[top] A Sledge Dog of the Arctic Highlander of Lat. 77. N. [bottom] Head of a White Bear.
Creator 1:
A.M. Skene
Creator 1 role:
Drawn by
Place image published:
London
Image publisher:
Iohn Murray, Albemarle Street
Image date:
1819
Image function:
plate; following p. 198
Technique:
etching, aquatint, hand coloring
Image dimension height:
11.2 cm.
Image dimension width:
17.6 cm.
Page dimension height:
26.6 cm.
Page dimension width:
20.3 cm.
Materials medium:
ink, colors
Materials support:
paper
Languages:
English
Description:
[top] Sled dog. [bottom] Head of a polar bear.
Source creator:
Ross, John, Sir, 1777-1856
Source Title:
A voyage of discovery, made under the orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty's ships Isabella and Alexander, for the purpose of exploring Baffin's Bay, and inquiring into the probability of a north-west passage.
Source place of publication:
London
Source publisher:
John Murray, Albemarle-Street
Source date:
1819
notes:
The polar bear is Ursus maritimus. The dog may be related to the breed Canadian Eskimo Dog or Canadian Inuit Dog known in Inuit as the Qimmiq (dog), although that breed is now black and white, not brown as shown here. Skene was the Admiralty Midshipman.Sir John Ross joined the Royal Navy at the age of nine. In 1818 he was appointed commander of an expedition sponsored by the British Admiralty to find a northwest passage. The ships were the Isabella and the Alexander (commanded by William Parry), specially fitted out to withstand Arctic exploration and to make wintering over in the Arctic possible. His mission was to find a passage, note the tides, currents, ice conditions, effects of magnetism, and to collect specimens. Ross experienced mirages in the form of mountains that made him turn back quite early in the exploration. He made two more trips to the Arctic: one in 1829 during which he found the magnetic north pole and spent four years in the Arctic while losing only three men, and one in 1850 when he was 72 to try to find the party of Sir John Franklin.
