‘You SEE HOW OUR HANDS SHAKE?’
Their exit through the consolidated pack was not as easy as their entry. The wind fell at noon on 7 March, leaving them at the mercy of a strong swell that drove them towards a long wall of bergs ‘so closely packed together that we could distinguish no gaps through which the ships could pass; the waves breaking violently against them, dashed huge masses of pack ice against the precipitous faces of the bergs, now lifting them nearly to their summit, now forcing them again far beneath their waterline, and sometimes rending them into a multitude of brilliant fragments against their projecting points’.1
Initially Ross was unperturbed. But as the hours dragged by, with no sign of a wind, he became more anxious. By 8 p.m. they were within half a mile of the bergs. ‘The roar of the surf… and the crashing of ice, fell upon the ear with fearful distinctness, whilst the frequently averted eyes as immediately returned to contemplate the awful destruction that threatened in one short hour to close the world and all its hopes and joys and sorrows upon us for ever.’2 All they could do was pray to the Almighty. Luckily, their prayers were answered and, at the last moment, a feeble breeze sprang up and by putting on full sail they were able to escape.
By 8 March they were free of the pack. Under a full moon, with the aurora australis billowing in the sky, they headed for Tasmania. Just to satisfy his curiosity Ross turned westward and spent an enjoyable few days sailing over Wilkes Land. Where Wilkes had marked a chain of mountains Ross found himself in open sea so deep that 600 fathoms of line were unable to touch bottom. The American had clearly been deceived by refraction, as John Ross had been in Lancaster Sound – and, in fact, as James Ross had been in the Antarctic: beyond the Barrier he had marked a range which he called Parry Mountains; they stayed on the map for sixty-three years until it was discovered they were no more than a few islands which had been raised into the sky by mirage – but Ross was not willing to tread lightly when it came to a man who had ‘forestalled’ him. Nor was Isaac Savage, who was touched by the muse when he learned what was happening.
Like the lying yankey who made his boast
he Saw high land & reached no Coast
when we returned from Seventy Eight
a hundred miles Each way we beat
But Low the land the yankeys See
was Sunk and Gone neath the Sea.3
The rest of the journey passed smoothly and, shortly after midnight on 6 April, Ross slipped into the Derwent River. The pilot came aboard at 9 a.m. the following morning and a little after noon they were being greeted by Franklin aboard his governor's barge.
The expedition had been an unqualified success. Ross had discovered new lands, had travelled further south than any man before him and had debunked Wilkes Land while simultaneously stamping his own name firmly on the map. Above all he had found a way through the consolidated pack. And throughout his odyssey he had not lost a single man either to accident or scurvy. It was a tremendous feat of which he was rightly proud and when the ships had been resupplied and refitted he intended to go back for another stab at the Magnetic Pole. But amidst the excitement he had not forgotten the expedition's main purpose: magnetic investigation. In Hobart he reapplied himself to this dreary task.
For Franklin the task was far from dreary. It was a welcome relief from local concerns. While Ross had been away his fortunes had taken a turn for the worse. His wife had travelled tirelessly across the island, compiling information about anything which caught her eye, be it the price of sheep or the habits of the white macaw. The colonial press, meanwhile, had equally tirelessly denigrated her – ‘puffed up with the love of fame and the desire of acquiring a name by doing what no one else does’4 read one comment. Franklin himself was considered even more indecisive and feeble than he had been before and powerful enemies, headed by Montagu, the Colonial Secretary, were gathering against him.
Matters would become worse still in due course. But for the moment Franklin shrugged off his administrative concerns and busied himself helping Ross erect his portable observatories alongside the permanent one he had put up previously – which was now called, thanks to Lady Jane, Rossbank. The sad truth was that Franklin would do anything rather than face his angry subjects. While Ross had been away he had attended the observatory as if it was a place of worship, spending all his free hours there. As Sophie Cracroft, Lady Jane's niece, reported, ‘He is so much interested in Terrestrial Magnetism that nothing could give him greater relaxation.’5
During their furlough Ross and his officers travelled over the island, collecting new specimens and casting an inquisitive eye on anything they met, from the fossilized wood of Derwent Valley to the convict settlements of Port Arthur.
