Ross expedition

The Ross expedition was a voyage of scientific exploration of the Antarctic in 1839 to 1843, led by James Clark Ross, with two unusually strong warships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. It explored what is now called the Ross Sea and discovered the Ross Ice Shelf. On the expedition, Ross discovered the Transantarctic Mountains and the volcanoes Erebus and Terror, named after his ships. The young botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker made his name on the expedition. The expedition inferred the position of the South Magnetic Pole, and made substantial observations of the zoology and botany of the region, resulting in a monograph on the zoology, and a series of four detailed monographs by Hooker on the botany, collectively called Flora Antarctica and published in parts between 1843 and 1859. The expedition was the last major voyage of exploration made wholly under sail. Among the expedition's biological discoveries was the Ross seal, a species confined to the pack ice of Antarctica. In 1838, the British Association for the Advancement of Science proposed an expedition to carry out magnetic measurements in the Antarctic. Sir James Clark Ross was chosen after previous experience working on the British Magnetic Survey from 1834 onwards, working with prominent physicists and geologists such as Humphrey Lloyd, Sir Edward Sabine, John Phillips and Robert Were Fox. Ross had made many previous expeditions to the Arctic, including experience as captain. The expedition was led by a Captain of the Royal Navy, James Clark Ross, who commanded HMS Erebus. HMS Terror was commanded by Ross's close friend, Francis Crozier. The botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, then aged 23 and the youngest person on the expedition, was assistant-surgeon to Robert McCormick, and responsible for collecting zoological and geological specimens. Thomas Abernethy, who had been on previous Arctic expeditions with Ross, was gunner. Hooker later became one of England's greatest botanists; he was a close friend of Charles Darwin, and became director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew for twenty years.