Erebus. Michael Palin

was the risk of mutiny. Which is why the detachment of seven Marines on both ships was so important. There were no Marines on the Bounty.

      For the most part, however, men on board ship seem to have got on well with one another. A chaplain on HMS Winchester, quoted by Brian Lavery, describes how ‘One peculiar characteristic of society on shipboard is the tone of hilarity, often kept up to a pitch which might elsewhere appear inconvenient and overstrained’, though he adds, ‘It would be, however, a great mistake to conclude, from any apparent levity of disposition, that sailors are a peculiarly thoughtless class. On the contrary, few men are more prone to moods and deep and serious reflection.’ Constant close proximity on board Erebus and Terror inevitably caused some tensions, even among the officers. On Christmas Eve 1839, for example, McCormick, his cabin ‘having become filled to overflowing with the Government collection of specimens of natural history’, got the Second Master to take some of it away and store it in the hold, only to find that First Lieutenant Bird, ‘to whom everything connected with science is a bore . . . ordered it up again, as having no abiding place there’. But such moments of disagreement were the exception rather than the rule.

      Ross was the man in charge, but he was still a servant of the Crown, paid by the government and obliged to follow the most thorough set of instructions ever drawn up by the Admiralty. The precise route was carefully prescribed, determined as it was by the programme of scientific observations that lay at the heart of Erebus’s mission. The number-one priority was to visit the locations that would enable measurements of terrestrial magnetism to be taken. After that, there was work to be done making detailed observations of ocean currents, depths of the sea, tides, winds and volcanic activity. Other studies covered such disciplines as meteorology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, vegetable and animal physiology and botany. The one thing the crew were not allowed to do was to engage in the activity for which Erebus had originally been built: ‘In the event of England being involved in hostilities with any other power during your absence, you are clearly to understand that you are not to commit any hostile act whatever; the expedition under your command being fitted out for the sole purpose of scientific discoveries.’

      Erebus had been across the Bay of Biscay before, and this time she seems to have avoided the nightmare weather for which it was famous. ‘During our passage across the Bay of Biscay we had no favourable opportunity of determining the height of its waves, as we experienced no violent storm,’ Ross noted, rather regretfully. Terror, on the other hand, was having a less happy ride, having come close to disaster during the storm that separated the two ships off the Devon coast. According to Sergeant Cunningham’s memorandum book, three members of the crew had been pulling in the flying boom – a spar to which extra sail could be attached – when they ‘nearly lost their lives in consequence of the violent manner in which she pitched . . . flying boom men and all completely under water’. It took four days for Terror to catch up with Erebus at their first stop – not a good omen for the voyage ahead.

      Nevertheless on 20 October, nearly a month after setting out, the two ships reached their first port of call, the island of Madeira, some 550 miles off the African coast. Here various readings were taken, including the measurement of Madeira’s highest point, Pico Ruivo. A Lieutenant Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition (who, like Ross, was headed for the Antarctic) had recently done his own calculations, and Ross was rather surprised to find that these differed from his own by some 140 feet: ‘much greater than we should expect from the perfect and accurate instruments employed on both occasions’. Later in his voyage Ross would have further reason to question information gathered by Wilkes – and would be rather less polite about the lieutenant.

      Erebus stayed in the roads of Funchal for ten days, but her crew were far from idle. Her auxiliary boats were constantly being lowered and raised, ferrying provisions in from the town. One was appropriated by Surgeon McCormick, who proceeded to make several exploratory walks around the island with a local man, Mr Muir.

      On 31 October the two ships weighed anchor and made for the Canary Islands. Progress was uneventful, though Ross did record that their trawl nets came up with an entirely new species of animalcula, which, he enthused, ‘constitute the foundation of marine animal subsistence and by their emitting a phosphorescent light upon disturbance, render the path of the ship through the waters on a dark night surprisingly brilliant’. Their time at Santa Cruz, Tenerife, was similarly unmarked by incident, the highlight arguably being the hoisting on board of ‘one live cow’, as recorded by Cunningham. But a passing remark he makes about the next island they visited shows that these islands were not havens of peace and tranquillity. Cunningham may have been able to buy ‘good wine’ and oranges on St Jago, but his note that its inhabitants ‘are or have been, slaves’ serves as a reminder of how recently this appalling trade had dominated the region. Though the trade in slaves had been illegal in the British Empire since 1807, slavery itself had only been banned in 1833. And at the time Erebus and Terror visited, the Royal Navy was still patrolling the waters off the West African coast to intercept slaving vessels – a role that must often have been as horrible as warfare. Christopher Lloyd describes in his book The Navy and the Slave Trade how one officer, boarding a slave ship in 1821, found her crammed so full below decks that her human cargo was ‘clinging to the gratings to inhale a mouthful of fresh air and fighting each other for a taste of water, showing their parched tongues, and pointing to their reduced stomachs as if overcome by famine’.

      As Erebus and Terror approached the Equator, they entered the latitudes between the north-east and south-east trade winds. ‘Violent gusts of wind and torrents of rain alternate with calms and light baffling breezes,’ observed Ross, ‘which, with the suffocating heat of the electrically-charged atmosphere, render this part of the voyage both disagreeable and unhealthy.’ If Ross, in his spacious stern cabin, found it uncomfortable, one can only imagine how much worse it must have been below decks, even with the hatches opened.

      On 3 December 1839, Terror crossed the Equator ahead of Erebus. William Cunningham, who had never done this before, was, as a ‘greenhorn’, subjected to the ritual line-crossing ceremony at the hands of his fellow crewmen, dressed as King Neptune and his attendants, and duly recorded the event in his diary:

      I was sat down on the Barber’s chair, and underwent the process of shaving by being lathered with a paint brush – and lather composed of all manner of Nuisance that could be collected in a Ship (not excepting Soil [excrement]). The fire engine was playing on the back of my neck the whole time with its utmost force. After being well scraped with a piece of an iron hoop I was tumbled backwards into a sailfull of water . . . and had a good sousing . . . after which I have the pleasure of seeing nearly 30 others go through a similar process.

      At midday they spliced the main brace (this being the term for a special ration of rum) and ‘after Dinner turned the hands up to dance and skylark’.

      Their first Christmas away from home was celebrated with traditional enthusiasm. After prayers and a sermon from Captain Ross, thirteen of the officers sat down in the gun-room to a dinner of pea soup, roast turkey and ham, parsnips, plum pudding and pumpkin tart. Two days later they had freshly caught dolphin for breakfast, and five days after that the men of Erebus saw out the old decade ‘with all hands on deck, stepping out to the fiddle’. Aboard Terror, on the stroke of midnight, Captain Crozier sent for the bosun to pipe all hands to splice the main brace, ‘and I must say,’ wrote Cunningham, ‘I never saw a body of men turn out so smartly before’. The fiddler struck up ‘Rule, Britannia!’ and, with dancing and conviviality lasting until two in the morning, they welcomed in the 1840s: ‘all finished with three hearty cheers.’

      ***

      The expedition appeared to be going well, but it was also going slowly.

      The need for constant comparative observations forced both ships into a meandering, indirect course. They had crossed the Magnetic Equator on 7 December, when Ross had noted with satisfaction that the needle on his Fox dip circle (a device used to measure the angle between the horizon and the earth’s magnetic field) was perfectly horizontal. He had seen