On 3 May their presence was celebrated at the Royal Victoria Theatre by ‘an entirely new nautical Drama entitled the SOUTH POLAR EXPEDITION’.6 ‘In Act 2, will be introduced a splendid view of the VOLCANIC MOUNTAIN, named by the distinguished navigators Mount Erebus … And in the last scene will be represented a Grand ALLEGORICAL TABLEAU of Science crowning the distinguished Navigators Captains Ross and Crozier at the command of Britannia, and Fame proclaiming their success to the world. To conclude with the romantic Drama (which was received with such unbounded applause) entitled the ROBBER OF THE RHINE.’7
Ross returned the compliment a month later, by holding a ball on the Erebus and Terror which had been lashed together and roofed over with canvas. It was one of the most magnificent events the colony had ever witnessed. Guests – each officer was allowed to invite ten friends – approached on a 300-yard driveway which had been cut through the surrounding woods and entered via a dark, covered bridge of boats swathed in flags and leafy branches at the end of which marines stood at attention to welcome them into the bright lights of the ballroom. The resident 51st Regiment provided music, along with the Hobart Town Quadrille Band, and the party lasted till dawn. Sophia Cracroft wrote, ‘the ball on board the Erebus and Terror on the 1st of June far eclipsed anything else that has taken place in Van Diemen's Land. We danced in the Erebus, and the Terror was the supper room. 350 persons were present and all sat down to supper together. You would not have fancied yourself in ships for they were so beautifully arranged with flags and flowers. There were 250 looking glasses (which were brought out for the natives of the islands they visit) arranged round the sides of the ship and reflected the lights beautifully. The chandeliers were formed of swords and had a very pretty effect … I had the honour of dancing with both Captain Ross and Captain Crozier. I told Captain Crozier that while I was dancing with him the morning of your birthday was dawning. He said he was very sorry that you were not there dancing too!’8
For many years after the event was referred to as ‘the Glorious First of June’. In the immediate aftermath Franklin's home was besieged by officers bringing ‘specimens of granite, albatrosses’ eggs and different things from the South …’ with which they hoped to impress the womenfolk. The most assiduous visitor was Crozier, who had taken a shine to Miss Cracroft. But alas, as he later discovered, she had eyes only for James Ross.
By the end of June the ships were ready for their next stab at Antarctica. They departed on 7 July, their holds stuffed with three years’ worth of provisions and another two jars of Lady Jane's jam. Before they entered the ice they had first of all to discharge their magnetic obligations. This entailed a trip to Sydney where Ross, unable to set up his observatories on his preferred station, Macquarie Island, because it was packed with guns and artillery balls, had to make do with the lesser Garden Island.
On 5 August Ross and Crozier sailed again, this time via New Zealand, where they erected more observatories and encountered one J. H. Aucklick, previously an officer in Wilkes's squadron but now commanding the American navy sloop Yorktown. Ross took the opportunity to despatch a letter to Wilkes stating that Wilkes Land did not exist and sailed on feeling that a good job had been well done.
Ross's satisfaction was only slightly spoiled when, after a three-day exploration of the interior, he returned to find a French corvette anchored not far from Erebus. To his chagrin its commander, Captain Leviche, was able to give him far better maps of the Chatham Islands – Ross's next stop south – than he already possessed. When Ross eventually sailed on 23 November his pride prevented him from stopping at the Chathams.
This time Ross had decided to attack further west, down the 146th meridian. It was a longer journey than the first. On 15 December the expedition met its first icebergs. By Christmas they were embedded in the consolidated pack. They celebrated the day with ‘good old English fare, which we had taken care to preserve for the occasion’.9 And after another six days, on New Year's Eve, they celebrated in the same fashion, but a little differently. The two ships were moored in the middle of the pack either side of a great floe. As McCormick recorded, ‘This being the last day of the old year, great preparations have been in progress all day upon the piece of ice forming a fender between the two ships … A Quadrangular space has been excavated in the ice for a dance, albeit a somewhat novel kind of ball-room. On this an elevated chair of the same material has been constructed for the accommodation of both captains: adjacent to this crystal ballroom a refreshment-room has also been cut out, with a table carved in the centre for bottles of wine and grog-glasses for the use of the dancers. The whole of this sculptured ice almost rivals in hardness and whiteness the finest Carrara marble.’10
Meanwhile Hooker and Davis, second master on the Erebus, carved a Grecian statue to oversee proceedings – a ‘figure of a woman which we called our “Venus de Medici” – she was made sitting down and about 8 feet long and as the snow froze very hard she remained perfect till we left the floe’.11 The boatswains served drinks, the crew danced, the captains sang, and one wily shot opened the New Year by shooting a white petrel and presenting it to Ross. When they left, Hooker's and Davis's ice statue floated northwards. If only D'Urville had been there to find it.
