Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier (; 17 October 1796 – disappeared 26 April 1848) was an Irish officer of the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

and polar explorer who participated in six expeditions to the

Arctic The Arctic (; . ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the North Pole, lying within the Arctic Circle. The Arctic region, from the IERS Reference Meridian travelling east, consists of parts of northern Norway ( ...

and

Antarctic The Antarctic (, ; commonly ) is the polar regions of Earth, polar region of Earth that surrounds the South Pole, lying within the Antarctic Circle. It is antipodes, diametrically opposite of the Arctic region around the North Pole. The Antar ...

. In 1843, he became a Fellow of the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

for his scientific work during his expeditions. Later, he was second-in-command to

Sir John Franklin Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer and colonial administrator. After serving in the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and thro ...

and captain of during what would become

Franklin's lost expedition Franklin's lost expedition was a failed British voyage of Arctic exploration led by Captain Sir John Franklin that departed England in 1845 aboard two ships, and , and was assigned to traverse the last unnavigated sections of the Northwest ...

, to discover the

Northwest Passage The Northwest Passage (NWP) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean, near the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The eastern route along the Arctic ...

in the

Canadian Arctic Northern Canada (), colloquially the North or the Territories, is the vast northernmost region of Canada, variously defined by geography and politics. Politically, the term refers to the three territories of Canada: Yukon, Northwest Territories a ...

, ending with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances. Many places in the Arctic and Antarctic are named after him. He, with

James Clark Ross Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862) was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer of both the northern and southern polar regions. In the Arctic, he participated in two expeditions led by his uncle, Sir John Ross, John ...

and

Richard Moody Major-General Richard Clement Moody (13 February 1813 – 31 March 1887) was a British Governor and Commander of the Royal Engineers. He was the founder and the first Lieutenant-Governor of British Columbia; and was Commanding Executive ...

, was also responsible for selecting the location of the capital of the

Falkland Islands The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...

Port Stanley Stanley (also known as Port Stanley) is the capital city of the Falkland Islands. It is located on the island of East Falkland, on a north-facing slope in one of the wettest parts of the islands. At the 2016 census, the city had a population o ...

, in 1843.

Early life

Francis Crozier was born in

Banbridge Banbridge ( ) is a town in County Down, Northern Ireland. It lies on the River Bann and the A1 road and is named after a bridge built over the Bann in 1712. It is in the civil parish of Seapatrick and the historic barony of Iveagh Upper ...

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 552,261. It borders County Antrim to the ...

, in

Ulster Ulster (; or ; or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional or historic provinces of Ireland, Irish provinces. It is made up of nine Counties of Ireland, counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); t ...

, the northern

province A province is an administrative division within a country or sovereign state, state. The term derives from the ancient Roman , which was the major territorial and administrative unit of the Roman Empire, Roman Empire's territorial possessions ou ...

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

. He was the eleventh of thirteen children, and the fifth son of solicitor George Crozier, who named him after his friend Francis Rawdon-Hastings, 2nd Earl of Moira. Crozier attended school locally in Banbridge, with his brothers William and Thomas, and lived with his family in Avonmore House which his father had built in 1792, in the centre of Banbridge.

Naval service

At the age of 13, Crozier volunteered for the

and joined HMS ''Hamadryad'' in June 1810. In 1812, he served on and visited Pitcairn Island in 1814, where he met the last surviving mutineers from . In 1817, he received his certificate as mate; in 1818, he served on during a trip to the

Cape of Good Hope The Cape of Good Hope ( ) is a rocky headland on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula in South Africa. A List of common misconceptions#Geography, common misconception is that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Afri ...

. Crozier joined Captain William Parry's second

expedition to traverse the

in 1821. He served as midshipman on Parry's , which was accompanied by Captain Lyon's . He returned to the North with Parry a second time in 1824, this time on ''Hecla''. The journey resulted in the sinking of ''Fury'' off Somerset Island. Crozier was promoted to lieutenant in 1826, and a year later, he once more joined Parry in his attempt to reach the

North Pole The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is the point in the Northern Hemisphere where the Earth's rotation, Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface. It is called the True North Pole to distingu ...

; ultimately a futile endeavour. During his voyages, Crozier became a close friend and confidant of the explorer

. He was elected to become a Fellow of the

Royal Astronomical Society The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) is a learned society and charitable organisation, charity that encourages and promotes the study of astronomy, planetary science, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. Its ...

in 1827, after conducting valuable astronomical and magnetic studies on his three expeditions with Parry. He was appointed to the frigate in 1831, and served off the coast of Portugal during the

Liberal Wars The Liberal Wars (), also known as the Portuguese Civil War () and the War of the Two Brothers () was a civil war in Portugal that lasted from May 1828 to May 1834, fought between liberal progressive constitutionalists (led by former King P ...

