James Clark Ross 1848-49
A distinguished and knighted British Naval Officer, James Clark Ross was a part of numerous Arctic and Antarctic expeditions. In 1841, he commanded the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on a mission charting unseen parts of Antarctica as well as locating the magnetic South Pole. After returning from this highly successful mission in 1843, he was soon asked to take another–this time with the objective of discovering the precise location and navigability of the Northwest Passage. Ross declined this offer, having made a familial promise to no longer take polar voyages, and Sir John Franklin was chosen as a replacement.
When Franklin’s expedition failed to return—sparking one of the largest and most publicized rescue efforts of the time—Ross may have felt a sense of guilt for not taking the mission himself, particularly as Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, was a close friend of his.
In June of 1848, Ross chose to break his familial promise and set sail on a rescue mission aboard the HMS Enterprise, accompanied by the HMS Investigator.
Though this expedition did not find any traces of the Franklin expedition, it significantly advanced the current understanding of the Arctic region's geography, mapping over 150 miles of new Arctic coastline. It was aboard this expedition that crewmember John Charters wrote his journal.