The going was harder this time. On 18 January they were still in the pack and the ice had closed around them so that they were imprisoned within a small circle of open water from which there was no visible escape. The next day the Antarctic showed what it was capable of. A hurricane blew up and the ships were battered remorselessly by blocks of ice weighing several tons which surged up from the foaming sea. ‘Soon after midnight,’ Ross wrote, ‘our ships were involved in an ocean of rolling fragments of ice, hard as floating rocks of granite, which were dashed against them by the waves with so much violence that their masts quivered as if they would fall at every successive blow; and the destruction of the ships seemed inevitable from the tremendous shocks they received.’12 Hawsers snapped, sails blew away, the copper sheathing was stripped from the Erebus’s hull. There was nothing they could do except pray. ‘Each of us could only secure a hold, waiting the issue with resignation to the will of Him who alone could bring us through such extreme danger; watching with breathless anxiety the effect of each collision and the vibrations of the tottering masts, expecting every moment to see them give way.’13
This was not the triumphant revisit they had envisaged, hardened by their previous experience of the pack. At 2 p.m. on 20 January, after twenty-eight hours of tempest, the storm peaked. But even then Ross could scarcely believe what was happening. ‘Although we had been forced many miles deeper into the pack, we could not perceive that the swell had at all subsided, our ships still rolling and groaning amidst the heavy fragments of crushing bergs, over which the ocean rolled its mountainous waves, throwing huge masses upon one another, and then again burying them deep beneath its foaming waters, dashing and grinding them together with fearful violence.’14 Both ships lost their rudders. In addition, a fire broke out in the Terror which was only quenched by flooding the hold to a depth of two feet.
Then, as suddenly as it had arrived, the hurricane departed. The ships were battered but unbowed and at least the storm had done them a favour: it had broken up the ice, allowing them to take shelter behind a chain of bergs while they made repairs. Once again they gave thanks for their reinforced hulls, without which they would have been reduced to matchsticks. The repairs were completed and on 2 February they broke through the consolidated pack. As Antarctic veterans they were no longer surprised by what they saw. Everything was familiar, even the icebergs – Ross recognized one he had seen on his first trip, a monster that was at least four miles in diameter.
It was colder this time. On 21 February, while the crew were chopping ice off the bows, ‘a small fish was found in the mass’.15 The fish had been thrown up in the spray formed by the Terror’s bow. So low was the temperature that it had frozen solid on first contact with the hull. An intrigued Dr Robertson tried to sketch the fish for posterity. But while he was doing so ‘it was unfortunately seized upon and devoured by a cat’.16
On 22 February they met the Barrier and Ross turned eastward. He sailed marginally further south than before – 78° 11’ at latitude 161° 27’ – but at that point the Barrier veered north and, after a few miles, merged with the consolidated pack. On 24 February Ross gave the order to head north for the Falkland Islands. Even ships like the Erebus and Terror could not butt their way around Antarctica in the pack. At 7 p.m. after an uneventful passage – give or take the odd gale – they crossed the Antarctic Circle and headed for Cape Horn.
Theoretically it should have been an easy journey. But out of sight was not out of mind as far as the Antarctic was concerned. As if in revenge for being violated it dealt Ross a final blow. On 12 March, in what should have been clear seas, the barometer began to sink, the sea took on a sullen aspect and by the afternoon, as snow fell, it became clear that there were bergs in the vicinity That night at 1 a.m. a massive, slab-like mountain of ice loomed in front of Erebus. Ross reefed sails and turned his ship to avoid it. Unfortunately he turned his ship directly into the path of Terror which had either not seen, or been unaware of, the danger and still had her sails on.
