The French expedition bade a final farewell to the polar regions on February 1st, 1840, and returned to Hobart Town. Important discoveries had been made, officers and men all vieing with each other in zeal and loyalty. It was a well conducted and successful voyage.
Dumont D’Urville had also previously surveyed part of the South Shetlands in 1838. He passed Clarence and Elephant Islands and, sailing down Bransfield Strait, discovered the north end of Graham Land without knowing it, which he named after Louis Philippe. An island to the east was named after the Prince de Joinville. He also saw a channel with the coast of Graham Land on one side, and Trinity with other islands on the other. To this he gave the name Orleans Channel.
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The American expedition was commanded by Captain Wilkes, its object being chiefly to explore the Pacific, in a voyage of circumnavigation. Captain Wilkes concluded it with a visit to the edge of the ice south of Australia, following in the wake of Captain Balleny and also of Captain Dumont D’Urville.
The American squadron consisted of the Vincennes, Captain Wilkes, the Porpoise, Peacock, and Flying Fish tender. The tender parted company in 48° S. and went back. The Peacock also returned owing to severe injuries received from the ice. The Vincennes and Porpoise continued the voyage and on the 16th January they were at the edge of the ice, nearly on the Antarctic Circle and in 154° 30′ E. Here land was reported by the Porpoise “mountains seen”; “two peaks distinctly seen, very clear, few clouds.” Wilkes saw some land himself, and called it Ringgold’s Knoll. Land was also visible from the Vincennes, “every appearance of land, believed to be such by all on board.” All this was nevertheless a mistake, due to the deceptive appearance of ice and clouds.
In 1850 Captain Tapsell, in a sealer called the Brisk, sighted the Balleny Islands and then sailed west to Long. 143° E., finding no land. It is now known that the coast trends S.E. from Adélie Land, and could not possibly have been sighted from Wilkes’s position. Wilkes reported having sighted land or appearance of land 3000 feet high several times, seen over the fast ice, and he was within a few miles of a coast beyond Sabrina Land, which he called Knox Land. He then stood to the north and reported land ahead trending north in 64°, which he called Termination Land, but we now know that this does not exist.
Captain Wilkes’s theory has been proved to be quite correct—that there is a continuous land forming a coast-line of 2000 miles and more, and he certainly made out the distant land on several occasions, as Balleny and Dumont D’Urville had done before him, but his subsequent controversies are to be deplored.
CHAPTER L
FIRST ANTARCTIC VOYAGE OF SIR JAMES ROSS
The great Antarctic expedition commanded by Sir James Ross had magnetic research and not geography for its immediate object. It originated with Colonel Sabine, who read a paper on terrestrial magnetism at the meeting of the British Association at Newcastle in August, 1838, which led to a deputation being nominated to approach the Government. The deficiency in our knowledge of terrestrial magnetism in the southern hemisphere, it was considered, should be supplied by observations of magnetic direction and intensity in high southern latitudes between the meridians of New Holland[191] and Cape Horn, and Her Majesty’s Government was urged to appoint a naval expedition expressly directed to that object.
Lord Melbourne acceded to the request, and Sir James Ross received his commission to command the expedition on the 8th April, 1839. The Erebus, a bomb vessel of 370 tons, strongly built and with a capacious hold, was selected for Sir James Ross, and the Terror, of 340 tons, a similar vessel which had been thoroughly repaired after her disastrous voyage with Sir George Back, was chosen for Ross’s second in command, Commander Crozier. The complement of each ship amounted to 64 persons.