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Notes
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This painting captures a dramatic scene from Rear-Admiral Sir James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition of 1839–1843. Ross was given command of HMS ‘Erebus’ and HMS ‘Terror’ to carry out a magnetic survey in the Antarctic region. The expedition resulted in various discoveries, including the area subsequently known as the Ross Ice Barrier. The artist portrays the Antarctic as a world of grandeur and the sublime: the night scene, the agitated waves and the towering icebergs dwarfing and isolating the man-made ships, eerily lit by flashes of light on their dangerous passage through the pack with broken masts. By the mid-nineteenth century, depictions of both the Arctic and the Antarctic held a fascination for the art-loving audience, and it is likely the painting was executed soon after Ross published his travel narrative ‘A Voyage of Discovery and Research to Southern and Antarctic Regions’ in 1847.
After the collision of the two ships on 12th March 1842, which crippled the ‘Erebus’s’ masts, the latter escaped the life-threatening gales of a storm by moving into a narrow channel in the chain of bergs. The crew could just make out the ‘Terror’s’ light, reassuring them of their fellow sailors’ safety, when they experienced the natural phenomenon of what they believed to be the Aurora australis. The appearance of the bright light marks the end of the peril and in the narrative is followed by a reference to a collective prayer. The painter has adhered to Davis’s composition and at the same time heightened the drama of the scene according to the academic rule, matching and surpassing the written account.
Title
HMS 'Erebus' Passing Through the Chain of Bergs, 1842
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
H 78.8 x W 111.76 cm
Accession number
BHC3654
Work type
Painting
National Maritime Museum
Romney Road, Greenwich, London, Greater London SE10 9NF England
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