Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea Medal: Sir James Clark Ross in the Ar…

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Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea Medal: Sir James Clark Ross in the Arctic and Antarctic

AssociatedAssociated with Lord Mountbatten of Burma (Frogmore House, Windsor, England, 1900 - 1979)

Medallist John Pinches, Medallists

DateMay 2004

Object NameMedal

MediumSterling Silver

ClassificationsMedals

AcquisitionPresented in 2004 by Dr Joan M Burrell.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDMS072500.56

Keywords

About MeSir James.Clark Ross (1800-1862) was the most successful of the Arctic and Antarctic explorers in the 19th century .He accompanied Parry on an early
voyage to discover the North-West Passage in 1819 and two years later was , second-in-command to his uncle, Sir John Ross, on an expedition financed
by Felix Booth, when he located the North Magnetic Pole in 1831.

The Admiralty then asked him to locate the South Magnetic Pole in command of HMS Erebus and Terror. At that date the only known coasts of the Antarctic continent were around Graham Land, south of Cape Horn, which had been accidentally sighted by British and American whalers. The Russian Captain Bellingshausen had also visited that area and the American Captain Wilkes met the Frenchman Dumont d'Urville there in an attempt to penetrate the Weddell Sea. As there seemed to be little chance of success in those parts, Ross was ordered to explore further west, sailing from Tasmania.

The two ships were three-masted sailing vessels of 370 tons, barque-rigged but later steam-powered. They were so capacious and strongly built that after service in the Antarctic from 1839 to 1843, they were transferred to the Arctic for the Franklin expedition.

The first success of the Ross expedition was the discovery of the volcanic Mount Erebus. There Ross calculated that the South Magnetic Pole lay 500 miles south in latitude 76°S. He took possession of the Ross Sea Dependency and the adjacent Victoria Land, now administered by New Zealand. At the southern extremity of the Ross Sea he found the convenient refuge of McMurdo Sound, from which nearly all later attempts to reach the South Pole started. On a second voyage Ross reached latitude 78°S, the highest yet attained by man, but he could not surmount the Ross Barrier ice shelf. He returned home by Cape Horn after another unsuccessful attempt to penetrate the Weddell Sea.

When the news of the disappearance of Franklin in the Arctic reached England, Ross was the obvious choice to command a relief expedition. He sailed in 1848, but found nothing. All interest centered in Arctic exploration for the next 50 years, but the discoveries made by Ross in the Antarctic bore fruit when the race for the South Pole began early in this century.

The Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea, John Pinches Medallists Ltd.