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.

After calling at the Auckland Islands and at Campbell Island, Ross again steered for the South, and the Antarctic Circle was crossed on New Year’s Day, 1841.  The ships were now faced by the ice-pack, but to Ross this was not the dangerous enemy it had appeared to earlier explorers with their more weakly constructed vessels.  Ross plunged boldly into the pack with his fortified ships, and, taking advantage of the narrow leads, he came out four days later, after many severe buffets, into the open sea to the South.

Ross had reached the sea now named after him, and the boldest voyage known in Antarctic exploration was accomplished.

Few people of the present day are capable of rightly appreciating this heroic deed; this brilliant proof of human courage and energy.  With two ponderous craft —­ regular “tubs” according to our ideas —­ these men sailed right into the heart of the pack, which all previous polar explorers had regarded as certain death.  It is not merely difficult to grasp this; it is simply impossible —­ to us, who with a motion of the hand can set the screw going, and wriggle out of the first difficulty we encounter.  These men were heroes —­ heroes in the highest sense of the word.

It was in lat. 69deg. 15’ S. and long. 176deg. 15’ E. that Ross found the open sea.  On the following day the horizon was perfectly clear of ice.  What joy that man must have felt when he saw that he had a clear way to the South!