The scientific life of William Scoresby Jnr, with a catalogue of his instruments and apparatus in the Whitby Museum

Summary

William Scoresby Jnr (1789–1857) spent the first years of his working life as a whaler, and then became an ordained minister of the Church of England. His early writings on the environment of the Greenland Sea gained him a reputation as an Arctic scientist. In the later part of his life he turned to the investigation of magnetism as it concerned the ship's compass, trying to find the best form of needle, and how the compass was affected by the magnetism of the ship itself.

Though he lived in various parts of the country, Scoresby kept his attachment to Whitby and bequeathed his papers, books and apparatus to its Literary and Philosophical Society. In this catalogue the apparatus and material relics are related to published accounts of his work.

In the text, [S] numbers refer to Scoresby's publications and [C] numbers to the catalogue.