Abstract
The Ross expedition of 1839–1843 was, in John Knight’s opening phrase, ‘a classic example of a project that achieved all it set out to do, and much more besides’ (1). Perhaps its very success has led it to be overlooked by historians. The attention goes to the doomed Franklin expedition, which was launched on the very same ships, the Erebus and Terror. This polar expedition, south rather than north, shared much with the Franklin expedition in terms of personnel and approach, as Knight outlines in this thorough and detailed naval history. The expedition, led by James Clark Ross, aimed to study global magnetism, including calculating the location of the South Magnetic Pole, in order to support future navigation and British naval and imperial control. In addition, the expedition aimed to collect biological specimens for metropolitan institutions. The expedition spent four years making numerous stops across the southern hemisphere, measuring, collecting and exploring, as well as reaching the ice shelf and establishing a new ‘furthest south’ record.
Knight’s text is clearly structured around three main sections. The first outlines the context of the expedition and gives a detailed narrative account of the voyage. Knight is particularly strong on providing insight into naval life, from the docks to life on board the ships. From this helpful opening, he gives a stop-by-stop account of the voyage, including the onshore activities of the crew. In this section, a number of interesting themes emerge. Knight highlights the importance of collecting for the expedition, particularly the role played by Joseph Dalton Hooker, the assistant surgeon on the Erebus and the future director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. At the time of the Ross expedition, Hooker’s father, William Jackson, was director at Kew, and father and son corresponded extensively throughout the expedition. The scale of collecting is striking, as are the methods used; emperor penguins, killed for metropolitan collections, were pickled to get them back to Britain. Knight has a good eye for details of the expedition such as this, as well as providing a comprehensive overview.
He also notes the transnational connection between the expedition and parallel French and American voyages to the Antarctic, particularly the Wilkes and d’Urville expeditions. The willingness of these expeditions to cooperate by, for example, sharing charts is striking. The Ross expedition also took part in Term Days – international days of synchronized magnetic measurements that enabled the gathering of data from a greater range of locations. The international nature of the expedition is also highlighted in the range of places it stopped, from St Helena to Australia and the Falklands. What is notable about this are the networks of British settlement and colonial control that the expedition observed and on which it drew. Knight offers some historical context around the political situations in the various stopping points of the expedition, but these could have been developed to consider the wider context of settlement, empire and naval power in the mid nineteenth century.
The second section offers detailed information on the men who participated in the expedition, with potted biographies where Knight has been able to locate sufficient information about them, especially through naval records and censuses. Here, the range of social backgrounds stands out, as does the geographical range of the places in Britain from which the crew came. Knight’s work to ensure that as many of the crew as possible are detailed in the text is valuable social history. The links to other polar exploration are also apparent here. The connections to the Franklin expedition are most apparent, not least in the Erebus and Terror. The expedition met Franklin when in Tasmania, where he was lieutenant governor. In total, 13 members of the expedition went on to serve on the Franklin expedition, including Francis Crozier, who had commanded the Terror in the Antarctic. Many members of the crew also participated in the numerous Franklin rescue expeditions of the 1840s and 1850s. Ross himself had significant Arctic experience, and many other sailors had visited the Arctic. These polar connections persisted beyond Franklin: Robert Falcon Scott asked Hooker for advice on Antarctic travel before his expeditions in the early twentieth century. The wider colonial service around the globe of the crew members is also apparent. Perhaps the clearest legacy of the Ross expedition, beyond its scientific work, is the names of places in Antarctica. Ross, Crozier and McMurdo, key members of the expedition, are now most familiar from their geographical appellations, whilst prominent mountains were named after the Erebus and Terror.
The third section lists the connections between crew members and other ships on which they served. This is an interesting way of showing the wider naval context of the Ross expedition, as well as the wider careers of the sailors, and will be of use to naval historians. As in the section on the sailors, Knight offers encyclopaedic detail and, whilst more analysis of the significance of this naval service would have been interesting, a solid base for researchers. Perhaps the main frustration of the book is the lack of referencing, even for direct quotation from historical documents. This, combined with a scant bibliography, limit the book’s usefulness for academic historians, and general readers may find it difficult to follow up on much of the book’s interesting content. The lack of an index is also frustrating. The book is nicely illustrated, often with photographs of key places taken recently. Paintings made of the expedition, by crew member J. E. Davis and the marine painter James Wilson Carmichael, are also included, but only for illustrative purposes. This is a missed opportunity: some art-historical analysis would have offered an important cultural perspective on the expedition, especially its reception, and on wider ideas about the Antarctic.
The Magnetism of Antarctica pays important attention to the Ross expedition, highlighting how it has been overlooked by historians and offering plentiful and informative evidence of its story. This is a narrative history that takes the purpose and success of the expedition on its own terms, but Knight’s work to provide detailed information about the lives of as many of the men involved as possible, as well as the events of the expedition, is valuable. As the examples of the art suggest, a greater awareness of the cultural context and meaning of the expedition would have added to the account. Nonetheless, this is a clear and comprehensive account of an understudied voyage in polar history.