globe, his double attempt at the South Pole, which led to his discovery of the Adélie Coast and the Louis–Philippe Peninsula, finally his hydrographic surveys of the chief islands in Oceania.

In 1838 the Frenchman Dumont d'Urville stopped at the Ice Bank in latitude 62° 57', sighting the Louis–Philippe Peninsula; on January 21 two years later, at a new southerly position of 66° 30', he named the Adélie Coast and eight days later, the Clarie Coast at 64° 40'.