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On April
8, 1839, Ross took command of the 370-ton Erebus
with his friend Francis Crozier assuming command of the
340-ton Terror. Antarctica was the new challenge and
a voyage was planned. Both ships were strengthened from bow
to stern for the tough voyage ahead. The three-masted ships
were ruggedly constructed warships used for carrying
mortars. The Terror had already seen service in
Arctic waters during 1836. Due to
Ross' extensive experience in the Arctic voyages, large
supplies of preserved meat were loaded aboard to head off
the risk of scurvy. In addition, extraordinary amounts of
soups, vegetables, cranberries, pickles and other foodstuffs
were included. Ross knew that a happy crew was a well-fed,
comfortable crew so extensive work was also done to the
ships' interiors. Senior representatives of the Admiralty
inspected the ships on September 2, 1839 and approval was
granted. The crew was paid three month's salary in advance
and on October 5, 1839, Erebus and Terror left
England on their southern voyage. Ross was
instructed to sail to Tasmania where they were supposed to
set up a permanent station for making magnetic observations.
Along the way they were to set up similar observatories at
St. Helena Island and the Cape of Good Hope. For two months
Erebus and Terror stayed at Îles
Kerguelen where a team of officers made hourly magnetometric
observations while Ross made astronomical and tidal
observations. Erebus
and Terror encountered a hurricane only two days
after leaving the islands and became separated from each
other. It was at this point that the expedition experienced
its first fatality when the Erebus's boatswain fell
overboard and drowned. The voyage to Tasmania became filled
with excitement as icebergs made the trip quite dangerous.
Ross and the Erebus landed in Hobart on August 16,
1840; the Terror had landed the day before. While
there, the magnetic observatory was built with the help of
200 convicts brought in by the Lieutenant Governor of
Tasmania, Sir John Franklin. While in Hobart, Ross read newspaper
accounts of the French and American searches for the
magnetic south pole. Both Dumont
d'Urville and Charles
Wilkes were doing research in
an area that Ross felt was his expertise and his alone.
Wilkes was kind enough to leave Ross charts of his course
and discoveries, although Ross never truly acknowledged the
gesture. Ross made the decision to take a more easterly
course for his search of the south magnetic pole rather than
follow in Wilkes' footsteps. At daybreak, on November 12,
1840, Erebus and Terror pulled up their
anchors, sailed down the Derwent River, and said goodbye to
Sir John Franklin as they left Hobart for the
Antarctic. One week
later, they came upon the Auckland Islands. Approaching the
islands, they noticed two boards erected on tall poles. On
one board was a hand-painted sign recognizing American
Charles Wilkes visiting the island on March 10 of the same
year while the other painted sign was a notice from Dumont
d'Urville recognizing his visit on the following day, March
11! Some magnetic observations and survey work was
accomplished and the ships then sailed on to Campbell
Island. On December 17 the two ships left Campbell Island
and on December 27 they encountered the first icebergs and
whales. On December 30 they crossed Thaddeus
von Bellingshausen's path and
on New Year's Day, 1841, they crossed the Antarctic
Circle. They
soon came upon the Antarctic pack of ice that had yet to be
penetrated by man. Encountering bad weather, the ice
stretched before them "motionless and menacing". Poor
weather continued but on January 5 Ross decided to "make the
attempt on the ice and push the ships as far into it as we
could get them". They forced their way slowly through the
pack until after "about an hour's hard thumping" they came
to lighter, scattered ice. They continued on "at times
sustaining violent shocks, which nothing but ships so
strengthened could have withstood". At 5 am on January 9
they broke into an open sea. Ross had discovered the Ross
Sea and he now set his sights on the south magnetic pole.
