Francis Crozier

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For the artist, see
Francis Rossiter Crozier
.
Francis Crozier
Crozier in 1845
Born(1796-10-17)17 October 1796
Banbridge, County Down, Kingdom of Ireland
Disappeared
26 April 1848 (aged 51)
Franklin expedition

Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier

Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage
, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.

Early life

Francis Crozier was born in

Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira. Crozier attended school locally in Banbridge, with his brothers William and Thomas, and lived with his family in Avonmore House which his father had built in 1792, in the centre of Banbridge.[1]

Naval service

At the age of 13, Crozier volunteered for the Royal Navy and joined HMS Hamadryad in June 1810. In 1812, he served on HMS Briton and visited Pitcairn Island in 1814, where he met the last surviving mutineers from HMS Bounty. In 1817, he received his certificate as mate; in 1818, he served on HMS Doterel during a trip to the Cape of Good Hope.

Crozier joined Captain

William Parry's second Arctic expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1821. He served as midshipman on Parry's HMS Fury, which was accompanied by Captain Lyon's HMS Hecla. He returned to the North with Parry a second time in 1824, this time on Hecla. The journey resulted in the sinking of Fury off Somerset Island. Crozier was promoted to lieutenant in 1826, and a year later, he once more joined Parry in his attempt to reach the North Pole
; ultimately a futile endeavour.

During his voyages, Crozier became a close friend and confidant of the explorer James Clark Ross. He was elected to become a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 1827, after conducting valuable astronomical and magnetic studies on his three expeditions with Parry.

He was appointed to the frigate HMS Stag in 1831, and served off the coast of Portugal during the Liberal Wars, the country's civil war. Crozier joined Clark Ross as second-in-command of HMS Cove in 1835, to assist in the search for 12 lost British whaling ships in the Arctic. Crozier was appointed to the rank of commander in 1837.[1][2]

Ross expedition

Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic, by James Wilson Carmichael. National Maritime Museum, London.

In 1839, Crozier again joined James Clark Ross on the Ross expedition, as second-in-command of a four-year voyage to explore the Antarctic continent in the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Crozier commanded Terror, and was appointed to the rank of captain in 1841. Erebus and Terror returned in 1843, having made the most significant penetration of the Antarctic pack ice and discovered large parts of the continent—including the Ross Sea and Ross Island, Mount Erebus and the Ross Ice Shelf.[3][4]

Crozier was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1843, in recognition of his outstanding work on magnetism.[5]

Franklin expedition

Main article: Franklin's lost expedition

In 1845, Crozier joined

Back's Great Fish River on the Canadian mainland.[7]

Unverified Inuit reports collected between 1852 and 1858 indicate that Crozier and one other expedition member might have been seen in the Baker Lake area, about 400 kilometres (250 mi) to the south, where, in 1948, Farley Mowat found "a very ancient cairn, not of normal Eskimo construction," inside which were fragments of a hardwood box with dovetail joints.[8] McClintock and later searchers found relics, graves, and human remains of the Franklin crew on Beechey Island, King William Island, and the northern coast of the Canadian mainland.

Ships' location

In 2014, the Victoria Strait Expedition found two items on

Hat Island, in the Queen Maud Gulf, near King William Island; part of a boat-launching davit bearing the stamps of two Royal Navy broad arrows, and a wooden object, possibly a plug for a deck hawse, the iron pipe through which the ship's chain cable would descend into the chain locker below.[9][10] The expedition located one of Franklin's ships, preserved in reasonably good condition.[11][12] The wreck lies at the bottom of the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, west of O'Reilly Island[13] and has been confirmed to be that of Erebus.[14] In 2016, a well-preserved ship matching Terror's description was located in Terror Bay, off the southern coast of King William Island.[15]
The exploration of the wrecks continues.

Legacy

Francis Crozier monument in Banbridge, County Down, with polar bear supporters.

In January 2008, Crozier's home town of Banbridge hosted a memorial event, which included a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at the Church of the Holy Trinity, which was attended by more than a hundred descendants of Crozier and other officers of Franklin's lost expedition and those who searched for it, along with the chairman of Banbridge Council, and several Arctic historians, including Michael Smith and Russell Potter.[16]

Francis Crozier memorial inside Seapatrick Church, Banbridge

A memorial to

Greenwich Royal Naval College's chapel in 1937, and was re-erected in the entrance of the former college in late 2009. At the service of thanksgiving on 29 October 2009, polar travellers and descendants of the expedition's crew celebrated their contributions.[17][18]

Namesake

Geographical features named after Crozier include:

In popular culture

Francis Crozier appears as a character and the primary narrator of the 2007 best-selling novel, The Terror by Dan Simmons, a fictionalized account of Franklin's lost expedition, as well as the 2018 television adaptation, where Crozier is portrayed by Jared Harris.[19]

References

  1. ^
    ISBN 1905172095
    .
  2. ISBN 9781848890237
    .
  3. ISBN 0395984157
    .
  4. ^ Ross, J. R. (1847). A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions, During the Years 1839–43. Vol. 2. London: John Murray.
  5. ^ "List of Fellows of the Royal Society, 1660–2007" (PDF). The Royal Society. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 February 2016. Retrieved 8 June 2017.
  6. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/6840. (Subscription or UK public library membership
    required.)
  7. ISBN 0312223722
    .
  8. ISBN 0773509364
    . Note: Woodman was unable to track down the origin of these Inuit reports, and the builder and origins of the cairn found by Mowat are unknown.
  9. ^ "Victoria Strait Expedition". pc.gc.ca. Archived from the original on 4 October 2015.
  10. ^ "Franklin expedition ship pieces believed discovered in Arctic". CBC. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  11. ^ "British ship lost in the arctic 170 years ago found". Daily Motion. 9 September 2014.
  12. ^ "Lost Franklin expedition ship found in the Arctic". CBC. 9 September 2014. Retrieved 9 September 2014.
  13. ^ Chase, S. (9 September 2014). "Finding of Franklin ship fuels Harper's new nationalism". The Globe and Mail. Ottawa. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
  14. ^ "HMS Eribus". pc.gc.ca. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015.
  15. ^ Watson, P. (12 September 2016). "Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt". The Guardian. Retrieved 12 September 2016.
  16. ^ "Polar First Proves Great Ice-breaker", Banbridge Courier, 23 January 2008.
  17. ^ "Online review of recent Service of Thanksgiving". Archived from the original on 6 March 2012. Retrieved 31 July 2010.
  18. ^ Online blog of Service of Thanksgiving
  19. ^ Andreeva, N. (2 March 2016). "AMC Orders 'The Terror' Anthology Drama Series From Scott Free". Deadline. Retrieved 13 September 2016.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Francis Crozier.
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