3C1 



SCORESBY, WILLIAM AND REV. WILLIAM. 



SCORESBY, WILLIAM AND REV. WILLIAM. 



command of other ships he continued in the trade, with the results 

 just described, until 1823, when he discontinued the pursuit, having 

 acquired an ample competency. 



The total number of voyages in the fishery in which ho held the 

 command, from first to last, was just thirty. The entire cargoes 

 obtained, under his personal guidance, comprised the produce of 533 

 whales a greater number than had fallen to the share of any other 

 individual with that of many thousands of seals, some hundreds of 

 walruses, very many narwhals, and probably not less than sixty Arctic 

 bears. The quantity of oil yielded by this produce was 4664 tuns, 

 of baleine (commonly termed whalebone) about 240 tons in weight, 

 together with the skins of the other animals taken. His yearly average 

 was almost double that of the Hull whale-fishing, or in fact of that of 

 any other port. The gross proceeds of the thirty years' adventures, 

 in money, amounted to very nearly 200,0002., of which the profits 

 amounted to 90,0002. ; while the capital annually invested did not 

 exceed on an average 90002., which thus yielded, through a series of 

 thirty years, no less a sum than 30002. a year, being at the rate of 

 33 ^ per cent, per annum on the capital employed. 



Mr. Scoresby survived his retirement six years, in a state however 

 of deteriorated health, experiencing apparently in his leisure the effects 

 of the wear and tear of the previous thirty-six years. His success had 

 partly been founded on numerous new contrivances and improvements 

 in the whale-fishing apparatus and operations. But he did not confine 

 his attention to subjects immediately connected with his occupation. 

 In the winter of 1816-17 he produced a pamphlet on the improvement 

 of the town and harbour of Whitby, the substance of which, revised, 

 extended, and illustrated by engraved plans, he again brought out in 

 1826 under the title of ' An Essay on the Improvement of the Town 

 and Harbour of Whitby, with its Streets and Neighbouring Highways : 

 Designed also for the maintaiuance of the Labouring Classes who are 

 out of Employment.' A portion of the improvement thus proposed, 

 with some little deviation, was carried into effect after Mr. Scoresby's 

 decease, the entrance of the harbour having thereby become more safe, 

 exactly as he had anticipated. He also left a manuscript document, 

 dated London, 23rd of December 1824, entitled ' Hints; or Outlines of 

 Improvements conceived by Mr. Scoresby.' These are stated, in an 

 introductory paragraph, to be the result of reflection during forty 

 years' occupation at sea, and are proposed in a manner much resem- 

 bling that of the Marquis of Worcester's celebrated ' Century of 

 Inventions' [WORCESTER, MARQUIS OF] : they include projected 

 improvements in ship-building, seasoning timber, ports and harbours, 

 breakwaters, the banks of rivers, barren lands, the ventilation of coal- 

 mines, the building of streets (including the suggestion of sub-ways), 

 making new roads, and other subjects connected with the arts of life 

 and with human culture. Unfortunately no record of the nature of 

 these projects appears to have been preserved. 



Mr. Scoresby was the inventor of the ' round top-gallant crow's nest,' 

 or small cylindrical observatory attached to the main top-mast for the 

 safe and effective navigation of the Arctic ices, and the keeping of a 

 due watch for the discovery of whales. The first example was built 

 in May 1807. It was substituted for the unsafe and unprotected con- 

 trivance called the ' crow's-nest,' in which the navigator had hitherto 

 been exposed to all the rigours of the weather whilst performing an 

 indispensable duty. This invention became universally employed by 

 the British Arctic whalers, and was adopted generally in our discovery 

 ships, being in Dr. Scoresby's opinion the greatest boon of modern 

 times given to the Arctic navigator. The construction of one for the 

 Isabella discovery ship is recorded in Ross's first voyage, 1818, p. 124, 

 but without any allusion to the inventor. 



WILLIAM SCORESBY, the son, was born in 1790, and commenced his 

 nautical life only ten years afterwards, accompanying his father in 

 the Dundee, on her voyage of the year 1800. The passion for naval 

 enterprise which the- child's examination of the ship had evoked, was 

 confirmed by his first voyage, and in 1803 the father and son sailed 

 together in the ship Resolution of Whitby. This they continued to 

 do for the ensuing eight years, the sedulous junior keeping a regular 

 journal of their voyages. He was promoted iu succession, as he 

 became qualified, without being unduly favoured, through all the 

 gradations of the service, until he was appointed chief mate of the 

 ship ; which responsible office he held in his sixteenth year. The 

 long intervals during which, from the nature of the whale-fishery, tht 

 ships were laid up in winter, were devoted by the young navigator 

 with the sanction and to the great satisfaction of his father, to 

 regular study, and for a considerable portion of two sessions, at 

 Edinburgh, where he secured the friendship of the late Professor 

 Jameson and other professors of the university, and also of Dr. (now 

 Sir David) Brewster. He thus acquired that definite knowledge of the 

 principles of the various branches of science bearing upon his peculiar 

 profession, which enabled him to extend them, by his own observa- 

 tions, in the voyages to the Arctic regions which alternated with and 

 succeeded these periods of intellectual culture. 



