TITLE: SIR JAMES CLARK ROSS; THE NIGHT OF EREBUS
AND TERROR
1999 5X16 INCHES
James Clark Ross:
1800-1862, British explorer and naval officer.
"…it was impossible for her to clear
both the berg and the Erebus, collision
was inevitable. We instantly hove all aback to diminish the violence of
the
shock... Sometime she rose high above us, almost exposing her keel to
view,
and again descend as we in turn rose to the top of the wave, threatening
to bury
her beneath us..."
Ross joined the Royal Navy at 12. As a teen-age boy he accompanied his
uncle, Sir John Ross, on several voyages to Arctic waters where he studied
Eskimo
life. On a later expedition in 1831 he located the North Magnetic Pole.
By 1839 he was the most experienced Arctic captain.
He was appointed to lead
a British national expedition to the Antarctic. Studying earth magnetism
(1839-43), he discovered the Ross Sea and followed the Ross Ice Shelf
for
hundreds of miles. He named the volcanoes Erebus and Terror for his two
ships. He
returned home to great acclaim and knighthood. He was a hero and the handsomest
officer in the Royal Navy."
|