Francis Crozier

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Francis Crozier as captain of the HMS Terror

Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (born August 16, 1796 in Banbridge , County Down , Ireland ; † winter 1848 near King William Island , Canada ) was an Irish-born officer in the British Royal Navy who participated in several expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic was involved. He probably died in the Canadian Arctic around King William Island in the winter of 1848 in a desperate attempt to lead the last survivors of the Franklin expedition south to the Back River .

Life

He was born in 1796 in Banbridge , Northern Ireland, the fifth son of the wealthy legal scholar George Crozier . At the age of 13 he volunteered for service in the Royal Navy and served on the HMS Hamadryad from June 1810 . His naval career quickly led him to the HMS Meander and the Queen Charlotte , until he finally sailed in 1812 on the HMS Briton with the rank of midshipman in the Pacific . On the island of Pitcairn in 1814 he came into contact with the descendants of the Bounty mutiny .

Finally, in 1817, at the age of just under 21, he passed the examination for his officer's license and went on the Dottrell to the Cape of Good Hope with the rank of mate (awarded by the respective captain of the ship at his own discretion) . After his return in 1820 he met Captain William Edward Parry , who was planning his second attempt to discover and sail through the legendary Northwest Passage with the ships Fury and Hecla .

Crozier took part in this expedition in 1821 as a midshipman on Parry's ship Fury , where he also met his future close friend James Clark Ross , who also served here as a midshipman. The expedition led Crozier to the area of ​​the Melville Peninsula and brought him into contact for the first time with the natives of the northern polar regions, the Inuit . The first experience of wintering in a ship enclosed by the ice also happened here. Both Crozier and Ross also took part in Parry's third expedition in 1824, which ended with the loss of the Fury at Somerset Island . His duties included monitoring the magnetic experiments and astronomical investigations that such an expedition had to carry out. Crozier was promoted to sub-lieutenant for his services and was accepted into the Royal Astronomical Society .

He served from 1831 on the HMS Stag off Portugal. When in 1835 his friend James Clark Ross was entrusted with the command of a rescue expedition for missing whaling boats in the Arctic Ocean, Crozier, now promoted to the rank of lieutenant , took over the post of second highest officer on HMS Cove . The whalers were rescued and Crozier was promoted to lieutenant captain on his return . He gained the reputation of an impeccable and capable seaman who, as a simple Irish citizen , should enable him to have a good career in the Royal Navy despite much resentment on the part of the predominantly British and aristocratic Admiralty.

In 1839 Crozier took part again as the second highest officer on a four-year Antarctic expedition under the direction of James Clark Ross. The expedition, consisting of the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror , the latter under Crozier's command, arrived in August 1840 in Hobart , the capital of the British colony of Van Diemens Land - today's Tasmania . He was welcomed here by the governor of the colony, Sir John Franklin , who himself had also commanded several expeditions to the Arctic, and soon fell in love with his niece, Sophia Cracroft . Although she did not give in to his marriage proposals twice, the two stayed in close contact until the end.

The expedition was known as a great success, the ships penetrated further south into the pack ice of Antarctica than any human before them (up to 78 ° 10 'south latitude), were the first to reach the magnetic south pole and map a large area. In addition, there was not a single loss of team members to complain about. Crozier was promoted to captain during the expedition and even found himself elevated to the rank of post captain on his return, and in 1843 accepted into the Royal Society .

The last expedition

Motivated by this success, the public pressure on the Admiralty to finally force the discovery and crossing of the Northwest Passage increased. The two ships Erebus and Terror were additionally reinforced for this purpose and provided with additional engines in the form of slightly converted steam locomotives that powered a removable propeller . The 59-year-old John Franklin was in command of the expedition; Crozier, who was probably rejected as a candidate for leadership of the expedition only because he could not quite correspond to the ideas of the Admiralty in terms of social status, took over again as the second highest officer of the expedition in command of the terror . It was the second time that the ships overwintered by the ice and suffered several loss of life when Sir John Franklin died in the summer of 1847 from an unknown cause. Crozier took command of the expedition according to the military hierarchy. When supplies were running out after the winter of 1847/48, Crozier ordered in the spring of 1848 to abandon the ships still enclosed by the ice and tried to lead the remaining crew south. Little by little, all remaining expedition participants died of the effects of cold, extreme physical exhaustion, lack of food and especially vitamin C , and probably also from symptoms of poisoning due to a proven very high proportion of lead in the cans .

A huge search for the missing expedition began in 1848, James Clark Ross was entrusted with the management of a search expedition, and Sophia Cracroft - just like Lady Franklin  - made great efforts to equip and send out more and more expedition ships. After it became increasingly clear in the following 10 years that the expedition must have come to a fatal end, a last expedition financed by Lady Franklin led by Francis Leopold McClintock in 1859 brought the final certainty: They found several bodies on King William Island as well as a note signed by Crozier and James Fitzjames, the commander of the Erebus , which documented the fate of the expedition until it left the ships.

Honors

His memorial in Banbridge (Ireland)

A large number of geographical features are named after Crozier : Cape Crozier on the east side of Ross Island in Antarctica, Cape Crozier on the west side of King William Island, and Cape Crozier at the western entrance of the "Mercy Bay" on Banks Island , in which the HMS Investigator under Robert McClure , who was later celebrated as the actual discoverer of the Northwest Passage, spent two hard winters. The Crozier Strait between Cornwallis Island and Bathurst Island is also named after him, as is the Crozier River, which can be found near the Fury and Hecla Straits . On Spitsbergen is Crozier Point, north of Banks Island is the Crozier channel. The Crozier Island in the Kennedy Channel bears his name, as does the lunar craters Crozier . The Mont Crozier on the Île Kerguelen is probably also named after him.

Today he is the most honored captain in Royal Navy history.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ According to recent research, the date of birth August 16 is more likely than September 17, which is often found in older literature. See: RJ Campbell: The date of birth of Captain FRM Crozier RN . In: Polar Record 45, 2009, pp. 83-84

Web links

Commons : Francis Crozier  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Crozier, Francis
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Crozier, Francis Rawdon Moira
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naval officer and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH August 16, 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Banbridge , Co. Down, Kingdom of Ireland
DATE OF DEATH 1848
Place of death Canadian Arctic at King William Island