SCORESBY, WILLIAM (5789-1857), English Arctic ex plorer, scientist and divine, was born near Whitby, Yorkshire, on Oct. 5, 1789. He made his first voyage with his father when he was eleven years of age, but on his return he was sent back to school till 1803. After this he was his father's constant com panion, and was with him on May 25, 1806, on the whaler "Resolution," when he reached 3o' N. lat. (19° E. long.). In 1811 his father resigned to him the command of the "Resolution." In his voyage of 1813 he established the fact that the tempera ture of the polar ocean is warmer at great depths than at the surface. In 1819 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In his voyage of 1822 to Greenland he surveyed and charted 400 m. of the east coast, between 69° 30' and 72° 3o'. This, however, was the last of his Arctic voyages. On his return his wife had died, and he entered the church. After two years at Cambridge he took his degree (1825) and was appointed to the curacy of Bassingby, Yorkshire, later to preferments at Liver pool, at Exeter and Bradford. In 1824 he was elected F.R.S.,
and he received other honours. From the first he was an active member and official of the British Association, and he contributed especially to the knowledge of terrestrial magnetism. In order to obtain additional data for his theories on magnetism he made a voyage to Australia in 1856, the results of which were published in a posthumous work—Journal of a Voyage to Australia for Magnetical Research, edited by Archibald Smith (1859). He visited America in 1844 and 1848. He died at Torquay on March 21, 1857.
He wrote: An Account of the Arctic Regions and Northern Whale Fishery (1820) and Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery, including Researches and Discoveries on the Eastern Coast of Greenland (1823).