, the country's civil war. Crozier joined Clark Ross as second-in-command of HMS ''Cove'' in 1835, to assist in the search for 12 lost British whaling ships in the Arctic. Crozier was appointed to the rank of commander in 1837.

Ross expedition

HMS Erebus and Terror in the Antarctic by John Wilson Carmichael

In 1839, Crozier again joined

on the

Ross expedition The Ross expedition was a voyage of scientific exploration of the Antarctic in 1839 to 1843, led by James Clark Ross, with two unusually strong warships, HMS Erebus (1826), HMS ''Erebus'' and HMS Terror (1813), HMS ''Terror''. It explored what i ...

, as second-in-command of a four-year voyage to explore the Antarctic continent in the ships and . Crozier commanded ''Terror'', and was appointed to the rank of captain in 1841. ''Erebus'' and ''Terror'' returned in 1843, having made the most significant penetration of the Antarctic pack ice and discovered large parts of the continent—including the

Ross Sea The Ross Sea is a deep bay of the Southern Ocean in Antarctica, between Victoria Land and Marie Byrd Land and within the Ross Embayment, and is the southernmost sea on Earth. It derives its name from the British explorer James Clark Ross who ...

and

Ross Island Ross Island is an island in Antarctica lying on the east side of McMurdo Sound and extending from Cape Bird in the north to Cape Armitage in the south, and a similar distance from Cape Royds in the west to Cape Crozier in the east. The isl ...

Mount Erebus Mount Erebus () is the southernmost active volcano on Earth, located on Ross Island in the Ross Dependency in Antarctica. With a summit elevation of , it is the second most prominent mountain in Antarctica (after Mount Vinson) and the second ...

and the

Ross Ice Shelf The Ross Ice Shelf is the largest ice shelf of Antarctica (, an area of roughly and about across: about the size of France). It is several hundred metres thick. The nearly vertical ice front to the open sea is more than long, and between high ...

. Crozier was elected a Fellow of the

in 1843, in recognition of his outstanding work on magnetism.

Franklin expedition

In 1845, Crozier joined

Captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader or highest rank officer of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police depa ...

as captain of the on the Franklin expedition to traverse the last unnavigated section of the

. Crozier himself was offered the command of the expedition, but, with "characteristic modesty", he deferred to Franklin. After Franklin's death in June 1847, Crozier took over. His fate and those of the other expedition members remained a mystery until 1859, when a note written by Crozier and James Fitzjames, captain of the ''Erebus'', was discovered on

King William Island King William Island (, ; previously: King William Land) is an island in the Kitikmeot Region of Nunavut, which is part of the Arctic Archipelago. In area it is between and making it the list of islands by area, 61st-largest island in the world ...

during an expedition led by Francis McClintock. Dated 25 April 1848, the note indicated that the ships—stuck in thick pack ice—had been abandoned. Nine officers, including Sir John Franklin, and 15 crewmen had died. Also stated was their intention, on 26 April, to set out on foot for Back's Great Fish River on the Canadian mainland.

Inuit Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwe ...

rumours collected between 1852 and 1858 indicate that Crozier and one other expedition member might have been seen in the Baker Lake area, about to the south, where, in 1948,

Farley Mowat Farley McGill Mowat, (May 12, 1921 – May 6, 2014) was a Canadian writer and environmentalist. His works were translated into 52 languages, and he sold more than 17 million books. He achieved fame with the publication of his books on the Ca ...

found "a very ancient cairn, not of normal Eskimo construction", inside which were fragments of a hardwood box with

dovetail joint A dovetail joint or simply dovetail is a joinery technique most commonly used in woodworking joinery (carpentry), including furniture, cabinets, log buildings, and traditional timber framing. Noted for its resistance to being pulled apart, a ...

s. McClintock and later searchers found relics, graves and human remains of the Franklin crew on Beechey Island, King William Island and the northern coast of the Canadian mainland.

Ships' location

In 2014, the Victoria Strait Expedition found two items on Hat Island, in the Queen Maud Gulf, near

; part of a boat-launching

davit Boat suspended from Welin Quadrant davits; the boat is mechanically 'swung out' Gravity multi-pivot on Scandinavia'' file:Bossoir a gravité.jpg, Gravity Roller Davit file:Davits-starbrd.png, Gravity multi-pivot davit holding rescue vessel on ...

bearing the stamps of two Royal Navy broad arrows, and a wooden object, possibly a plug for a deck hawse, the iron pipe through which the ship's chain cable would descend into the chain locker below. The expedition located one of Franklin's ships, preserved in reasonably good condition. The wreck lies at the bottom of the eastern portion of Queen Maud Gulf, west of O'Reilly Island and has been confirmed to be that of ''Erebus''. In 2016, a well-preserved ship matching ''Terror''s description was located in Terror Bay, off the southern coast of King William Island. The exploration of the wrecks continues.

