William Scoresby Junior (1789-1857)

Abstract

To the arctic enthusiast the name of William Scoresby, F.R.S., needs no introduction. The author of An Account of the Arctic Regions, the whaling captain-turned scientist is too closely associated with pioneer arctic research to remain long unknown, even to the most modest beginner in polar studies. Indeed, the activities and achievements of this remarkable man place him in a class apart from almost all those who have journeyed and researched in polar regions. Carrying on with great success the most demanding and arduous of all maritime activities - the hunting and capture of whales - he yet collected over a period of some 15 years data on sea currents and temperatures, ice formation and movement, wind directions and velocities, magnetic variations, marine organisms, biology of whales, structure of snow crystals and much besides, gathering all this original work together in his two-volume classic Account of the Arctic Regions. The publication of this work in 1820 marks the beginning of the scientific study of the polar regions. And if this were not sufficient claim to fame, Scoresby's second volume was a significant addition to the literature of the sea in its accounts of whaling adventures and the dangers and thrills of the chase, which compare favourably with those of the great maritime novelists. ... The results of Scoresby's scientific work in the Arctic have long been part of the fabric of our polar knowledge, and in his published works he left us first-hand accounts of his voyages in Greenland waters. Geographically speaking, his most important voyage was that of 1822. The uncharted coastline of east Greenland became clear of ice around 1820, and in 1822 Scoresby, in the midst of an arduous whaling voyage, sailed along some 400 miles of this inhospitable landscape, charting it, and naming points as he went in honour of scientific and other friends, chief of which was Scoresby Sound, named for his father. Almost all his place names survive today. They are currently being listed by A.K. Higgins of the Greenland Geological Survey. ... He left active sea life in his thirties and entered the Church, and despite a busy life he continued to work for science with his pen, sending many papers to the Royal Society and the British Association, of which he was a founding member. Scoresby visited America and Canada twice in the 1840s, lecturing to support his many social endeavours in the industrial parish where he pioneered five schools for the illiterate mill-working children of Bradford. ... William Scoresby's life was crowned by his final act of undertaking a voyage to Australia in order to verify his theories of compass behaviour in iron ships; the simple outcome of this was the conclusion that the only reliable place for the ship's compass was aloft. ...