A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions

"He is hardly known in Britain, but he was one of Amundsen’s heroes. He made this expedition to the Antarctic regions between 1839 and 1843, so he was an early Victorian. He was a watershed figure, born in 1800 and almost an 18th century figure who saw exploration as a rational occupation. He was definitely against self-sacrifice and becoming a martyr. After him came [John] Franklin, who tried to navigate the northwest passage but never came back, and became the model of the martyred hero. After Ross, British polar exploration became a search for adventure and took place in a public ambience of waiting for disaster. If you could have a dead hero with a service in St Paul’s, that was all to the good. But Ross was almost a Johnsonian figure – no sentiment, just very rational. Absolutely. Obviously they were impressed and you’re right it affects you, but in a rational and cool way. I’m not saying these people were without emotion, but it was a different kind of emotion – the kick you get from what mathematicians call the elegant solution. I suppose you could say it’s emotional but intellectual. I admire Ross because of what he did. Remembering that his ships were purely sail driven, he plunged into the pack ice around 170 degrees east longitude. Nobody had ever been that way before. He found his way through to what is now called the Ross sea, and then explored the coast for hundreds of miles. Then he sailed along the Ross ice layer – which he said looked for all the world like the cliffs of Dover. He writes in a simple and compelling way. He has this description of how, using a studding sail, he discovered the bay that Amundsen later used for his base, and explored it for 500 miles. He got out again safely, and for sheer shiphandling he has my abject admiration. It’s not much fun on a sailing ship going along a high cliff. This was his accomplishment, and again it is a strange phenomenon that Ross is hardly known in Britain but he is a household name in Norway. This is a hangover from the whaling days. The last factory ship ever built was called the James Clark Ross. They hunted out one of his descendants and got him over to baptise the ship. Clark Ross’s was the last major discovery of Antarctic coastline for about 70 years. When Amundsen came along, he said it was incredible that this man accomplished what he did with nothing but sail. He was the best kind of naval officer."