On November 13th, 1840, the expedition sailed, Sir John Franklin remaining on board the Erebus until she reached the mouth of the Derwent, when he returned in his tender. Sir James Ross touched at Auckland Island and Campbell Island, and on January 1st the Antarctic Circle was crossed, and the warm clothing supplied by the Admiralty was served out. Passing a great many icebergs with a strong breeze from the N.W., the main pack was reached on the 5th, and Sir James resolved to put the bows of the two old sailing ships straight on to it and force his way through. The pack is always closest and most difficult to penetrate at the edge, and more open inside. After about an hour’s hard bumping, and receiving several heavy blows, the outer edge was forced, and the inside ice was found to be much lighter and more scattered than it appeared to be when viewed from a distance. During the following days the ships were bored through the pack, steering south for the supposed position of the magnetic pole.
They had been six days in the pack when, on January 10th, in the middle watch, Lieutenant Wood reported that land was distinctly visible right ahead. It rose in lofty peaks, but was still very distant. They were in 71° 15′ S. Next day they were fairly close to the land, the northern point of which was named Cape Adare. Soundings were obtained in 160 fathoms. The mountains, crowned with snowy peaks, attained a height of from 7000 to 10,000 ft. They were named the Admiralty Range, and the peaks were called after the then Lords of the Admiralty. The principal peak, nearly 10,000 feet high, was, however, named after Sir Edward Sabine, who was with Ross in two Arctic voyages.
Here the variation was 44° and the dip 86°, which according to Sir James Ross’s calculation placed the magnetic pole in 76° S. and 1450 26′ E., or about 500 miles inland[194].
With some difficulty Ross, Crozier, and several officers landed on a small island near the coast, covered with penguins, in 71° 56′ S. and 171° 7′ E., giving it the name of Possession Island. In very bad and stormy weather a further range of lofty mountains came in sight whose peaks were named after friends of the Royal Society and the British Association, while an island received the name of Coulman, and its northern point Cape Anne, the name of Sir James’s fiancée.
On the 27th January the ships were in sight of another island which was named after Sir John Franklin. The two captains with several officers went on shore in two boats. There was a heavy surf beating on the rocks but Ross and a few others effected a landing. Hooker, however, fell into the sea, and was nearly drowned before he could be hauled into the boat, more dead than alive from the intense cold. His condition made it necessary to return to the ship as soon as possible, Ross having collected several specimens of rock. The island is in 76° 8′ S., and is 12 miles long by 6 broad.
On the same day the ships sighted a mountain 12,400 ft. high, emitting flame and smoke in great profusion. Sir James Ross named it Mount Erebus, and an extinct volcano to the eastward 10,900 ft. high, Mount Terror. A small round island, which had been in sight all the morning, was called Beaufort Island.
Ross and his officers were astonished at the sight of a mighty ice cliff 100 feet high, with a uniform level summit, stretching away to the eastward from the peninsula or island of the volcanoes. It was a bitter disappointment, as they hoped to have gone much further south. As the ships approached the volcanoes two capes were recognised and named after Crozier and Bird, Sir James Ross taking the opportunity of expressing his affectionate regard for his two old Arctic messmates, who were giving him such invaluable help. The bay formed by the island of volcanoes was called after M’Murdo, the first Lieutenant of the Terror, “a compliment that his zeal and skill well merited.” The ice cliffs were higher than the masthead, so that little could be seen, but some peaks were made out, rising above the line of cliffs, and looking more distant than they really were owing to the haze. These Ross named the Parry mountains, after his revered old commander with whom he had served in all but one of his Arctic voyages. The peaks were really the tops of islands at the back of the volcanoes, but the mistake was natural, indeed inevitable under the circumstances.
When within three or four miles of the great ice barrier, Sir James Ross altered course to the eastward to ascertain its extent. Mount Erebus was then emitting smoke and flames in great volume, affording a grand spectacle. Good progress was made in sailing along the ice barrier but no rent or fissure could be seen throughout its whole extent. On the 29th, after sailing along the barrier for a hundred miles, the ships being in 77° 47′ S., it was still seen stretching away to the east. The soundings showed that the outer edge of the ice was not resting on the ground. Bad weather came on with much snow, and the barrier was only seen at intervals as they continued their course to the east. Ross wrote of the barrier as a “mighty and wonderful object, far beyond anything we could have thought of or conceived.” The furthest south of the two ships was in 78° 5′ S.
Mt Erebus from the South