William Scoresby (5 October 178921 March 1857), known as "William Scoresby Junior" to distinguish him from his father, was an English whaler, Arctic explorer, scientist and clergyman.

Early years

Scoresby was born in the village of Cropton near Pickering south-west of Whitby in Yorkshire. His father, William Scoresby (1760–1829), made a fortune in the Arctic whale fishery and was also the inventor of the barrel crow's nest. The son made his first voyage with his father at the age of eleven, but then returned to school, where he remained until 1803.

After this he became his father's constant companion, and accompanied him as chief officer of the whaler Resolution when on 25 May 1806, he succeeded in reaching 81°30' N. lat. (19° E. long), for twenty-one years the highest northern latitude attained in the eastern hemisphere. During the following winter, Scoresby attended the natural philosophy and chemistry classes at the University of Edinburgh, and again in 1809.

In 1819, Scoresby was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. His proposers were Robert Jameson, John Playfair and Sir G S Mackenzie. About the same time he communicated a paper to the Royal Society of London: "On the Anomaly in the Variation of the Magnetic Needle". In 1820, he published An Account of the Arctic Regions and Northern Whale Fishery, in which he gathers up the results of his own observations, as well as those of previous navigators.

In his voyage of 1822 to Greenland, Scoresby surveyed and charted with remarkable accuracy 400 miles of the east coast, between 69° 30' and 72° 30', thus contributing to the first real and important geographic knowledge of East Greenland. This, however, proved to be the last of his Arctic voyages. On his return, he learnt of his wife's death, and this event, with other influences acting upon his naturally pious spirit, decided him to enter the church.

From the first, Scoresby worked as an active member and official of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and he contributed especially to the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism. Of his sixty papers in the Royal Society list, many relate to this department of research. However, his observations extended into many other departments, including researches on optics

To obtain additional data for his theories on magnetism, he made a voyage to Australia in 1856 on board the ill-fated iron-hulled Royal Charter, the results of which appeared in a posthumous publication: Journal of a Voyage to Australia for Magnetical Research, edited by Archibald Smith (1859). He made two visits to America, in 1844 and 1848; on his return home from the latter visit he made observations on the height of Atlantic waves, the results of which were given to the British Association. He interested himself much in social questions, especially the improvement of the condition of factory operatives.

enrolling under the ten-year divinity statute and thus becoming a ten-year man, and also became the curate of Bessingby, Yorkshire. In 1834 he received his bachelor's degree in divinity (BD) from Cambridge University, and in 1839, was awarded an honorary doctorate, Doctor of Divinity (DD). The appointment to Bradford had been in the hands of the Simeon Trust, since Charles Simeon's death in 1836. His predecessor Henry Heap (died 1839), had let the administration slide. There were 13 Bradford curates, counting incumbent perpetual curates, who included Patrick Brontë and William Morgan (1782–1858). There were new churches, such as St James's built by John Wood, and one at Wibsey under construction by the Hardy family, ironmasters.

Scoresby addressed matters in hand, but succeeded only in generating contentious issues. On finance, he took on Wood in 1840, over surplice fees in his new church, and was opposed by Wood's "factory movement" allies and others. St James's was closed for a period, and Wood moved away to the south. Scoresby believed in smaller catchment districts for churches;

He is also memorialised on the family grave in Whitby.

His sister Arabella Scoresby was mother to the physician Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson FRSE.

Legacy

A number of places have been named after him, including:

  • the Lunar crater Scoresby
  • Scoresbysund, now Ittoqqortoormiit on the east coast of Greenland
  • the Scoresby Sund fjord system
  • the Melbourne suburb of Scoresby, Victoria in Australia, which is 25 km southeast of the CBD
  • RRS William Scoresby, an early-twentieth-century research vessel in the employ of the British scientific organisation, Discovery Investigations;
  • William Scoresby Bay and the William Scoresby Archipelago, off the Antarctic coast, are named after RRS William Scoresby.
  • Scoresby Land in Greenland
  • Cape Scoresby (66°34′S 162°45′E / 66.567°S 162.75°E / -66.567; 162.75), bluff marking the north end of Borradaile Island.
  • Scoresbyøya, which means Scoresby Island in English. A small island of 6&nbsp;km<sup>2</sup>, north of Nordaustlandet, Svalbard, Norway.

References in media

Herman Melville's main character Ishmael quotes Scoresby in the Cetology chapter of Moby-Dick: "'No branch of Zoology is so much involved as that which is entitled Cetology,' says Captain Scoresby, A.D. 1820."

Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy features a character named Lee Scoresby, an intrepid explorer, old Arctic hand, and balloon aeronaut. Pullman has stated that the character was named after William Scoresby and Lee Van Cleef.

Scoresby is named in H. P. Lovecraft's science fiction-horror novella At the Mountains of Madness, as having observed and drawn "some of the wilder forms" of arctic mirages.

In James Cameron's Avatar series, the captain of the fleet of marine vessels hunting the whale-like Tulkun species is named Mick Scoresby.

References

Further reading

  • Life by his nephew, Robert Edmund Scoresby-Jackson (1861).