From Antarctica to the Gold Rushes

Commander Alexander Smith RN served his country with fearless resolution for seventeen years on the quarterdeck, encountering many adventures on the high seas - an intrepid voyager in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans. Under the command of Captain James Clark Ross, he became a heroic polar explorer in the north Atlantic and was chosen for the epic 1839-1843 British Antarctic Expedition aboard the Erebus in the pivotal rank of First Mate.For the first time, the expeditions Erebus and Terror penetrated the furthest south into the Antarctic and discovered the ice barrier despite competition of Charles Wilkes’ American and Dumont d'Urville’s French expeditions. The Ross expedition was the first to go where no human being had gone before.Retiring from the Royal Navy, he was appointed Goldfields Commissioner in Castlemaine during the Victorian gold rushes in 1853. Later, he was elected as a pioneering member of parliament, became a homesteader and gardener and developed a fine reputation as a botanist and naturalist…an extraordinary, but forgotten life.