CAPTAIN ROS S'S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 



ARRIVAL OF SvPTAIN ROSS. 



Hull, Quarter before 10, Friday morning. 

 Captain Ross is this moment landing, having come by the 

 Gazelle steamer from Rotterdam to Hull. 



A second edition of the Hull Advertiser, dated Friday, 

 half-past 9, has the following :— " We stop the press to 

 announce the arrival at Hull of Captain Ross, who is on board 

 the Gazelle steamer, from Rotterdam. He and Captain Hum- 

 phreys left the Isabella off the Humber. We had the plea- 

 sure of bidding Captain Ross welcome to his native land, 

 and were happy to see that he appeared in excellent health." 

 (From the Caledonian Mercury. ) 

 The following particulars of Captain Ross's arctic expe- 

 dition have been collected from the verbal statement of one of 

 his crew, and we give them as we received them, without 

 vouclnng for their entire accuracy, although we have reason 

 to believe that, in the main, they will be found to be Correct. 

 In the month of May, 1829, this enterprising officer sailed 

 from this country for the Arctic regions in a steamer pre- 

 pared and fitted out at his own expense. His crew, we be- 

 lieve, consisted of 19 persons, exclusive of himself and his 

 son, all volunteers. In the first season he only reached 

 Wvlie Fiord, on the eastern side of Davis's Straits, where, 

 finding his machinery nearly useless, he resolved on con- 

 verting his steamer into a sailing vessel, and equipped 

 it as such from the materials of a London whaler which 

 he found abandoned on that part of the coast. Next sea- 

 son he took the earliest opportunity to prosecute his 

 voyage, and having proceeded up Baffin's Bay, entered Sir 

 John Lancaster's Sound, and steered for the spot, in Prince 

 Regent's Inlet, where His JIajesty's ship Fury had been 

 abandoned. Here he found only the keel of the Fury, and a 

 few of her timbers, but, what was of more importance to him, 

 he found the greater part of her provisions. Having re- 

 victualled his vessel out of the abandoned stores, and left 

 three of his boats at Fury B :ach, he made sail for the west- 

 ward, and succeeded in getting as far as 101 deg. W. L., near 

 the North Georgian Island?, where, unfortunately, his pro- 

 gress was arrested by finding himself embayed and beset with 

 ice. As the season was now far advanced, and he had no 

 hope whatever of extricating his vessel. Captain Ross was 

 compelled to abandon her; and after many difficulties, he and 

 his crew succeeded, by means of sledges and otherwise, in 

 reaching Fury Beach, where the boats had been left, lato in 

 the same season. It appears that during the whole of 1831 

 they were unable to move to any distance from Fury Beach. 

 In 1032, however, they made an attempt to reach the sea in 

 their three boats ; but after suffering many privations they 

 failed in accomplishing their object, and were obliged to 

 retrace their steps that winter, being at times thrown upon the 

 beneficence of the few natives whom they chanced to meet 

 with. As early in the present season as ihey could make 

 any progress they again started for the open sea, and happily 

 fell in with the Isabella, of Hull, at Jacob Teure, just as that 

 ship was about to leave the fishing station. The Clarendon, 

 of Leith, afterwards fell in with the Isabella, and saw both 

 Captain Ross and his crew, who were all well, excepting two 

 or three who were affected with scurvy. Captain Ross lost 

 three men the first year on his voyage out, but no other 

 casualties occurred. 



A report from the Times, October 18, 1833, 

 announces the safe arrival of John Ross 

 after an absence of four years. It was on 

 this expedition that J. C. Ross searched 

 for the North Magnetic Pole. 



Ross it was just a beginning of a long series of ventures. 

 For the time being the Admiralty lost interest in a Northwest 

 Passage, but John Ross was still anxious to make up for his error 

 about Lancaster Sound. Although the Admiralty refused to back 

 his latest plan, an old friend, Felix Booth, alderman of the City of 

 London, gave him ;{;i8,ooo toward the cost of a private expedition 

 in search of a Northwest Passage. With part of this money Ross 

 bought the Victory, an old steam packet of eighty-five tons, and 

 James Ross, now age twenty-nine, joined the crew. He had a special 

 reason for doing so. He had become interested in the earth's mag- 

 netism, then a new field of study. Ross' particular interest was to 

 find the actual positions of the magnetic poles. Until this had been 

 done cartographers could not prepare charts showing variation, 

 which was necessary to get a true compass heading. Encouraging 

 Ross was the acknowledged expert of the time, Edward (later Sir 

 Edward) Sabine, who had been Ross' shipmate on Parry's voyages. 

 It was Sabine who originated the program of magnetic observations 

 which was later to carry Ross into Antarctic waters. 



Meanwhile the Victory sailed, followed the northward route 

 taken by Parry, and in 1829 entered Prince Regent Inlet, all the 

 time searching for an opening to the west and the Bering Strait. 

 But once again John Ross missed his opportunity. By bad luck he 

 sailed past a "bay" that later proved to be the way through to the 

 Pacific and wa? named Bellot Strait. Even so, John Ross discovered 

 land to the south, which he called Boothia Felix, and the Victory 

 remained there for three summers. 



During that time Eskimos visited them and built a village of 

 igloos near the ship. James Ross had already learned some Eskimo, 

 so he was able to talk to them about their country. The Eskimos 

 told him that Boothia FeUx was, in fact, Unked to the mainland of 

 North America by a narrow isthmus. They lent Ross huskies and 

 guides, and in the course of the many sledge trips he made he was 

 able to plot the position of the North Magnetic Pole. On the last 

 day of May 1831, James Ross attained his objective and stood at 

 what was then considered the Magnetic Pole (but we now know that 

 the position of both magnetic poles varies from year to year). Here 

 at lat. 70° N., long. 96° W. on low-lying land, he raised the Union 

 Jack. "I wish," he later wrote, "that a place so important had 

 possessed more mark or note [such as that envisioned by some 

 people who expect the Magnetic Pole to be] a mountain of iron or 

 of magnets as large as Mont Blanc. But Nature had erected no 

 monument to denote the spot which she had chosen as the centre 

 of one of her great and dark paths." 



During the two winters that the Victory lay frozen in, James Ross 

 made many other sledge journeys covering extensive unexplored 

 areas. He was the first to sight present-day King William Island and, 

 thinking it part of the mainland, he explored beyond its north- 

 ern tip, Cape Felix, to Victory Point on the west coast. As the 

 third winter came on, the expedition faced the dreaded threat of 

 scurvy. John Ross' only hope for getting his men alive back to 

 England was to abandon ship and sledge across to the wreck of 

 Parry's old ship, the Fury. Here there were boats and supplies. The 

 group spent a fourth winter in the makeshift hut near the Fury, 

 then in the spring of 1833 John Ross and his men sailed in their 

 small boats for Lancaster Sound. Then they saw a sail, and after 



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