We present the characteristics of the lithogenic components of seafloor surface sediments covering the entire South Atlantic Ocean (from the equator to Antarctica). These samples were collected by multiple seagoing expeditions between 1988 and 2005. This dataset describes the end-member (EM) grain-size distributions that were calculated for the entire dataset of grain-size distributions, and which are used for the calculation of end-member composition of the South Atlantic surface sediments.