Discover one of the earliest firsthand records of Antarctica's mysteries.

Towering icebergs, active volcanoes, and a rich, though perhaps too indulgent, penguin stew—these are just a few of the intriguing details captured in one of the earliest personal accounts of Antarctica. Penned in the 1840s by botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, the Antarctic Journal revealed the natural marvels of the southern continent to the world. Today, the Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project and the Biodiversity Heritage Library have digitized and preserved this work for a new generation of adventurers.

Born two centuries ago in Suffolk, England, Hooker would rise to become one of the most influential naturalists and explorers of the 19th century. A close confidant of Charles Darwin, he also served as director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew from 1865 to 1885. However, before all that, at the young age of 22, Hooker set out on a groundbreaking expedition to Antarctica.

Hooker acted as both the assistant surgeon and botanist during the expedition, which was led by Captain James Clark Ross, a seasoned veteran of seven previous Arctic missions. Like all Royal Navy exploration voyages at the time, this one had clear objectives: confirm the existence of the southern continent, locate the south magnetic pole, gather flora and fauna, and map uncharted geographical features.

Equipped with 25 reams of paper for plant preservation, glass greenhouses to house live specimens, natural history books, microscopes, and a trunk of polar clothing, Hooker set up his small field laboratory aboard the HMS Erebus, the larger of the two ships in the expedition.

The Erebus and the HMS Terror departed England in late September 1839, reaching Hobart, Tasmania, in August 1840. From there, they ventured south, soon spotting a rocky land surrounded by pack ice and towering icebergs. Hooker documented the awe-inspiring sights in his journal. "Saw a shoal of whales, and for the first time an iceberg, a most magnificent flat topped mass of ice about 160ft high, and a quarter of a mile long," he noted on December 28, 1840.

The ships navigated through ice floes, inching closer to the continent. Massive glaciers were funneled toward the sea by surrounding mountains (which Ross named after himself), while a vast floating ice barrier—later named the Ross Ice Shelf—formed a sheer wall towering over 160 feet above the ocean, stretching to the horizon. Hooker observed rafts of penguins, white petrels, and gulls heading toward a hilly island at the northern end of the ice shelf.

"At 8:45, observed the smaller hills on the Island … emitting small puffs of smoke, a discovery which interested us all very much," Hooker wrote on January 28, 1841. "4:30, observed the volcano emitting immense clouds of black smoke rising perhaps 300 feet above it; its margins tinged white by the sun, with a distinct red tinge from the fire below; it was a magnificent spectacle and a most extraordinary one."

The crew stumbled upon Antarctica’s two largest volcanoes, which Ross subsequently named Mount Erebus and Mount Terror after the expedition's ships.

Beyond the southern continent, the expedition also journeyed to Australia, New Zealand, and smaller subantarctic islands. Whenever the ship docked, Hooker would go ashore to collect mosses, lichens, algae, and vascular plants. At sea, he used a tow net to capture plankton and various marine organisms. If the plants had frozen into the soil, Hooker would carefully extract them and sit on them until they thawed. "The observations Hooker recorded in this [Antarctic Journal] and numerous other notebooks formed the basis of a flora of Antarctica and also of the wider regions visited," writes Cam Sharp Jones, the Joseph Hooker Correspondence Project officer at the Royal Botanical Gardens, in a blog post.

The most vivid passages in Hooker's journal describe the comical behavior of the ever-present penguins, which provided the crew with the only fresh meat during the voyage. "At first we had a dozen on board running wild over the decks following a leader … until one day the leader, finding the hawse hole [a small hole in the ship's hull for cables to pass through] empty, immediately made his exit & was followed by the rest, each giving a valedictory croak as he made his escape," Hooker wrote.

Penguins that didn’t make their escape were transformed into a variety of dishes. "Their flesh is black & very rich & was much relished at first for stews, pies, curries, etc.," Hooker noted. "After a day or two we found it too rich with a disagreeable flavour … except in the shape of soup, which is certainly the richest I ever ate, much more so than hare soup which it most resembles."

After four years spent in icy waters, the crew was undoubtedly weary of penguin soup and eager to return home by the start of 1843. The Ross expedition reached England on September 4, having accomplished most of its objectives. Ross determined the location of the south magnetic pole, confirmed the existence and features of the southern continent, and mapped large portions of its coastline. Hooker documented plant and animal life previously unknown to science, publishing his findings in his six-volume Flora Antarctica, a comprehensive record of over 3000 species and 530 illustrations from the voyage. The Erebus and Terror were later refitted and sent out on the doomed Franklin expedition in 1845.

To honor Hooker's contributions to exploration and science (and to celebrate the bicentennial of his birth), the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew hosted an exhibition showcasing his letters, paintings, travel prints, photographs, journals, significant botanical illustrations, and even personal belongings. On display until September 17, 2017, Joseph Hooker: Putting Plants in Their Place highlights how his curiosity and exploration revolutionized the study of plants, bringing us closer to one of Earth's most remote regions.