Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
7
reach the Magnetic South Pole. Age forty, he was in his prime and said to be the most
handsome oYcer in the Royal Navy. As the expedition was being organized, Ross had
stated his intention of sailing south along 160° E. When he arrived in Hobart in August
1840, he was dismayed to find that he had been preempted the previous season by both
Dumont d'Urville and Wilkes, who in that time had made important discoveries along
a sizable segment of coastline. Bound not to follow in the paths of these less experienced
rivals, the irascible Ross made the fateful decision to sail south along 170° E in search of
new lands and a passage to the Magnetic South Pole.
The British expedition sailed with two well-outfitted ships, HMS Erebus and Terror,
both bomb vessels (370 tons and 340 tons, respectively) with their decks stoutly fitted for
the recoil of mortar cannons and their hulls reinforced several years earlier for ice rescue
in the Arctic. The ships were a bit slow but would be tough and reliable when it came to
the pounding. They sailed from Hobart on November 12, 1840, spent three weeks in the
Auckland Islands, and then continued south. On the last day of 1840 the ships had their
first encounter with the pack, to Ross's view not as formidable as he had been led to be-
lieve by the reports of others.
Pack ice is composed of a collage of broken blocks of sea ice born of the previous win-
ter's freeze (Fig. 1.3). By spring, Antarctica is surrounded by a frozen shell of ice floating
on the Southern Ocean, which begins to break up along long cracks, or leads, that pene-
trate into its interior. As the breakup continues, pieces of ice bump and grind against each
other, blunting their corners and fragmenting into smaller polygons. Storm swells do
the most destruction. The ice floes are six, maybe ten feet thick, and tens of feet to miles
across. Driven in part by currents and in part by the wind, the pack reacts animately, con-
tracting from wind pressure at its edges and expanding when the air is calm. The pack
also dampens swells, so to be deep within it may be haven from a storm. But closer to
the margins when winds are severe, hefty waves may roll through with a great gnashing
of ice.
When Erebus and Terror first encountered the pack, a freshening gale blew the ships
back north into a lane of icebergs that they had previously crossed. There they rode out a
spell of snow squalls under easy sail, dodging bergs in moments of high anxiety, but by
January 3, 1841, the storms had passed, and Ross was back at the edge of the pack. From
the crow's nest, the view was that of a vast continuum of ice, merging into the horizon
in both southerly quadrants with not a blip to disturb the distant surface. The margin of
the pack was composed of small, tightly fitted floes, but beyond that the lookout could
see black, edgy lines between the white blocks that branched and merged deeper into the
pack (Fig. 1.4). Somewhere in this maze Erebus and Terror would have to force a passage
to the interior, nudging and jostling their way between the shifting floes. These were
wooden sailing ships, before the widespread use of steam power, which gave a ship the
ability to reverse its propeller and back out of a tight situation. There would be no turn-
ing back.
Ross sailed along the margin for several miles, finding no one spot better than the
next, so he boldly gave the signal for Terror to follow as Erebus turned straight into the
pack and “bore away before the wind.” With a crack like rifle fire and a lurch, the ship
hit the pack, gave only a little shiver, and plunged forward, the mate in the crow's nest
 
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