Eight Adélies and Erebus

9" x 12½",   Oil on Panel,  1995,  unframed,   £75

Mt Erebus is  a backdrop to a group of Adélie penguins on an ice floe about to take to the water in McMurdo Sound.

At the time of its discovery in January 1841 by Sir James Clark Ross sailing in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, this volcano was notably active with a dark column of smoke, tinged with flames rising in an unbroken column clear of its summit to fall back in misty clouds. Ross named it and its twin but dormant peak Mounts Erebus and Terror after his ships. Mt Erebus is one of only two active volcanoes in Antarctica, with a constant plume of vapour rising from the summit crater at 3749m (12,448ft). The other is Deception Island, now a flooded crater at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, last erupting in 1968.

Mt Erebus is a conspicuous feature of the McMurdo Sound area and with other quiescent volcanoes it forms and dominates Ross Island. First climbed by members of Shackleton's Nimrod Expedition in March 1908, it lies at a distance of 24km (15 miles) from this scene.

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