Jean Rivard - University of British Columbia

Books in Review
us a compelling portrait of his grandfather
James Clark Ross, of James's uncle John,
and of the complex behind-the-scenes
machinations of the Admiralty, the political
in-fighting, and the often vicious struggle
for national and individual glory and wealth
that characterized and determined the
course of nineteenth-century exploration.
M.J. Ross tells his story in meticulous and
judicious detail, taking pains to present the
facts objectively. As a result, John Ross
(1777-1856) comes alive as a stern disciplinarian,
irascible and egotistical but skillful
and with what, in hindsight, we can see as
very advanced and sound ideas about how
to survive in the arctic (which he did for
four years from 1829 to 1832) and the potential
value of steam powered ships. That he
also antagonized almost everyone he met
and disparaged in print the claims and discoveries
of others (including his nephew)
should not blind us to the unfairness of the
vindictive attacks he suffered from John
Barrow, second secretary of the Admiralty
from 1804 to 1845, who wielded his considerable
power in the press and with the
Admiralty to discredit and exclude John
Ross. James Clark Ross (1800-62) emerges
as an altogether more noble and likeable
human being, a skilled navigator and gifted
scientist. He was also a moderate and modest
man who shrank from self-promotion,
public disputes, and self-aggrandizement.
Indeed, if any one man appears in three
dimensions here it is James and it is, finally,
James's rightful place in history that this
book establishes.
James accompanied his uncle on two arctic
expeditions, the most remarkable being
the second, which kept the ships "four years
in Boothia." It was on this voyage that James
located the magnetic north pole, detecting
that it moved even as he took his measurements.
The subsequent falling-out between
uncle and nephew resulted in John's taking
credit for the expedition and its discoveries.
In 1839-43 James Clark Ross commanded
an expedition to the antarctic, one of the
main goals of which was to determine the
precise location of the south magnetic pole.
This expedition, described in A Voyage of
Discovery and Research in the Southern and
Antarctic Region (1847) and in many ways
his crowning achievement, was a great success,
but at the time the arctic had a much
higher profile in the public imagination
and in the ambitions of many would-be
discovers of the Northwest Passage or the
lost Franklin, and James Clark Ross's
achievements went uncelebrated.
James did return to the arctic, one last
time, in command of the first official search
for Franklin in 1848-49. As M.J. Ross makes
clear, the decision to take this command
was complex; on the one hand, he had chosen
not to return to sea and was very happily
married; on the other, John Franklin
and Francis Crozier were dear personal
friends and Lady Franklin had appealed to
him personally as the best man for this
urgent search. As fate would have it, James
found no trace of the men or the ships Terror
and Erebus and he was forced to return to
England rather than risk the loss of more
lives from disease, poor provisioning, and
perilous ice conditions. Once home he
faced criticism for abandoning the search,
not least from his vociferous uncle John.
Polar Pioneers is certainly not about the
Franklin disaster, but the scramble to find
the Northwest Passage, the battle of competing
egos, the unedifying squabbling and
ad hominem attacks that characterize
British naval history of the period form the
unavoidable context for the lives of the two
Rosses. By deftly establishing that context
and narrating his story of two men inextricably
caught up in what all too often reads
like a plot of Jacobean proportions, M.J.
Ross has created a biography of the era, as
well as of the men. There is a large cast of
characters in this drama, all of them
famous for their exploits (Parry, Back,
Franklin, Beechey, Bellot, Rae and
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