and the President of the Royal Geographical Society, John Washington, both strong supporters of the British expeditions to the South Pole. First contact with AntarcticaAstrolabe and Zélée sailed from Toulon on 7 September 1837, after three weeks of delay compared to Dumont's plans. His objectives were to reach the most southerly point possible at this time in the Weddell Sea; to pass through the Strait of Magellan; to travel up the coast of Chile in order to head for Oceania with the objective of inspecting the new British colonies in Western Australia; to sail to Hobart; and to sail to New Zealand to find opportunities for French whalers and to examine places where a penal colony might be established. After passing through the East Indies, the mission would have to round the Cape of Good Hope and return to France. Early in the voyage, part of the crew was involved in a drunken brawl and arrested in Tenerife. A short pause was made in Rio de Janeiro to disembark a sick official. During the first part of the voyage there were also problems of provisioning, particularly rotten meat, which affected the health of the crew. At the end of November, the ships reached the Strait of Magellan. Dumont thought there was sufficient time to explore the strait for three weeks, taking into account the precise maps drawn by Phillip Parker King in between 1826 and 1830, before heading south again. In the Strait of Magellan Dummont surveyed the coast trying to find out the ruins of Ciudad Rey Don Felipe, a city founded in 1584 as part of a failed Spanish colonization attempt to control the passage through the strait. An expedition report recommended that a French colony be established at the strait to support future traffic along the route. The strait was eventually settled by Chile in 1843. Two weeks after seeing their first iceberg, Astrolabe and Zélée found themselves entangled again in a mass of ice on 1 January 1838. The same night the pack ice prevented the ships from continuing to the south. In the next two months Dumont led increasingly desperate attempts to find a passage through the ice so that he could reach the desired latitude. For a while the ships managed to keep to an ice-free channel, but shortly afterwards they became trapped again, after a wind change. Five days of continuous work were