58 



Resolution for eight years, and manifested his diligence and turn for 

 observation by keeping a regular journal in addition to his other 

 duties. The fact that he won the responsible post of first mate of 

 the ship while yet in his sixteenth year, and that he was appointed 

 commander in 1811, as soon as he became of legal age, supplies good 

 testimony as to his courage and skill in his adventurous profession. 



It was during this period, in 1806, that the Scoresbys sailed to 

 a higher north latitude than, in the absence of trustworthy evidence 

 to the contrary, had ever before been reached. Steering northwards 

 from the western coast of Spitzbergen, they found an open sea, in 

 which they not only captured as many whales as furnished a full 

 cargo, but found on one occasion their position to be 8130'N., 

 about 510 miles from the Pole. The sea was then so clear, that but 

 for the risk of detention from sudden frost, they might have still 

 sailed uninterruptedly to the northward. 



In his subsequent voyages, the younger Scoresby observed the 

 disappearance of the vast accumulations of ice that had for years 

 closed the sea on the west of Greenland ; and in 1817, pursuing a 

 correspondence of some years' standing with Sir Joseph Banks, he 

 informed that eminent person of the remarkable phenomenon. In 

 the following year the Government, acting on this information, and 

 the recommendation of the Council of the Royal Society, despatched 

 the first of the- expeditions which, within the present century, have 

 resolved the important geographical question of a north-west 



The winter season between his voyages had always been employed 

 by Scoresby in the acquisition of scientific knowledge : he had 

 studied during two sessions at Edinburgh, where by his assiduity he 

 had gained the friendship of some of the Professors. In 1820, after 

 his seventeenth voyage to the Polar seas, he published, at the sug- 

 gestion of Prof. Jameson, his well-known book in two volumes, ' An 

 Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of 

 the Northern Whale Fishery.' Being the first popular work on 

 that subject, it was eagerly read, and while it brought fame to the 

 author, prepared the way for further developments of whaling enter- 

 prise, and for arctic research generally. 



Meanwhile Capt. Scoresby was making observations on magnetism, 

 a part of science to which, at a later period of his life, he especially 



