Ross Expedition
After two years service in the Mediterranean Sea, Erebus was refitted as an exploration vessel for Antarctic service, and on 21 November 1840 — captained by James Clark Ross — she departed from Tasmania for Antarctica in company with Terror. In January 1841, the crew of both ships landed on Victoria Land, and proceeded to name areas of the landscape after British politicians, scientists, and acquaintances. Mount Erebus, on Ross Island, was named for the ship itself.
They then discovered the Ross Ice Shelf, which they were unable to penetrate, and followed it eastward until the lateness of the season compelled them to return to Tasmania. The following season, 1842, Ross continued to survey the "Great Ice Barrier", as it was called, continuing to follow it eastward. The two ships returned to the Falkland Islands before returning to the Antarctic in the 1842-1843 season. The ships conducted studies in magnetism, and returned with oceanographic data and collections of botanical and ornithological specimens. Birds collected on the first expedition were described and illustrated by George Robert Gray and Richard Bowdler Sharpe in The Zoology of the Voyage of HMS Erebus & HMS Terror. Birds of New Zealand., 1875. The revised edition of Gray (1846) (1875).
Read more about this topic: HMS Erebus (1826)
Famous quotes containing the words ross and/or expedition:
“The New Yorker will be the magazine which is not edited for the old lady from Dubuque.”
—Harold W. Ross (1892–1951)
“It is a sort of ranger service. Arnold’s expedition is a daily experience with these settlers. They can prove that they were out at almost any time; and I think that all the first generation of them deserve a pension more than any that went to the Mexican war.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)