The American naval officer, Lieutenant Charles Wilkes, sailed in August, 1838, with a fleet of six vessels.  The expedition was sent out by Congress, and carried twelve scientific observers.  In February, 1839, the whole of this imposing Antarctic fleet was collected in Orange Harbour in the south of Tierra del Fuego, where the work was divided among the various vessels.  As to the results of this expedition it is difficult to express an opinion.  Certain it is that Wilkes Land has subsequently been sailed over in many places by several expeditions.  Of what may have been the cause of this inaccurate cartography it is impossible to form any opinion.  It appears, however, from the account of the whole voyage, that the undertaking was seriously conducted.

Then the bright star appears —­ the man whose name will ever be remembered as one of the most intrepid polar explorers and one of the most capable seamen the world has produced —­ Admiral Sir James Clark Ross.

The results of his expedition are well known.  Ross himself commanded the Erebus and Commander Francis Crozier the Terror.  The former vessel, of 370 tons, had been originally built for throwing bombs; her construction was therefore extraordinarily solid.  The Terror, 340 tons, had been previously employed in Arctic waters, and on this account had been already strengthened.  In provisioning the ships, every possible precaution was taken against scurvy, with the dangers of which Ross was familiar from his experience in Arctic waters.

The vessels sailed from England in September, 1839, calling at many of the Atlantic Islands, and arrived in Christmas Harbour, Kerguelen Land, in the following May.  Here they stayed two months, making magnetic observations, and then proceeded to Hobart.

Sir John Franklin, the eminent polar explorer, was at that time Governor of Tasmania, and Ross could not have wished for a better one.  Interested as Franklin naturally was in the expedition, he afforded it all the help he possibly could.  During his stay in Tasmania Ross received information of what had been accomplished by Wilkes and Dumont d’Urville in the very region which the Admiralty had sent him to explore.  The effect of this news was that Ross changed his plans, and decided to proceed along the 170th meridian E., and if possible to reach the Magnetic Pole from the eastward.

Here was another fortuitous circumstance in the long chain of events.  If Ross had not received this intelligence, it is quite possible that the epoch-making geographical discoveries associated with his name would have been delayed for many years.

On November 12, 1840, Sir John Franklin went on board the Erebus to accompany his friend Ross out of port.  Strange are the ways of life!  There stood Franklin on the deck of the ship which a few years later was to be his deathbed.  Little did he suspect, as he sailed out of Hobart through Storm Bay —­ the bay that is now wreathed by the flourishing orchards of Tasmania —­ that he would meet his death in a high northern latitude on board the same vessel, in storms and frost.  But so it was.