Article ID: CBB617839298

Robert McCormick and the circumstances of his Arctic fossil collection, 1852–1853 (2020)

unapi

The Royal Navy surgeon Robert McCormick (1800–1890) took part in three mid-nineteenth century British Polar expeditions, two to the Arctic and one to the Antarctic. Of the two Arctic voyages, the first was to Spitsbergen (in today's Svalbard) in 1827; the second from 1852 to 1853, was one of the expeditions dispatched to search for the missing ships commanded by Sir John Franklin that had set out in 1845 to navigate a “Northwest Passage” through the islands of the Canadian Arctic. The Svalbard expedition was formative in developing McCormick's interest in the Polar regions, with the likely highlight of his career being his subsequent participation in the Antarctic expedition of 1839–1843 led by James Clark Ross. Throughout these expeditions, McCormick collected natural history specimens, principally in the fields of ornithology and geology. Many of the geological specimens he retained in a personal collection which passed to what is now the Natural History Museum, London, on his death in 1890. This collection includes rock specimens from Svalbard and Baffin Bay, and a substantial number of Silurian fossils (mostly brachiopods) from Beechey Island and Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic. The fossil collection was the largest of several assembled during the successive expeditions sent out in search of Franklin, but is one of those that has received no subsequent attention. That omission was largely due to McCormick's own scientific shortcomings and persisted despite his determined efforts to promote himself as a serious scientific naturalist and Arctic authority.

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Authors & Contributors
Viney, Mike
Peter Wigley
Rumsey, Mike
Jim Mills
Cheney, Sharon
Halley, Matthew R.
Concepts
Scientific expeditions
Natural history
Specimens
Travel; exploration
Geology
Fossils
Time Periods
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
20th century
21st century
Places
Polar regions
United States
Great Britain
Antarctica
Italy
Australia
Institutions
Natural History Museum (London, England)
British Museum
United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
British Museum. Natural History
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