John Ross (Arctic explorer)
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Sir John Ross (June 24, 1777 – August 30, 1856) was a British rear admiral and Arctic explorer.
Ross, the son of the Rev. Andrew Ross, minister of Inch, near Stranraer, Wigtonshire, entered the British Royal Navy in 1786 as an apprentice, when he was only nine years old. He served in the Mediterranean until 1789, and afterwards in the English Channel. In 1808 he acted as captain of the Swedish Fleet, and in 1812 was promoted to commander.
Six years later, in 1818, he received the command of an Arctic expedition fitted out by the Admiralty, the first of a new series of attempts to solve the question of a Northwest Passage. This entailed going around the extreme northeast coast of America and sailing to the Bering Strait. He was also to note the currents, tides, the state of ice and magnetism and to collect specimens he found on the way. In April of that year, Ross left London with two ships, and in August reached Lancaster Sound, in Canada.
There he re-examined the observations William Baffin, a previous British explorer, had made two hundred years before. But Ross went no further, for he suffered from mirages that appeared as mountains at the end of the strait. He named them "Crocker Hills," and returned to England despite the protests of several of his officers. The account of his voyage, published a year later, brought to light their disagreement, and the ensuing controversy over the existence of Crocker Hills ruined his reputation.
This expedition failed to discover much that was new, and somewhat prejudiced the Arctic reputation of its leader, who attained the rank of captain on his return.
In 1829, Ross admitted he may have been wrong, and convinced one of his friends, Mr (afterwards Sir) Felix Booth, to finance a second expedition. He left in May of that year, this time on a steam ship. They sailed past Lancaster Sound to a previously unexplored area, where their ship became stuck in the ice. The crew was stranded for four years, during which they explored the regions to the west and north, with the help of local Inuits. On one of these explorations, Ross found the magnetic north pole on the Boothia Peninsula.
In 1832, Ross and his crew abandoned their ship and walked to another shipwreck which had been abandoned by a different expedition many years earlier. A year went by before a break in the ice allowed them to leave, on that ship's longboats. They were eventually picked up by a British vessel and taken home. "This impressive experience, as well as the scientific and ethnological information gathered by Ross's team, brought him the renown that he had long sought."
On his return Captain Ross received gold medals from the English and French geographical societies, and various foreign orders, including a knighthood of the Pole Star of Sweden, and in the following year (1834) received a knighthood and a CB in Britain.
In 1850 he undertook a third voyage to the Arctic regions, this time in search of the missing expedition party of Sir John Franklin. He did not find them. In the following year he attained flag-rank. Upon returning, he settled in Scotland, and died in London in 1856.
His publications include:
- Voyage of Discovery for the Purpose of Exploring Baffin's Bay (1819)
- Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage, including the Discovery of the North Magnetic Pole (1835)
- Memoirs and Correspondence of Lord De Saumerez (1838).
External link
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online (http://www.biographi.ca/EN/ShowBio.asp?BioId=38292)de:John Ross (Polarforscher)