The Erebus Chalice is a silver and gilt chalice gifted to the

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National ...

in 1987 for use in the

Chapel of the Snows The Chapel of the Snows is a non-denominational Christian church located at the United States' McMurdo Station on Ross Island, Antarctica and is one of eight churches on Antarctica. Overview The chapel is the second southernmost religious bu ...

at McMurdo Station in

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

, where it is now kept on display during austral summers. At the time of its gifting, the Chalice was believed to have been carried aboard (and thus named after) , which, alongside , was one of two ships of the Ross Expedition that mapped Antarctica in 1839–1843. In 2006 the

Canterbury Museum, Christchurch The Canterbury Museum is a museum located in the central city of Christchurch, New Zealand, in the city's Cultural Precinct. The museum was established in 1867 with Julius von Haast – whose collection formed its core – as its first directo ...

discovered that the chalice actually had been made in London circa 1910 and therefore could not have sailed aboard ''Erebus''.

References

{{reflist McMurdo Station Chalices Culture of Antarctica