Captain Francis Crozier by Michael Smith

Author:Michael Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Collins Press
Published: 2012-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

Erebus and Terror caught in a storm in 1843 during the last stages of the momentous four-year journey to the Antarctic.

Erebus and Terror returned briefly to the Falklands in mid-November before making final preparations for their third voyage into Antarctic waters. At Port Louis, Crozier picked up his mail, including an official notification from the Admiralty confirming his appointment to the rank of captain.

A ceremonial gun salute was fired as the ships sailed from Port Louis on 17 December 1842, though the volley could not disguise the sheer relief at leaving the depressing Falklands. Ross observed that ‘not one individual in either ship [felt] the smallest regret at leaving the Falkland Islands’.

The plan was to sail as far south as possible on the meridian 55° west towards the Antarctic Peninsula in the hope of meeting Louis Philippe’s Land at the northern tip of the peninsula, first discovered five years earlier by D’Urville. If ice blocked their path, the alternative was to sail into the nearby seas found in 1823 by the Scottish sealing captain, James Weddell.

Ross, at least, maintained an air of determination that either took no account of the unrest or was a resolute display of authority. In a dispatch to the Admiralty from the Falklands, he boldly announced:

I have not the smallest shadow of anxiety about our next season’s operations, experience has made us so familiar with our work, now in that quarter that we can regard it with as much tranquillity as we should approaching the English Channel.1

Erebus and Terror again headed south and the first icebergs were sighted on Christmas Eve. Christmas Day was celebrated close to Clarence Island by dining on a ‘fine fat ox’ which Governor Moody had generously donated to each ship. Towards late afternoon, the main pack came into view and Joinville Island, which lies at the northern tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, was seen in the distance a few days later.

To the south of Joinville, the ships found a host of unknown islands and rocky capes. The weather was blissfully fine and Crozier and Ross went ashore to a place called Cockburn Island to claim formal possession of the area for the Crown. A flurry of other namings took place in the area, including James Ross Island, Snow Hill Island and Paulet Island. An inlet was named Erebus and Terror Gulf.

Further southerly progress, however, was blocked by an imposing line of unbroken ice. After consulting Crozier, Ross decided to head southeast, into the pack, in the hope of finding a passage towards the continent. But the pack, which had been penetrated so successfully into the Ross Sea, was crammed more tightly on this side of the continent.

Ice soon closed around the ships and by mid-January, Erebus and Terror were firmly beset in the northern reaches of King George IV Sea (later renamed the Weddell Sea).

The Weddell Sea is a graveyard for ships. Among the vessels subsequently lost in the same seas was Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance, which was crushed by the ice and sunk in 1915.

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