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
Allmon, Warren D.
Branagan, D. F.
Cioppi, Elisabetta
Cohen, Claudine
Cunningham, Michael Doucette
Davenport, J.
Journals
Archives of Natural History
Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society
Endeavour: Review of the Progress of Science
História, Ciências, Saúde---Manguinhos
Historical Records of Australian Science
Polar Record
Publishers
Geological Society of America
British Society for the History of Science
Éditions du Seuil
Natural History Museum
Princeton University Press
University of Connecticut
Concepts
Natural history
Geology
Fossils
Scientific expeditions
Specimens
Travel; exploration
People
Ross, James Clark
McCormick, Robert M.
Wilkes, Charles
Clark, William
Darwin, Charles Robert
Digby, Bassett
Time Periods
19th century
18th century
20th century
20th century, early
21st century
17th century
Places
Great Britain
Italy
Australia
Polar regions
United States
Antarctica
Institutions
Natural History Museum (London, England)
British Museum. Natural History
Università di Pavia
United States Exploring Expedition (1838-1842)
British Museum
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