50 THE ANTAECTIC VOYAGE : PEELIMINAEIES 



navigator, James Clark Eoss, who had shared in no less than 

 seven Polar expeditions namely, the Erebus, a bomb of 

 378 tons, ' of strong build and capacious hold,' especially 

 strengthened to bear the pressure and shocks of the ice, and 

 the Terror, 340 tons, which had been similarly strengthened 

 for Arctic service in the winter of 1836, when many whalers 

 were reported beset by the ice in Baffin's Bay, and which had 

 been employed the following summer by Sir George Back 

 in his attempt to reach Eepulse Bay. ' They possessed every 

 superiority,' writes Hooker, ' except that of sailing qualities 

 for manoeuvring amongst ice.' So well found were the ships 

 that they suffered no vital injury from storm or collision, or 

 from frenzied battering by the masses of pack ice in the long- 

 drawn fury of the Antarctic gales : nor, thanks to the precau- 

 tions taken, did the crews suffer from the dreaded scurvy 

 which cut short the rival cruise of the Astrolabe and Zelee 

 under D'Urville. 1 



Eoss was instructed to land the observers and instruments 

 for fixed magnetic observatories at St. Helena, the Cape, and 

 Van Diemen's Land, finally calling at Sydney, the centre of 

 reference for magnetic determinations. He carried with him 

 portable observatories, and with these he was to make special 

 observations at intermediate oceanic islands (Kerguelen's 

 Land being particularly recommended) simultaneously with 

 the fixed observatories and those in Europe. 



Then, after refitting at Van Diemen's Land, he was to begin 

 his southward explorations, first to determine the Magnetic 

 Pole, and incidentally to extend geographical discovery, * while 

 seeking fresh places on which to plant your observatory in all 

 directions from the Pole.' 



The Antarctic afforded more of ' those yet unvisited tracts 

 of geographical research ' than the Arctic. It had been visited 



1 Dumont D'Urville (1790-1842), the French navigator and accomplished 

 man of science, whose first claim to fame was the identification and preserva- 

 tion of the Venus of Milo. His exploring voyage in search of La Perouse, 

 1826-9, took him to Australasia and the Pacific ; in 1837-40, again in the 

 Astrolabe, with the Z&lee as tender, he made two voyages to 'the Antarctic. 

 Compelled by scurvy to refit at Hobart, he started in January 1840, as Wilkes 

 six weeks before from Sydney, in the very direction in which it was known 

 that Ross was about to sail. 