The Terror ploughed straight into the Erebus. ’The concussion when she struck us,’ wrote Ross, ‘was such as to throw almost every one off his feet; our bowsprit, foretopmast, and other smaller spars, were carried away.’17 People sleeping below were shaken brutally awake. ‘So sudden was the collision,’ recorded McCormick, ‘that there was scant time for dressing, and an officer might have been seen clinging to the capstan in his nightshirt only.’18 The two ships, tangled together by their rigging, performed a hideous vertical dance in seas which were worsening by the minute. ‘Sometimes she rose high above us,’ continued Ross, ‘almost exposing her keel to view, and again descended as we in turn rose to the top of the wave, threatening to bury her beneath us, whilst the crashing of the breaking upper-works and boats increased the horror of the scene.’19
Eventually they wrenched apart, but Erebus was completely disabled. Moreover, the single berg had emerged as the forerunner of a chain of similar behemoths between whom there was only one clear route – that between the first berg and its neighbours. Tangled under a wreckage of spars, unable to make sail, and being driven ever closer to the bergs, the Erebus’s only hope was to use the dangerous and often ineffective remedy of a sternboard – going astern with a reversed helm and hoping that the bow swung around to circle them out of danger. Hazardous enough at the best of times, the manoeuvre was made even more fraught by the fact that Ross not only had to twirl the Erebus out of danger but time his movements so that it slipped bow-first through the one available passage in the chain of ice.
When Ross gave his order spray was already dashing over him from the frozen cliffs ahead. As he later wrote, ‘nothing could justify [such a manoeuvre] during such a gale and with so high a sea running’. It was ‘an expedient that perhaps had never before been resorted to by seamen in such weather’.20 But it was his only chance. The men monkeyed up the rigging and released the sails. Below them the lower yard-arms brushed against ice.
It was three-quarters of an hour before they had everything ready, during which time all that kept them from destruction was the undertow of water striking the berg and washing them those valuable few feet out. By a miracle they scraped past the berg. But then came the difficulty of forging the pass. They were heading, stern-first, for the adjoining berg. Everyone feared that their move had been mistimed and that they would be dashed against the ice. There was nothing that could be done at this point. All they could do was wait while the ship's bow swung slowly round. Abernethy the ice-master lay flat on the ice-plank protruding from the bow, ready to shout directions. Ross stood, arms folded, on the afterpart of the quarterdeck, the epitome of fearlessness. The gap through which the Erebus must pass was only three times the ship's own breadth. He was as petrified as a British naval captain could be. ‘His whole bearing,’ wrote McCormick, ‘whilst lacking nothing in firmness, yet betrayed both in the expression of his countenance and attitude, the ail-but despair with which he anxiously watched the result of this last and only expedient left to us in the awful position we were placed in … But for the howling of the winds, and the turmoil of the roaring waters, the falling of a pin might have been heard on the Erebus’s deck, so silent and awestruck stood our fine crew in groups around, awaiting the result.’21
Thanks to Ross's superb seamanship and Abernethy's desperate signals they made it. They slipped between ‘two perpendicular walls of ice … and the next moment we were in smooth water’.22 The Terror, which had skirted the bergs undamaged, was waiting for them, a lamp shining on its masthead.
It had been the most terrifying moment of any trip Ross had ever made. In the lee of the bergs Ross inspected the damage, which was worse than he had feared. Not only had his sails and masts been destroyed but the Erebus’s bow anchor had been driven into its hull, puncturing wood and copper sheathing alike.
During the emergency Ross had been amazed – and gratified – by ‘the daring spirit of the British seaman’23 as they rushed to obey his orders in the face of collision. Those same seamen now showed their worth by mending the masts and sails – there was nothing they could do about the anchor, whose fluke remained embedded for the rest of the voyage – and three days afterwards they were back on course. They navigated Cape Horn and by 6 April were at Port Louis on the Falkland Islands with only one casualty: the Erebus’s quartermaster, who fell off the main yard and was drowned on 2 April as they were approaching the Cape.
All in all, they had accomplished little. They had gone slightly further south, but had mapped only ten degrees of new Barrier; they had narrowly escaped death and had lost a man. When the Governor of the Falklands welcomed them ashore they were feeling the strain. Physically they were all well enough. As Crozier later boasted they only opened their medicine chests once in four years, and then only to treat a cut hand. Psychologically, however, the expedition was fracturing.
