Page:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu/26

xviii was acceded to by Lord Melbourne; and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty being pleased to honour me with the command, I received my commission for Her Majesty's ship Erebus, on the 8th of April, 1839, and their Lordships' directions to proceed with the equipment of the expedition upon the most liberal scale, to be provided with all requisite means to carry into full execution the several points suggested, and observations recommended, by the two learned bodies, in the most complete manner. The Erebus, a bomb of three hundred and seventy tons, like all others of her class, was of strong build and with a capacious hold. The second vessel appointed for the service was the Terror, of three hundred and forty tons; she had been originally strengthened for contending with the ice of the arctic seas, upon the occasion of the detention of so many of our whale ships in Baffin's Bay, during the winter of 1836, and employed in the subsequent summer under the command of Sir George Back, upon his arduous but unsuccessful attempt to reach Repulse Bay. The damages she sustained during that voyage had already been repaired, and her fortification being considered perfectly sufficient, she was not commissioned until a month later, by my trusty and tried friend and messmate, Commander Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier; and from the numerous applicants for the service, the following officers were selected and appointed to the Erebus and Terror:—