HAVE YOU MET—

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22419, 4 June 1938, Page 19

HAVE YOU MET—

William Scoresby ? , We hear much about the North Pole in these days, but we do not hear a great deal of brave William Scoresby—though a British whaling research ship is named after him. He was known as the North Pole Man in his day, and well he deserved the title. Bom in Yorkshire in 1760, he lived 69 strenuous years, a giant of a man, more than six feet in his bare feet, and of extraordinary muscular strength. He was not a Polar explorer in any official sense. His work was simply to hunt whales in the Greenland whaling grounds, and to ply a dangerous task among grey seas and towering bergs. But he was never content merely to catch whales. He must always be exploring a few miles of sea or coast, or pushing boldly north. For 30 years he never missed a season in the north. He sailed his ship from Whitby, and proved himself the finest seaman in Europe, a bom navigator, and as intrepid as any man alive. In 1806, for instance, he pushed his ship, the Resolution, farther north than any ship had ever been before, gaining latitude 81 degrees, and some distance beyond, a point not passed by any other ship for years. No whaler ever took back so many whales as he, and yet, unlike all his competitors, he would never catch whales on Sunday. It is said he made a fortune of more than £90,000. He invented the ice-drill. He would sometimes remain at his post on deck for days and nights at a time, and his name was an honoured word in the merchant service . . . “Scoresby! He’s done it again! Twenty-four whales, two seals, and two bears, and a couple of walruses! And all in 32 days!” There was never a whaler like William Scoresby.