The fissures started at the top. Imperturbable as he may have appeared at the helm, and urbane as he was in normal society, Ross was still his uncle's nephew, with a quick temper and harsh words for any who disputed his judgement. At times McCormick had found him impossible to deal with, ‘so strong were his prejudices, and … so difficult [was he] to reason with’.24 Ross knew better than to let his stormy side interfere overmuch with the expedition's purpose, but in the relative tranquillity of the Falklands he allowed his anger to boil over. The Governor, a man named Moody, was at the receiving end. As Hooker recorded, ‘they quarrelled most grievously, so that I was often unpleasantly situated’.25 What on earth they can have found to quarrel about is a mystery. (Hooker himself got on well with Moody, who gave him the run of his library, and the two became ‘great chums’.)26 But quarrel they did.
Hooker himself fell foul of Ross over the question of whether or not the expedition's findings should be sent home ahead of them. Ross was against it. Hooker, the eager young man on the make, was all for it. He reasoned in a letter to his father: ‘[Ross] seems to wish all the news to come home with him, to astonish the world like a thunder clap; but will find himself much mistaken I fear; ‘out of sight, out of mind’, and if the knowledge of our proceedings be stifled it will beget indifference, instead of pent-up curiosity, ready to burst out on our firing one gun at Spithead. I do not believe he tells Sabine too much, or his own father.’27
Hooker was right. For all its accomplishments Ross's expedition had slipped from the public view. With no news and no clear indication of its objectives, which were no more than a boring set of magnetic observations as far as anyone was aware, the public had no reason to be concerned with the expedition's fate. Hooker had sent a few bulletins home to his father – against Ross's orders – but these had been shown only to Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort (who expressed polite interest). The popular feeling was that ‘Ross will deserve a peerage if he gets to the Pole.’28 But nobody knew if he had got anywhere near it.
There were other disagreements too. McCormick had taken a violent dislike to Lieutenant Sibbald of the Erebus who had roused his anger by not lowering a boat when McCormick wanted to go collecting – ‘our automaton first lieutenant’, he called him, ‘whose prestige, if he has any at: all, is more for holy-stoning decks in his morning watch’.29 The general malaise that hung over the expedition was not improved when promotions arrived for Crozier and Bird but not for the other officers. Those who had not been promoted felt slighted. What reward was coming their way? (Hooker had been elected a member of the Linnaean Society in his absence but was unaware of the fact.) Many seamen were ready to jump ship. Rumours spread that the Falklands – which Hooker described as more dreadful than Kerguelen Island – had been chosen as a deliberately unpleasant revictualling station to prevent men deserting.
The Falklands were, indeed, very unpleasant and they stewed there for five months. The colony was pitifully neglected, with only seventy inhabitants, twenty of whom were government officials and four of whom were a stranded missionary family bound for Patagonia as soon as the means of getting there presented itself. In previous years it had enjoyed a community of South American gauchos, but they had long gone, leaving “their cattle to roam wild across the tussocky countryside. Farming was conducted at subsistence level, and there were not enough fresh vegetables to supply Ross's mess with more than one serving per day. The listless populace depended on supplies sent out from Britain, but as these had been unaccountably delayed, they were short of most foods when Ross's ships dropped anchor. Ironically, Ross found himself having to provision his would-be provisioners from the stocks he had stowed at Hobart. The settlement, Ross wrote disappointedly, was ‘rather retrograding’.30
A ship eventually reached Port Louis on 23 June, bringing as well as stores a new bowsprit for the Erebus and taking with it McMurdo, the first lieutenant of the Terror, who had fallen ill and was considered too weak to continue. By this time Ross had virtually taken over the colony. His men built a new pier and a small warehouse for ships’ stores, which was used for the overhauling of the Erebus. He and Crozier surveyed the main island and reported that Port William rather than Port Louis was the better harbour – as testimony to their findings Port William later became Stanley, capital of the Falklands. Hooker roamed across the hills collecting as many specimens as he could. A temporary observatory was set up, in which the officers all took turns at recording magnetic measurements. And McCormick led hair-raising hunting parties into the interior, which left him with an abiding respect for feral cattle. They were vicious, with sharp horns, skin that was up to two inches thick, and displayed no fear of humans. One man who tripped and fell escaped goring by sheer chance, the earth on either side of him being ripped up by the horns of a bull who had misjudged his angle of attack.
