James Clark Ross  (1800 - 1862)

James Clark Ross (1800-1862) led one of the most successful of all Antarctic exploring expeditions. In 1840 he sailed his two ships, Erebus and Terror, south from Hobart into an area that a previous explorer, John Balleny, had signalled as a promising way through pack ice. Penetrating the ice, he was astonished to find clear water, a magnificent range of mountains, including a smoking volcano that he named Mount Erebus, and an enormous barrier of ice that became known as the Ross Ice Shelf. Sixty years later the Ross Sea region became a centre of Antarctic land exploration.