William Scoresby Senior (1760-1829)

Abstract

... He was of an original and inventive turn of mind, and the shelter given to the masthead lookout by the "crows' nest" is his creation. ... Being dissatisfied with an agricultural life, he determined to go to sea and set himself the task of learning navigation and astronomy. His early voyages took him to places as far away as St. Petersburg and Spain, where he was captured managed to escape through stratagem. He joined a Whitby whaling vessel when he was 25, and from then on he found ample opportunity for developing his skills. ... Studying each job to be done, he soon worked out the quickest and most efficient way of doing it. One example involved the flensing of whales. Not long after he had been given command of a whaler, he challenged four men busy at the job, saying he could do it single-handedly in half the time. They were crestfallen when he accomplished it in one-third of the time. In ice navigation he possessed that extra sense also attributed to Captain Cook. It seemed as if he knew what was over the horizon, and he safely led every ship under his command into calm waters heavily populated with whales. But hunting whales was not the sum total of his sailing life. He had an inquiring mind and was early led to report on arctic winds, currents, and ice conditions to Sir Joseph Banks, who voyaged with Captain Cook. In 1806 he forced his ship, the Resolution, through the Spitsbergen ice barrier into open water in the far north. They reached an estimated 81 31 N latitude and could have sailed even farther, had it not been for the commercial design of the voyage and the scarcity of whales. Even so, the Scoresbys (his son was with him as mate) held the record for sailing farthest north for nearly a century, if one discounts sledging journeys. ... The achievements of William Scoresby Senior and his son form an unrivalled chapter in the history of the Arctic, for indubitably the formative years of Scoresby junior were largely shaped by the leadership of his father who, though lacking formal education and sophistication, was yet an original and forceful character, seeing in the Arctic opportunities for exploration and investigation far exceeding the commercial endeavours which were his main object. His son brilliantly continued and greatly enlarged his father's early ambition. That the father's example and training won his son for arctic science cannot be doubted.