The magnetic observations were completed on 4 September. Four days later Ross set out for Tierra del Fuego where the next set of measurements were to be taken. Everyone was relieved to be back at sea. ‘Not one individual in either ship,’ Ross wrote, felt ‘the smallest regret on leaving the Falkland Islands.’31 By the 19th they were at Hermite Island, being greeted by three Fuegans who watched with amusement as the sailors put up another observatory. When not watching they did a bit of constructive pilfering. And when neither watching nor pilfering they allowed the sailors to powder their hair with flour and teach them to dance a hornpipe. ‘The most degraded savages that I ever set eyes upon,’32 recorded Hooker.
On 17 December the two ships departed for what would be their last stab at the Antarctic. This, their third attempt, was for once uneventful. Sailing down the 55th meridian, through shoals of whales so tame that they had to nudge them aside, they entered the South Shetlands where they charted what is now called James Ross Island, with its 7,000-foot hill, Mt. Haddington, and on 5 January claimed Cockburn Island for Britain where the ever-eager Hooker ‘procured the ghosts of eighteen Cryptogamic plants’.33 Here they were overtaken by the pack, which did not release them until 4 February by which time they had lost much of the season and were only at 64° 0’ south. Ross turned to the east, following the pack, but did not penetrate the Antarctic Circle until 29 February. By the time he reached 71° 30’ south, 14° 51’ west on 5 March it was time to head back.
The Antarctic saw them off with a gale which buffeted them from all sides with changing winds for four days, save for a six-hour period when they found themselves in the eye of the storm. On 4 April Ross dropped anchor at Simon's Bay, South Africa, for a three-week rest before he set off back to Britain. Here, with the end in sight, they crumbled. Everyone fell ill. They felt the heat intensely, even though it was the Cape winter. Ross and Crozier were nervous wrecks, quivering so badly that they could hardly hold a glass or cup. ‘You see how our hands shake?’ Ross told the local admiral's daughter. ‘One night in the Antarctic did this for both of us.’34
By 13 May he was at St Helena, twelve days later he was at Ascension Island and on 18 June he landed at Rio de Janeiro to complete his final magnetic observation. By 5 September he was at Folkestone where he travelled immediately to London to be greeted by ‘my highly valued friends, Admiral Beaufort and Sir John Barrow’.35 When Erebus and Terror were paid off at Woolwich on 23 September 1843, their crews had been travelling for four and a half years. For this, the last major voyage of exploration made solely under sail, Ross was duly rewarded. Awaiting his return were both the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society and the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of Paris. The following year he was given a knighthood and was awarded an honorary degree from Oxford University. But in his own mind he had failed. In his trunk, unpacked, lay the flag he had flown at the North Magnetic Pole. When he had set sail his intention had been to fly it at the South Magnetic Pole. He had not done so. Set against his astonishing achievements in leadership, planning and discovery lay this accusing scrap of ten-year-old cloth.
Ross was through. The journey had taken more out of him than he had expected. Now, with a knighthood and his new wife, Ann Coulman – her father had given permission for them to marry on the condition that Ross undertake no more polar voyages; a contract with which one suspects Ross did not quibble – he retired to a house near Aylesbury and became a country gentleman.
Interest in the Antarctic died with Ross's expedition. Britain had discovered all it needed to know about the continent, viz. that it was cold, useless and there – very much as Cook had predicted – and for more than half a century it was left in peace. In 1905, however, when Antarctica became once again the focus of international rivalry, Ross's expedition received an intriguing footnote.
In that year Hooker was still alive – just; he would die in 1911 aged ninety-four. His advice as the only man living who had journeyed so far south was sought by Captain Robert Falcon Scott, who was planning an expedition to the South Pole. ‘I remember that it was quite news to me,’ wrote Scott in reply to a letter from Hooker, ‘to hear from you that Ross was coldly received on his return. At first it seems inexplicable when one considers how highly his work is now appreciated … I have always thought that Ross was neglected, and as you once said he is very far from doing himself justice in his book. I did not know that Barrow was the bete noire who did so much to discount Ross's results. It is an interesting sidelight on such a venture.’36 Perhaps Hooker was confusing uncle and nephew. He was eighty-eight at the time. Perhaps Barrow was confused. He was seventy-nine when Ross returned and, as the Rosses’ biographer claims, ‘might not have been able to tell one Ross from another’.37 Perhaps Scott himself was confused. Whatever the answer, it provides a lingering echo of arguments long forgotten and in the ultimate failure of Scott's own venture a revisiting of Barrow's last gasp: the ‘conquest’ of the North-West Passage by Sir John Franklin.