Legacy

In January 2008, Crozier's home town of Banbridge hosted a memorial event, which included a service of remembrance and thanksgiving at the Church of the Holy Trinity, which was attended by more than a hundred descendants of Crozier and other officers of Franklin's lost expedition and those who searched for it, along with the chairman of Banbridge Council, and several Arctic historians, including Michael Smith and Russell Potter. A memorial to

and his men was erected by order of Parliament in 1858, in the

Painted Hall The Old Royal Naval College are buildings that serve as the architectural centrepiece of Maritime Greenwich, a World Heritage Site in Greenwich, London, described by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) ...

of London's Greenwich Hospital. It was moved to Greenwich Royal Naval College's chapel in 1937, and was re-erected in the entrance of the former college in late 2009. At the service of thanksgiving on 29 October 2009, polar travellers and descendants of the expedition's crew celebrated their contributions.

Namesake

Geographical features named after Crozier include: *

Cape Crozier Cape Crozier () is the most easterly point of Ross Island in Antarctica. It was discovered in 1841 during James Clark Ross's polar expedition of 1839 to 1843 with HMS ''Erebus'' and HMS ''Terror'', and was named after Commander Francis Crozi ...

on the eastern side of

, Antarctica * Cape Crozier on the western flank of

, in the Canadian Arctic * Cape Crozier at the western entrance of the Bay of Mercy on

Banks Island Banks Island is one of the larger members of the Arctic Archipelago. Situated in the Inuvik Region, and part of the Inuvialuit Settlement Region, of the Northwest Territories, it is separated from Victoria Island to its east by the Prince of ...

, in the Canadian Arctic * Crozier Strait which lies between Cornwallis and Bathurst Islands, in the Canadian Arctic * Crozier River, near

Fury and Hecla Strait Fury and Hecla Strait is a narrow (from wide) Arctic seawater channel located in the Qikiqtaaluk Region of Nunavut, Canada. Geography Situated between Baffin Island to the north and the Melville Peninsula to the south, it connects Foxe Basin o ...

in the Canadian Arctic * Crozier Point on

Spitsbergen Spitsbergen (; formerly known as West Spitsbergen; Norwegian language, Norwegian: ''Vest Spitsbergen'' or ''Vestspitsbergen'' , also sometimes spelled Spitzbergen) is the largest and the only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipel ...

, in the Arctic north of Norway * Crozier Channel, to the north of Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic * Crozier Island in the

Kennedy Channel Kennedy Channel (; ; ) is an Arctic sea passage between Greenland and Canada's most northerly island, Ellesmere Island. It was named by Elisha Kane around 1854 during his second Arctic voyage in search of the lost Franklin expedition. It is no ...

, between Greenland and

Ellesmere Island Ellesmere Island (; ) is Canada's northernmost and List of Canadian islands by area, third largest island, and the List of islands by area, tenth largest in the world. It comprises an area of , slightly smaller than Great Britain, and the total ...

* The lunar crater

Crozier A crozier or crosier (also known as a paterissa, pastoral staff, or bishop's staff) is a stylized staff that is a symbol of the governing office of a bishop or abbot and is carried by high-ranking prelates of Roman Catholic, Eastern Catholi ...

, located at 13.5° S, 50.8° E on the Moon's near side * Crozier Place, a street in Stanley,

* The hydrographic survey vessel HMS Crozier was named after him in 1919 * Francis Street in the suburb of Keilor Park in

Melbourne Melbourne ( , ; Boonwurrung language, Boonwurrung/ or ) is the List of Australian capital cities, capital and List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Victori ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

* Mount Crozier, a mountain in the French Kerguelen Islands

In popular culture

Francis Crozier appears as a character and the primary narrator of the 2007 best-selling novel, ''The Terror'' by

Dan Simmons Dan Simmons (born April 4, 1948) is an American science fiction and horror writer. He is the author of the Hyperion Cantos and the Ilium/Olympos cycles, among other works that span the science fiction, horror, and fantasy genres, sometimes ...

, a fictionalized account of Franklin's lost expedition, as well as the 2018 television adaptation, where Crozier is portrayed by Jared Harris.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Crozier, Francis 19th-century Royal Navy personnel 1796 births 1840s deaths 1840s missing person cases Date of death unknown Royal Navy captains Fellows of the Royal Society Irish explorers of Antarctica Irish explorers of the Arctic Irish people of Norman descent Lost explorers People from Banbridge Recipients of the Polar Medal Franklin's lost expedition Military personnel from County Down Irish officers in the Royal Navy 19th-century Irish explorers