While filling the stations respectively of commander and chief-mate 

 of the Resolution in 1806, the Scoresbys sailed to a higher latitude than 

 had been reached before. In May of that year they were successively 

 in 80 50' 28", N. lat., 81 1' 53", and 81 12' 42", and once, by 

 estimation, as far as 81 30', the nearest approach to the pole 

 within about 510 miles at that period authenticated. It has been 



exceeded only by the late Admiral Parry [PARRY, WILLIAM EDWARD], 

 who, in his celebrated boat expedition, during hia fourth voyage, in 

 1827 reached 82 45', the highest point yet attained ; but this was 

 accomplished by travelling across the ice, which had to be commenced 

 on gaining the latitude of 79 55' 20% inferior to that attained by the 

 Scoreubys by ordinary sailing, and the honour still remains theirs of 

 having in ordinary sailing navigated the highest northern latitudes. 

 It may be remarked here that the boat expedition had itself been 

 adopted from a suggestion made by the yolinger Scoresby (in a pro- 

 position which had been rejected by the Admiralty), but had not, in 

 his opinion, been properly executed. It was always his conviction 

 that by such an expedition, if carried out according to his views, the 

 pole itself might have been arrived at ; and at a later period he had 

 the satisfaction of learning that Parry himself had expressed the same 

 conviction. It is proper to note in this place, in order to preclude 

 error, that the surgeon of the Resolution in this voyage, states, in an 

 ' Account of a Voyage to Spitzbergen,' and in a manner taking the 

 achievement to himself, that the highest latitude attained was 81 50', 

 but ^this, as Dr. Scoresby has explained in his * Memorials of the 

 Sea,' p. 153, is erroneous ; the highest latitude observed being 

 81 12' 42", as already stated. The Resolution was the property 

 of a co-partnery, of which the senior Scoresby was one, and influ- 

 enced in a considerable degree by a kindly and parental regard 

 for his son he formally resigned his command in 1811, on the 

 very day on which the subject of this notice completed his twenty- 

 first year; and on the same day, the earliest at which he could 

 legally hold a command, William Scoresby junior was unanimously 

 elected his father's successor. 



In consequence of information communicated by Captain Scoresby 

 to Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, the attention 

 of the council of that learned body and of the government was 

 directed in 1817 to the dormant enterprise of endeavouring to reach 

 the North Pole and discovering the long-sought North-West passage ; 

 the latter of which objects has at length been accomplished by Sir 

 Robert MacClure [MACCLURE, SIR ROBERT J. LE M.] in one of the 

 recent searching expeditions for the ill-fated Franklin. Sir J. Banks 

 was very desirous that his young but experienced friend should be 

 employed in the proposed adventure, his father having deferred the 

 fitting out of the ship Fame, which the son was to command, under 

 the idea that she might be taken up for service. Their expectations 

 however were altogether disappointed, and as is well known, Captain 

 (the late Sir John) Ross with the Isabella and Alexander, and Captain 

 Buchan with the Dorothea and Trent, were appointed to make the 

 attempt. It appears to be the policy, not perhaps to bo discom- 

 mended on grounds of national justice, however the consequences of 

 it may be regretted in particular instances, of the Board of Admiralty, 

 to reserve these arduous expeditions and others destined for marine 

 scientific research, as the encouragements and rewards of an inevitably 

 laborious and ill-paid service. The history of this subject will be 

 found in a paper by Dr. Scoresby, ' On some circumstances connected 

 with the Original Suggestion of the Modern Arctic Expeditions ' pub- 

 lished in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal, vol. xx. 1835-36. 



Having made seventeen voyages to the Spitzbergen or Greenland 

 Whale-fishery, Captain Scoresby published, in 1820, his celebrated 

 work entitled, ' An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a history and 

 description of the Northern Whale-Fishery,' in 2 volumes consisting of 

 1217 pages, illustrated by twenty-four engravings. It had been under- 

 taken at the suggestion of Professor Jameson, who did great service 

 to scientific literature by stimulating his pupils or former pupils to 

 make public the results of the observations made by them in their 

 professional or official employments in distant countries. This was 

 the first original work on the physical and natural history of the coun- 

 tries within the Arctic circle and on the nature and practice of the 

 Whale-Fishery, published in this country, with the exception of a 

 tract by Henry Elking on the latter subject. It obtained for the 

 author a more general reputation than he had hitherto enjoyed, and 

 justified the owners of the whaling ships he commanded, in coun- 

 tenancing a degree of enterprise in geographical discovery not 

 unconnected however with the object of the trade, which had not 

 before been united with the pursuit of whales, except through acci- 

 dental circumstances. But on Captain Scoresby's return to Liverpool, 

 from a voyage in 1822, in the ship Baffin of that port, undertaken 

 with these views, he received on entering the Mersey the afflicting 

 intelligence of the decease of his (second) wife while he was absent. 

 He now quitted the whale-fishery, but published the geographical 

 results of the voyage, in a 'Journal of a Voyage to the Northern 

 Whale-Fishery; including researches and discoveries on the eastern 

 coast of West-Greenland, made in the summer of 1822, in the ship 

 Baffin of Liverpool,' Edinburgh, 1823, 515 pages, with 8 plates, includ- 

 ing a chart, &c. A German translation by Professor F. Kries was 

 published at Hamburg in 1825. Not long after the appearance of 

 this work, on the 17th of June, 1824, he was elected a Fellow of the 

 Royal Society, being already a contributor to the ' Philosophical Trans- 

 actions,' and having been for some years a fellow of the Royal Society 

 of Edinburgh. He subsequently received one of the highest honorary 

 rewards of scientific eminence, in being made a corresponding member 

 of the Institute of France, or Academy of Sciences of Paris. As the 

 captain, of a whaler he had been a remarkable man. His crews were 



