Mt Erebus, the largest active volcano in Antarctica, was discovered on 27 January 1841 by the expedition led by Sir James Clark Ross. He named the volcano, which could be seen erupting, after his ship Erebus. A nearby mountain, an inactive volcano, was named Mt Terror after his companion ship, commanded by Captain Francis Crozier.

The Ross expedition had sailed from England in October 1839, commissioned to establish magnetic observatories in the southern hemisphere and to try and reach the South Magnetic Pole. Ross and his ships had penetrated the ice pack south of Hobart in only four days and discovered an open polar sea, the Ross Sea. They discovered Victoria Land and the high Admiralty Mountains: the Magnetic Pole was beyond these and out of their reach. They turned east, to discover Mt Erebus and beyond it an impenetrable ice barrier, now known as the Ross Ice Shelf.

Ross wrote:

... it proved to be a mountain twelve thousand four hundred feet of elevation above the level of the sea, emitting flame and smoke in great profusion; at first the smoke appeared like snow drift, but as we drew nearer, its true character became manifest. The discovery of an active volcano in so high a southern latitude cannot but be esteemed a circumstance of high geological importance and interest, and contribute to throw some further light on the physical construction of our globe. I named it "Mount Erebus," and an extinct volcano to the eastward, little inferior in height, being by measurement ten thousand nine hundred feet high, was called "Mount Terror." (Ross, 1969, vol. 1, pp. 216-17)

The volcanoes discovered by Ross's expedition are two of four which constitute Ross Island: the others are Mt Bird and Mt Terra Nova. The island was named Ross Island by Robert Falcon Scott who established his first base on the island in 1901-04, and again in 1910-13. Ernest Shackleton also made his base there in 1907-09, and members of his expedition were the first to climb Mt Erebus and make a scientific examination of it. The island is now home to the New Zealand Scott Base and the American McMurdo Station.

Ross's ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror were bomb vessels (designed to carry mortars rather than cannon), especially strong ships eminently suitable for work in the polar pack ice. For the voyage they were additionally strengthened and were six feet thick at the bows. Erebus was of 370 tons and Terror slightly smaller at 340 tons. Both had capacious holds and in addition to the strengthened bows had double coppered bottoms and watertight bulkheads.

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