James Clark Ross

The English admiral and polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross (1800-1862) is known for his discovery of the North magnetic pole and his magnetic surveys of the Antarctic.

James Clark Ross was born in London on April 15, 1800, the son of George Ross and a nephew of Rear Adm. John Ross. He entered the Royal Navy in 1812, serving with his uncle in four ships and accompanying him on his first Arctic voyage, in 1818. He was in William Edward Parry's four Arctic expeditions. The first was in 1819-1820 aboard the Hecla; the second was between 1821 and 1823 in H.M.S. Fury. Ross received a promotion on Dec. 26, 1822, and sailed as lieutenant of the Fury on Parry's 1824-1825 Arctic expedition. He was also with Parry in 1827-1828 during the latter's unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole by sledge from West Spitsbergen.

Ross was promoted to commander on Nov. 8, 1827. From 1829 to 1833 he again served on one of his uncle's Arctic expeditions. On this trip James Clark Ross led a party across Boothia Isthmus, reaching the North magnetic pole on May 31, 1831. After his return home in 1833, Ross was promoted to captain and undertook the relief of whalers in Baffin Bay in 1836 and conducted a magnetic survey of Great Britain from 1835 until 1838.

In September 1838, with Ross as commander, H.M.S. Erebus and Terror sailed to the Antarctic to discover the South magnetic pole, examine Antarctica, and conduct numerous scientific tests according to directions of the Royal Society. They penetrated the ice belt as far south as latitude 78°9'30" in January 1841, reaching open water and discovering the Ross Sea. They continued to sail south and discovered Victoria Land (now part of New Zealand's Ross Dependency). The Ross Shelf Ice barred their way further south, and they were forced to turn back. In November 1841 they sailed again, from New Zealand, to solve the "Great Barrier Mystery" and failed owing to bad weather conditions. This time they wintered in the Falkland Islands, but they were no more successful on their third attempt. Finally they sailed for home and reached England in September 1843.

This voyage gave Ross "a distinguished place amongst the most successful votaries of Science, and the brightest ornaments of the British Navy." He received gold medals from geographical societies in London and Paris; in 1844 he was knighted; and in 1848 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. He led the first naval expedition in 1848-1849 to search for Sir John Franklin, missing with H.M.S. Enterprise and Investigator, but this was unsuccessful. Until his death, Ross was frequently consulted as "the first authority on all matters relating to Arctic navigation." He died at Aylesbury, England, on April 3, 1862.

Further Reading

Ross's account of his expedition is A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, 1839-43 (2 vols., 1847). Laurence P. Kirwan, A History of Polar Exploration (1960), devotes a chapter to the expedition, largely based on Ross's own account. Ross's discovery of the North magnetic pole is told in Sir John Ross, Narrative of a Second Voyage in Search of a North-West Passage … (1835).

Additional Sources

Ross, M. J. (Maurice James), Polar pioneers: John Ross and James Clark Ross, Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994.

Ross, Sir James Clark (1800-62). Ross was involved in eight Arctic and Antarctic expeditions after joining the navy in 1812. Those of 1818 and 1829-33 were with his uncle John Ross, those of 1819-20, 1821-3, and 1824 with Sir William Parry. With Ross he discovered the Magnetic Pole, while with Parry he reached 110 degrees west in Melville Sound. He was appointed in 1839 to lead the navy's first full-scale Antarctic expedition. In specially strengthened ships, the Erebus and Terror, Ross reached further south than anyone hitherto.

James Clark Ross
Sir James Clark Ross beside him is a dip circle designed by Robert Were Fox, and used by Ross to discover the magnetic south pole.
Born	April 15, 1800 London
Died	April 3, 1862 (aged 61)
Nationality	British
Home town	1
Known for	Antarctica

Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862), was a British naval officer and explorer. He explored the Arctic with his uncle Sir John Ross and Sir William Parry, and later led his own expedition to Antarctica.

Contents 1 Arctic explorer 2 Antarctic explorer 3 Tributes 4 References

Arctic explorer

Ross was born in London, the nephew of noted Scottish Arctic explorer Sir John Ross (1777 - 1856), under whom he entered the navy in 1812, accompanying him on Sir John's first Arctic voyage in search of a Northwest Passage in 1818. Between 1819 and 1827, Ross took part in four Arctic expeditions under Parry, and in 1829 to 1833, again served under his uncle on Sir John's second Arctic voyage. It was during this trip that they located the position of the North Magnetic Pole on 1 June 1831 on the Boothia Peninsula in the far north of Canada. It was on this trip, too, that Ross charted the Beaufort Islands, later renamed Clarence Islands by his uncle.^[1][2]

In 1834, Ross was promoted to captain, and from 1835 to 1838, he was employed on the magnetic survey of Great Britain.

Antarctic explorer

Between 1839 and 1843 Ross commanded an Antarctic expedition comprising the vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror and charted much of the coastline of the continent. Also aboard was Joseph Dalton Hooker who had been invited along as assistant surgeon. Erebus and Terror were bomb vessels – an unusual type of warship named after the mortar bombs they were designed to fire and constructed with extremely strong hulls, to withstand the recoil of the mortars, which were to prove of great value in thick ice.

