Animals, Joseph Dalton Hooker and the Ross Expedition to Antarctica, 1839–1843

Abstract

• In 1839 the Ross Expedition to locate the Southern Magnetic pole was launched from Chatham. Over the next four years, this voyage of discovery would bring into sharper focus the land and seas surrounding the Antarctic region. Official reports and modern accounts of this voyage invariably situate the humans on board HMS Erebus and Terror as focal points for such narratives. The archive of Joseph Dalton Hooker, however, allows scholars to repopulate this voyage with its zoological inhabitants and replace a faunal silence with myriad animal noises.