INTRODUCTION 



northward he sighted high islands which were probably 

 part of the Balleny group and he sailed across the site 

 of a range of mountains marked on a chart which Wilkes 

 had given him. Wilkes afterwards explained that these 

 mountains were not intended to show one of his discoveries 

 and an unedif ying controversy ensued, which did credit to 

 neither explorer. Ross returned to Hobart on April 6, 

 1841, after the greatest voyage of Antarctic discovery 

 ever made. Three months later the news reached England, 

 and the Royal Geographical Society at once awarded the 

 Founder's Gold Medal to Captain Ross. 



On November 23, 1841, the Erebus and Terror left the 

 Bay of Islands, New Zealand, which had been declared 

 a British possession the year before, to make a new 

 effort to get south in a longitude about 150° West, so as 

 to approach the Great Barrier from a point east of that 

 at which they had been stopped the previous season. The 

 pack was entered about 60° South and 146° West on 

 December 18, and it seemed as if the ships were never 

 to get through it. The Antarctic Circle was reached on 

 New Year's Day, 1842, every effort being made to work 

 the ships through the lanes between the floes. For a 

 time when the wind was favourable the two ships were 

 lashed on each side of a small floe of convenient shape and 

 with all sail set they were able to give it sufficient way to 

 break the lighter ice ahead, using it as a battering-ram 

 and as a buffer to protect their bows. Ross did every- 

 thing to keep up the spirits of the crews, by instituting 

 sports and keeping up visits between the two ships, as 

 in an Arctic wintering. A terrific storm on January 18 

 buffeted the ships unmercifully, the huge masses of float- 

 ing ice being hurled against them in a prodigious swell, 

 and for twenty-four hours the Erebus and Terror were 

 almost out of control, their rudders having been smashed 

 by the ice, though the stout timbers of the hulls held good. 



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