On January 11 land was reported
straight ahead. Ross first thought it to be an ice-blink (a
whiteness in the sky caused by the reflection of ice ahead)
but as they approached they realized the ice-blink was
actually a mountainous, snow-covered land. Ross was actually
disappointed to find land between him and his search for the
south magnetic pole but, nevertheless, quickly determined
the sighting to be a "way of restoring to England the honor
of the discovery of the southernmost land, which had been
nobly won by the intrepid Bellingshausen, and for more than
twenty years retained by Russia". They next saw a range of
mountains, rising to 8000 feet, which he named the Admiralty
Range. He named as many of the peaks as he could see. His
compass needle was behaving oddly; Ross determined he was
within 500 miles of the magnetic pole. Taking a westerly
course, they sailed through the Ross Sea and on January 12
Ross and Crozier planted a flag on newly discovered
Possession Island, one of two islands located just off the
mainland. A toast was offered to "Her Majesty and His Royal
Highness Prince Albert" with the region claimed as Victoria
Land. On
January 22 Ross calculated that they had reached a higher
latitude than Weddell
had in 1823. On January 27 Franklin Island was formally
possessed and on January 28 there was another
surprise. Beaufort Island and Mt.
Erebus, January 16, 1841 As the
ships sailed south, Ross saw a low white line "extending
from its eastern extreme point as far as the eye could see
to the eastward. It presented an extraordinary appearance,
gradually increasing in height, as we got nearer to it, and
proving at length to be a perpendicular cliff of ice,
between one hundred and fifty feet and two hundred feet
above the level of the sea, perfectly flat and level at the
top, and without any fissures or promontories on its even
seaward face". Ross realized there was no possible
penetration further as Ross stated that "we might with equal
chance of success try to sail through the cliffs of Dover,
as to penetrate such a mass". Naming it the Victoria
Barrier, it was later changed to the Ross Ice Shelf. By the
middle of February, after sailing eastwards along the shelf
for 200 miles, Ross decided to abandon his search for an
entrance until the next season. The expedition arrived at
Derwent River on April 6, 1841. Ross was delighted and took
pleasure in the fact that their efforts had been "unattended
by casualty, calamity, or sickness of any kind, and that
every individual on both ships had been permitted to return
in perfect health and safety to this southern
home". Erebus
and Terror at Victoria Land The
weather remained a constant problem. Ross spent much of the
summer frustrated by his hopeless efforts to find a route
through the pack. He sailed eastward and a little further
south than the previous season but, up against the wall, he
decided to give it up as winter was rapidly approaching.
They recrossed the Antarctic Circle and set a course for
Cape Horn. The expedition progressed uneventfully for
several hundred miles. In the darkness on March 12 a massive
iceberg loomed directly ahead and "the ship was immediately
hauled to the wind on the port tack with the expectation of
being able to weather it. But just at this moment the
Terror was observed running down upon us, under her
top-sails and foresail; and as it was impossible for her to
clear both the berg and the Erebus, collision was
inevitable. We instantly hove all aback to diminish the
violence of the shock, but the concussion when she struck us
was such as to throw almost everyone off his feet. Our
bowsprit, foretopmast, and other smaller spars, were carried
away, and the ships hanging together, entangled by their
rigging, and dashing against each other with fearful
violence, were falling down upon the weather face of the
lofty berg under our lee, against which the waves were
breaking and foaming to near the summit of its perpendicular
cliffs. Sometimes she rose high above us, almost exposing
her keel to view, and again descended as we in our turn rose
to the top of the wave, threatening to bury her beneath us,
whilst the crashing of the breaking upperworks and boats
increased the horror of the scene". The ships were able to separate but
the Erebus was completely disabled and drifting on to
the berg "so close that the waves, when they struck against
it, threw back their sprays into the ship". It was a very
serious moment but, as the Erebus's surgeon wrote,
"Captain Ross was quite equal to the emergency, and, folding
his arms across his breast, as he stood like a statue on the
afterpart of the quarter-deck, calmly gave the order to
loose the sail". Ross then ordered the use of a stern-board,
a hazardous three-point turn that "perhaps had never before
