254 SIEGE OF THE SOUTH POLE 
in like manner charged with botanical observations, and 
for this work the Erebus was singularly fortunate in 
having Dr. Joseph Dalton Hooker, son of Sir W. J. 
Hooker, the eminent botanist. The youngest officer on 
the expedition (he was only 21), Sir Joseph Hooker has 
outlived all his shipmates and risen to the first rank 
amongst British men of science, always cherishing the 
memory of those years of unprecedented interest passed 
on the great voyage of discovery and largely instru- 
mental sixty years later in securing the renewal of Ant- 
arctic research. The assistant surgeon on the Terror 
was Mr. David Lyall, and the second master of that ship, 
Mr. John E. Davis, was a skilled draughtsman who pre- 
pared the charts of the expedition, took advantage of 
every opportunity presented to him, and in his letters 
home gave a very vivid account of the incidents of the 
cruise. 
Sir John Franklin, whose ability to judge of the quali- 
ties of polar explorers is not likely to be challenged, did 
not think much of the subordinate officers of the expedi- 
tion when he met them in Tasmania — 44 there was scarcely 
one, with the exception of Hooker, above the ordinary 
run of the service/' he said, in a confidential letter when 
comparing them with those whom he had selected to 
accompany him on his last and fatal voyage. This of 
course did not refer to Captain Crozier, whom Franklin 
subsequently selected as his own second in command, 
and Davis also might justly have been excepted. 
The worst risk which the commander of a government 
expedition of exploration runs is to be hampered by the 
minuteness of his instructions which he dares not disobey 
even when unforeseen circumstances turn them into a 
prohibition of all progress. Ross was fortunate in com- 
