WILLIAM SCOKESBY, THE YOU^'GER. 
205 
Avitli his wife, wlio was not only of pious habits, but had a deep know- 
ledge and experience in religion, and was a member of a dissenting 
congregation, to help him out of his unconverted state. 
In 1812, he was again successful as a whale fisher, and in that 
year his first child was born. For ten years he remained connected 
with the " Resolution," eight years under his father's command, and 
two as commander himself. He records with pride that during the 
whole of those ten years the ship never met with any accident, or 
suffered damage. Nor did she ever fail to surpass all the other ships 
in the port, which were seven or eight in number, in her catch of whales. 
In 1813 he took command of another vessel, the " Esk," and 
sailed on his first voyage in her in March of that year. It was very 
successful commercially, but the ship had a narrow escape from being 
crushed in the ice. It was on this voyage that he contrived the 
instrument named by him the ' marine diver,' by which he investi- 
gated the temperature of water at and beneath the surface, and settled 
the fact that the temperature was warmer below than at the surface, 
which was the reverse of every former experiment performed in any 
other part of the globe. 
In 1814 he read before the Wernerian Society a paper entitled 
" A Description of the Polar Ice," which attracted considerable atten- 
tion amongst the scientific men of the day. Baron Von Bucli speaks 
of the paper and its author in high terms, placing him as a navigator 
in the same rank with Hudson, Dampier and Cook. 
In 1815 he was less successful as a whaler, but he records in his 
journal that God was beginning to call him by the voice of his Provi- 
dence to other work. 1815 and 181G saw considerable progress with 
his "Account of the Arctic Regions," which was published in 1820, 
and received with marked approval by competent judges both in 
England and on the Continent. This must ever remain one of the 
most interesting and valuable of his books. 
In 1817 he had attained a position of great eminence in the 
scientific wwld. On the subject of the North Seas his word was 
law. It is perhaps not too much to say that out of suggestions made 
by him to Sir Joseph Banks, the new interest in Arctic discovery was 
awakened, which afterwards took visible form in the expeditions of 
Ross and his adventurous successors to the regions of the Pole. 