been resorted to by seamen in such weather". It took
forty-five minutes to execute but "In a few minutes, after
getting before the wind, she dashed through the narrow
channel between two perpendicular walls of ice, and the
foaming breakers which stretched across it, and the next
moment we were in smooth water under its lee". There was a
huge amount of damage to the Erebus but repairs were
quickly made and by March 15 they resumed their voyage. The
expedition finally arrived at the Falkland Islands, after a
brief stay at Cape Horn, where they remained for nearly five
months. Ross
departed the Falklands on December 17, 1842, for his third
and final season in the Antarctic. His desire was to
penetrate the Weddell Sea and add to the research done by
Weddell in 1822. Unfortunately, he met with "dense,
impenetrable, pack ice". Abandoning his plan, Ross crossed
the Antarctic Circle on March 5, 1843, and the Terror
sailed for home. Ross wrote: "The shores of Old England came
into view at 5h 20m A.M. on the 2nd of September, and we
anchored off Folkestone at midnight of the 4th". The voyage
was completed after four years and five months at
sea. From
Ross's departure in 1843 until the last decade of the 19th
century, Antarctica was almost solely the domain of the
sealer. There were a few exceptions. In 1844-45 the
Admiralty sent out Lieutenant T.E.L. Moore in the barque
Pagoda to carry out magnetic work in the south
Atlantic and southern Indian Oceans. The Challenger
Expedition of the British Admiralty in 1872-75 cruised
through the south Indian Ocean in January and February 1874,
mapping Prince Edward Island, Îles Crozet, Îles
Kerguelen, and Heard Island. Reasons for the lack of further
exploration were varied. America was involved with the Civil
War and there was an extreme interest in the Arctic by both
the Americans and Europeans. It was a resolution, passed by
the Sixth International Geographical Congress in London in
1895, that ushered in the "Heroic Era". Before World War I
halted the scientific research, some 16 exploring
expeditions were launched from Australia, Belgium, England,
France, Germany, Japan, Norway, Scotland, and
Sweden.
James
Clark Ross, born in 1800, entered the Navy at 11 years of
age. During his first years of service he was tutored and
watched over by his uncle, Sir John Ross. In 1818 he joined
his uncle on a controversial voyage in search of the
Northwest Passage. Between 1819 and 1827 he joined Edward
Parry in four more expeditions to the Arctic. Between 1829
and 1833 Ross spent another four and one half years
exploring the Arctic, achieving the rank of commander. On
May 31, 1831, Ross located the position of the north
magnetic pole on Boothia Peninsula in northern
Canada.
Robert McCormick, Erebus's surgeon, described the
discovery as "a stupendous volcanic mountain in a high state
of activity". Dr. Hooker ran to grab his notebook and
quickly wrote down his reaction: "All the coast one mass of
dazzling beautiful peaks of snow which, when the sun
approached the horizon, reflected the most brilliant tints
of golden yellow and scarlet; and then to see the dark cloud
of smoke, tinged with flame, rising from the volcano in a
perfectly unbroken column, one side jet-black, the other
giving back the colors of the sun....This was a sight so
surpassing everything that can be imagined...that it really
caused a feeling of awe to steal over us at the
consideration of our own comparative insignificance and
helplessness, and at the same time, an indescribable feeling
of the greatness of the Creator in the works of His hand".
The peak was 12,400 feet above sea level and was belching
flame and smoke. Ross named it Mount Erebus and the smaller
extinct volcano to the east, Mount Terror.
On
November 23, the expedition once again left Hobart, Tasmania
for Antarctica. In three weeks they were among the ice bergs
and on December 17 they entered the ice pack. By January 19,
1842, Erebus and Terror were in "an ocean of
rolling fragments of ice, hard as floating rocks of granite,
which were dashed against them by the waves with such
violence that their masts quivered". Terror's rudder
was smashed by the ice and the Erebus's didn't fare
much better. Ross wrote: "There seemed to be but little
probability of our ships holding together much longer, so
frequent and violent were the shocks they sustained".
Miraculously they did survive and, after repairs, continued
south on February 4. By the end of February the Ross Ice
Shelf was in sight again. It was so cold that while the
crewmen were chipping ice from the bows of Terror, a
small fish was found frozen in place where it had been
thrown against the ship's side. Terror's surgeon and
naturalist, Dr. Robertson, tried to retrieve it for analysis
but the ship's cat was a little quicker.