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

Philip Stone

doi:10.3366/anh.2020.0655

Abstract

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.

Highlights

The early nineteenth century saw a resurgence of British interest in Arctic exploration, with a succession of Royal Navy ships dispatched from 1818 onwards in search of an anticipated “Northwest Passage” between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans
This paper acknowledges a few members of that labour force and considers the Arctic fossil collection of surgeon Robert McCormick (1800–1890)
The principal focus of British Arctic exploration changed dramatically following the disappearance of the expedition led by Sir John Franklin (1786–1847), with HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which had left Britain in 1845

Summary

INTRODUCTION

The early nineteenth century saw a resurgence of British interest in Arctic exploration, with a succession of Royal Navy ships dispatched from 1818 onwards in search of an anticipated “Northwest Passage” between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Belcher’s expedition returned with a small number of fossils from Beechey Island that had been collected by another naval surgeon, Alexander Armstrong (1818– 1899) He had served aboard HMS Investigator which, searching for the lost Franklin expedition, had entered Arctic waters from the west, via Bering Strait, in 1850. Therein, McCormick took the opportunity to reiterate his claim to the Kerguelen discovery in opposition to the counter claim by his Assistant Surgeon at the time, Joseph Hooker, whom he does not mention; this was a long-running dispute (Stone 2020) Another lost collection most probably lies in the wreck of HMS Erebus, one of Franklin’s ill-fated ships whose disappearance had prompted the missions with which McCormick, Sutherland and colleagues were involved.. Should Goodsir’s fossil collection be recovered it would make an emotive final contribution to the palaeontological work of Royal Navy surgeons during nineteenth-century Arctic exploration

A TAXONOMIC EPILOGUE

WCL MS 3358