have been downed with ship’s biscuit. The five o’clock watch washed the decks and polished the planks with holystone, whilst others followed up with brooms and buckets, swabbing the decks.
By seven-thirty all hammocks would be stowed, and at eight bells the captain would inspect the work and, if that was approved, the boatswain would pipe for breakfast. (The boatswain’s whistle was a vital part of life on board: it served as the equivalent of a modern PA system, with different cadences conveying different orders.) The main meal would be taken at midday and generally comprised something like hardtack biscuit, salt beef, cheese and soup. A grog ration – a quarter-pint of rum and water for each man – was served with it. At that time, too, if the skies were clear, and with the sun at its highest point above the horizon, measurements would be taken to determine the ship’s latitude. Various other tasks filled the rest of the day, including the checking of stores and equipment, sail-handling and the washing of clothes. In the evening more grog would be served, the fiddles would come out and songs would be sung and jigs danced.
The accommodation on the ship was segregated according to rank, with captain’s, officers’ and warrant officers’ cabins towards the stern, and other ranks further forward. The captain’s cabin ran the entire width of the ship. At the stern end he would have had five lights – or windows – to look out of, each about 3 feet high with quarter-panes doubled up – one frame on the inside, one on the outside. Fanning out from his quarters were the cabins for individual officers: on the starboard side, next to the captain’s bed cabin, was one each for the surgeon and the purser, both about 6 feet by 5 feet 5 inches, with a washbasin in one corner, a table in another and a bed-place with drawers underneath; on the port side were four similar cabins, three occupied by the lieutenants and one by the master. Next to them, running forward, were four single but smaller cabins, accommodating the captain’s steward, the steward’s pantry, the First Mate and the Second Master. They would have had little more than a seat, a cupboard, a scrap of a table and narrow bed-places. Further forward on the starboard side were small individual cabins for the purser’s steward, the gun-room steward and the assistant surgeon (both with bed-places but no washbasins). Next to them, the master gunner, boatswain and carpenter shared a mess room and adjoining communal sleeping quarters, with two bunks and a single bed-space.
Between the rows of cabins was the wardroom, where the officers dined together, served by their own stewards and sometimes joined by the captain. The officers contributed to mess rations out of their own pockets, which ensured that their menu was more varied than that doled out to the rest of the crew. The better-off would have had their own wine and other delicacies. The purser and mates ate separately in their own mess room, also known as the gun-room. A ladderway and main hatch were situated amidships, and beyond them, in the forward third of the ship, was the forecastle, an open area where petty officers, Marines and sailors ate and slept. All except the officers and warrant officers slept in hammocks.
The men would have eaten at tables of four, squeezed either side of the long Sail Bin, where spare sails were stored. They would have used their own seaman’s chests both for seating and for storage of their gear.
Beyond the forecastle was the galley and finally, in the bows, the Sick Room. From the plans of the ship, it seems there were only two water-closets with cisterns. These were located at the stern, flanked by two hen coops, and next to the Colour Boxes, where all the various signal flags were kept in neat compartments. There must have been other toilets, but only the captain’s and officers’ privy is marked.
All in all, there was little room on board and, if you weren’t an officer, almost no privacy at all, but this would have been true of any ship, and indeed of many of the homes that the men came from and which they shared with their often-large families. The key to life at sea was regular activity, scrupulous cleanliness, respect for orders and for the officers who gave them. If that broke down, as it famously did with Captain Bligh on the Bounty, then there was the risk of mutiny. Which is why the detachment of seven Marines on both ships was so important. There were no Marines on the Bounty.
For the most part, however, men on board ship seem to have got on well with one another. A chaplain on HMS Winchester, quoted by Brian Lavery, describes how ‘One peculiar characteristic of society on shipboard is the tone of hilarity, often kept up to a pitch which might elsewhere appear inconvenient and overstrained’, though he adds, ‘It would be, however, a great mistake to conclude, from any apparent levity of disposition, that sailors are a peculiarly thoughtless class. On the contrary, few men are more prone to moods and deep and serious reflection.’ Constant close proximity on board Erebus and Terror inevitably caused some tensions, even among the officers. On Christmas Eve 1839, for example, McCormick, his cabin ‘having become filled to overflowing with the Government collection of specimens of natural history’, got the Second Master to take some of it away and store it in the hold, only to find that First Lieutenant Bird, ‘to whom everything connected with science is a bore . . . ordered it up again, as having no abiding place there’. But such moments of disagreement were the exception rather than the rule.
Ross was the man in charge, but he was still a servant of the Crown, paid by the government and obliged to follow the most thorough set of instructions ever drawn up by the Admiralty. The precise route was carefully prescribed, determined as it was by the programme of scientific observations that lay at the heart of Erebus’s mission. The number-one priority was to visit the locations that would enable measurements of terrestrial magnetism to be taken. After that, there was work to be done making detailed observations of ocean currents, depths of the sea, tides, winds and volcanic activity. Other studies covered such disciplines as meteorology, geology, mineralogy, zoology, vegetable and animal physiology and botany. The one thing the crew were not allowed to do was to engage in the activity for which Erebus had originally been built: ‘In the event of England being involved in hostilities with any other power during your absence, you are clearly to understand that you are not to commit any hostile act whatever; the expedition under your command being fitted out for the sole purpose of scientific discoveries.’
Erebus had been across the Bay of Biscay before, and this time she seems to have avoided the nightmare weather for which it was famous. ‘During our passage across the Bay of Biscay we had no favourable opportunity of determining the height of its waves, as we experienced no violent storm,’ Ross noted, rather regretfully. Terror, on the other hand, was having a less happy ride, having come close to disaster during the storm that separated the two ships off the Devon coast. According to Sergeant Cunningham’s memorandum book, three members of the crew had been pulling in the flying boom – a spar to which extra sail could be attached – when they ‘nearly lost their lives in consequence of the violent manner in which she pitched . . . flying boom men and all completely under water’. It took four days for Terror to catch up with Erebus at their first stop – not a good omen for the voyage ahead.
Nevertheless on 20 October, nearly a month after setting out, the two ships reached their first port of call, the island of Madeira, some 550 miles off the African coast. Here various readings were taken, including the measurement of Madeira’s highest point, Pico Ruivo. A Lieutenant Wilkes of the United States Exploring Expedition (who, like Ross, was headed for the Antarctic) had recently done his own calculations, and Ross was rather surprised to find that these differed from his own by some 140 feet: ‘much greater than we should expect from the perfect and accurate instruments employed on both occasions’. Later in his voyage Ross would have further reason to question information gathered by Wilkes – and would be rather less polite about the lieutenant.
Erebus stayed in the roads of Funchal for ten days, but her crew were far from idle. Her auxiliary boats were constantly being lowered and raised, ferrying provisions in from the town. One was appropriated by Surgeon McCormick, who proceeded to make several exploratory walks around the island with a local man, Mr Muir.
On 31 October the two ships weighed anchor and made for the Canary Islands. Progress was uneventful, though Ross did record that their trawl nets came