In 1841, James Ross discovered the Ross Sea, Victoria Land, and the volcanoes Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, which were named for the expedition's vessels. They sailed for 250 miles (400 km) along the edge of the low, flat-topped ice shelf they called the Victoria Barrier, later named "Ross Ice Shelf" in his honour. In the following year, he attempted to penetrate south at about 55°W, and explored the eastern side of what is now known as James Ross Island, discovering and naming Snow Hill Island and Seymour Island. It is noteworthy^{[citation needed]} that Ross reported that Admiralty Sound was blocked by glaciers at its southern end, providing evidence for a much greater extent for the ice shelves in Prince Gustav Channel and the northern Larsen Ice Shelf.

On his return, Ross was knighted, and was also nominated to the French order of the Legion d'Honneur. In 1847, he published his account of the expedition under the title of A Voyage of Discovery and Research to Southern and Antarctic Regions. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1848, and in that year made his last expedition, as captain of HMS Enterprise, accompanied by HMS Investigator,^[3] in the first expedition in search of Sir John Franklin.

James was married to Lady Ann Ross. He died at Aylesbury in 1862, five years after his wife. A blue plaque marks Ross's home in Eliot Place, Blackheath, London. His closest friend was Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier with whom he sailed many times. Crozier has never been found after he participated in The Franklin Expedition and became leader after the death of Sir John Franklin.

James also lived in the ancient country house of the Abbotts of St Albans, later known as the Abbey, at Aston Abbotts in Buckinghamshire. He is buried with his wife in the local churchyard. In the gardens of the Abbey there is a lake with two islands, named after the ships Terror and Erebus.

Tributes

• The James Ross Strait, in the Canadian province of Nunavut, is named after him.
• Named after James Ross, the Ross Ice Shelf is Antarctica's largest ice shelf.
• James Clark Ross is the name of a British Antarctic Survey ship.
• The crater Ross on the Moon is jointly named after James Clark Ross and Frank Elmore Ross.

References

1. ^ Bossi, Maurizio; Gabinetto scientifico letterario G.P. Vieusseux (1984). Notizie di viaggi lontani : l'esplorazione extraeuropea nei periodici del primo Ottocento, 1815-1845. Naples: Guida. ISBN 8870423999. http://books.google.com/books?id=M1izJwICQ2kC&pg=PA571&lpg=PA571&dq=%22Clarence+Islands%22+%22king+william%22&source=web&ots=ZYYX-3lxcZ&sig=h5eBVFnLDsGEA-NLC84zkSDyf4M&hl=en#PPA571,M1. 
2. ^ Woodman, David C. (1991). Unravelling the Franklin disaster : Inuit testimony. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. ISBN 0773508333. http://books.google.com/books?id=RbnvSlOc6twC&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75&dq=%22Clarence+Islands%22+-elephant+&source=web&ots=zdDXRbYpc7&sig=SnNsRyMCPfFT3hQijcRURS8wsEw&hl=en#PPA75,M1. 
3. ^ Mowat, Farley (1973) (The Vanished Ships). Ordeal by ice; the search for the Northwest Passage. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd. p. 250. OCLC 1391959. 

• The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration From Frobisher to Ross - E C Coleman - 2006 ISBN 0-7524-3660-0
• The Royal Navy in Polar Exploration From Franklin to Scott - E C Coleman - 2006

v • d • e The Continent of Antarctica Main articles Antarctic · History · Climate · Expeditions · Research stations · Territorial claims · Antarctic Treaty System · Communications in Antarctica Antarctica portal Geographic regions Antarctic Peninsula · East Antarctica · West Antarctica · Extreme points of the Antarctic · List of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands · Antarctica ecozone Waterways: McMurdo Sound · Ross Sea · Weddell Sea Notable stations Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station (US) · Scott Base (NZ) · McMurdo Station (US) · Palmer Station (US) · Frei Montalva (CL) · Vostok Station (RU) · more... Famous explorers Ernest Shackleton · James Clark Ross · Richard Evelyn Byrd · Roald Amundsen · Douglas Mawson · Robert Falcon Scott · more...

v • d • e Royal Navy Arctic Exploration Expeditions Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822 · Franklin's lost expedition · British Arctic Expedition People Pelham Aldrich · Horatio Thomas Austin · George Back · Frederick William Beechey · Edward Belcher · Richard Collinson · Francis Crozier · David Buchan · John Franklin · Henry Parkyns Hoppner · Edward Augustus Inglefield · Henry Kellett · Skeffington Lutwidge · George Francis Lyon · Albert Hastings Markham · Francis Leopold McClintock · Robert McClure · George Nares · Erasmus Ommanney · Sherard Osborn · William Edward Parry · Constantine Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave · James Clark Ross · John Ross · Henry Frederick Stephenson Ships Alert · Assistance · Blossom · Carcass · Discovery · Enterprise · Erebus · Fury · Griper · Hecla · Herald · Intrepid · Investigator · Pioneer · Plover · Racehorse · Resolute · Terror

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