They didn’t make their goal of the south magnetic pole but, writes Palin, “never again, in the annals of the sea, would a ship, under sail alone, come close to matching what she and Terror had achieved”. It is hard to imagine what the Erebus crew thought and felt as they sailed along the 30-metre (98ft) high ice cliffs of this shelf the size of France.Įrebus and Terror were the first sailing ships to break through the pack and the first to discover that an Antarctic continent existed. The crew enjoyed a double allowance of rum to celebrate Queen Victoria’s birthday. In September 1839, accompanied by HMS Terror, it dropped her pilot off Deal in Kent and spent four years on an Antarctic adventure, where the dashing James Clark Ross captained her to the Barrier, or the Ross ice shelf as it was then known. Erebus spent two years patrolling the Mediterranean “to annoy the Turks”, then its life as a warship ended. After Waterloo, the navy was at a loose end. The adaptation by means of the genial Sublimeand the Picturesque of the land, rather than the traveller, if it did not provide what can be considered a realistic picture of the North today, nevertheless fortified British optimism and morale sufficiently to see the search for Franklin through to a successful conclusion.Palin is strong on historical context. ![]()
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