Irish naval officer and polar explorer (1796?1848?)
Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier
FRS
FRAS
(
; 17 October 1796 ? disappeared 26 April 1848) was an Irish officer of the
Royal Navy
and polar explorer who participated in six expeditions to the
Arctic
and
Antarctic
. In 1843, he became a Fellow of the
Royal Society
for his scientific work during his multiple expeditions.
[1]
Later, he was second-in-command to
Sir John Franklin
and captain of
HMS
Terror
during the
Franklin expedition
to discover the
Northwest Passage
, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
Multiple places in the Arctic and Antarctic are named after him.
[2]
He, alongside
James Clark Ross
and
Richard Moody
, was also responsible for selecting the location of the capital of the
Falkland Islands
,
Port Stanley
, in 1843.
[3]
Early life
[
edit
]
Francis Crozier was born in
Banbridge
,
County Down
, in
Ulster
, the northern
province
in
Ireland
. He was the eleventh of thirteen children, and the fifth son of solicitor George Crozier, who named him after his friend
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.
[4]
Naval service
[
edit
]
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.
[4]
[5]
Ross expedition
[
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]
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
.
[6]
[7]
Crozier was elected a Fellow of the
Royal Society
in 1843, in recognition of his outstanding work on magnetism.
[8]
Franklin expedition
[
edit
]
In 1845, Crozier joined
Captain
Sir John Franklin
as captain of the
Terror
on the
Franklin expedition
to traverse the last unnavigated section of the
Northwest Passage
. Crozier himself was offered the command of the expedition, but, with "characteristic modesty", he deferred to Franklin.
[9]
After Franklin's death in June 1847, Crozier took over. His fate and those of the other expedition members remained a mystery until 1859, when a note written by Crozier and
James Fitzjames
, captain of the
Erebus
, was discovered on
King William Island
during an expedition led by
Francis McClintock
. Dated 25 April 1848, the note indicated that the ships?stuck in thick pack ice?had been abandoned. Nine officers, including Sir John Franklin, and 15 crewmen had died. Also stated was their intention, on 26 April, to set out on foot for
Back's Great Fish River
on the Canadian mainland.
[10]
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
.
[11]
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
[
edit
]
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.
[12]
[13]
The expedition located one of Franklin's ships, preserved in reasonably good condition.
[14]
[15]
The wreck lies at the bottom of the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, west of
O'Reilly Island
[16]
and has been confirmed to be that of
Erebus
.
[17]
In 2016, a well-preserved ship matching
Terror
'
s description was located in
Terror Bay
, off the southern coast of King William Island.
[18]
The exploration of the wrecks continues.
Legacy
[
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]
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
.
[19]
A memorial to
Sir John Franklin
and his men was erected by order of Parliament in 1858, in the
Painted Hall
of London's
Greenwich Hospital
. It was moved 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.
[20]
[21]
Namesake
[
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]
Geographical features named after Crozier include:
- Cape Crozier
on the eastern side of
Ross Island
, Antarctica
- Cape Crozier on the western flank of
King William Island
, in the Canadian Arctic
- Cape Crozier at the western entrance of the Bay of Mercy on
Banks Island
, in the Canadian Arctic
- Crozier Strait
which lies between
Cornwallis
and
Bathurst Islands
, in the Canadian Arctic
- Crozier River, near
Fury and Hecla Strait
in the Canadian Arctic
- Crozier Point on
Spitsbergen
, in the Arctic north of Norway
- Crozier Channel
, to the north of Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic
- Crozier Island
in the
Kennedy Channel
, between Greenland and
Ellesmere Island
- The lunar crater
Crozier
, located at 13.5° S, 50.8° E on the Moon's near side
- Crozier Place, a street in Stanley,
Falkland Islands
- The hydrographic survey vessel
HMS Crozier
was named after him in 1919
- Francis Street in the suburb of
Keilor Park
in
Melbourne
,
Australia
- Mount Crozier
, a mountain in the French Kerguelen Islands
In popular culture
[
edit
]
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
.
[22]
References
[
edit
]
- ^
Smith, Michael (2021).
Icebound In The Arctic: The Mystery of Captain Francis Crozier and the Franklin Expedition
. The O'Brien Press
. Retrieved
30 April
2024
.
- ^
Smith, Michael (2021).
Icebound In The Arctic: The Mystery of Captain Francis Crozier and the Franklin Expedition
. The O'Brien Press
. Retrieved
30 April
2024
.
- ^
Smith, Michael (2021).
Icebound In The Arctic: The Mystery of Captain Francis Crozier and the Franklin Expedition
. The O'Brien Press
. Retrieved
30 April
2024
.
- ^
a
b
Smith, M. (2006).
Captain Francis Crozier ? Last Man Standing
. Collins Press.
ISBN
1905172095
.
- ^
Smith, M. (2010).
Great Endeavour ? Ireland's Antarctic Explorers
. Collins Press.
ISBN
9781848890237
.
- ^
Paine, L. P. (2000).
Ships of Discovery and Exploration
.
Houghton Mifflin
. pp. 139?140.
ISBN
0395984157
.
- ^
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.
- ^
"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
.
- ^
"Crozier, Francis Rawdon Moira".
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
(online ed.). Oxford University Press.
doi
:
10.1093/ref:odnb/6840
.
(Subscription or
UK public library membership
required.)
- ^
Savours, A. (1999).
The Search for the North West Passage
. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp.
291?293
.
ISBN
0312223722
.
- ^
Woodman, D. C. (1992).
Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony
. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press. p. 317.
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.
- ^
"Victoria Strait Expedition"
.
pc.gc.ca
. Archived from
the original
on 4 October 2015.
- ^
"Franklin expedition ship pieces believed discovered in Arctic"
.
CBC
. Retrieved
9 September
2014
.
- ^
"British ship lost in the arctic 170 years ago found"
.
Daily Motion
. 9 September 2014.
- ^
"Lost Franklin expedition ship found in the Arctic"
.
CBC
. 9 September 2014
. Retrieved
9 September
2014
.
- ^
Chase, S. (9 September 2014).
"Finding of Franklin ship fuels Harper's new nationalism"
.
The Globe and Mail
. Ottawa
. Retrieved
10 September
2014
.
- ^
"HMS
Eribus
"
.
pc.gc.ca
. Archived from
the original
on 24 September 2015.
- ^
Watson, P. (12 September 2016).
"Ship found in Arctic 168 years after doomed Northwest Passage attempt"
.
The Guardian
. Retrieved
12 September
2016
.
- ^
"Polar First Proves Great Ice-breaker",
Banbridge Courier
, 23 January 2008.
- ^
"Online review of recent Service of Thanksgiving"
. Archived from
the original
on 6 March 2012
. Retrieved
31 July
2010
.
- ^
Online blog of Service of Thanksgiving
- ^
Andreeva, N. (2 March 2016).
"AMC Orders 'The Terror' Anthology Drama Series From Scott Free"
.
Deadline
. Retrieved
13 September
2016
.
External links
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