The explorer who mapped mountains that didn't exist
In short: In 1819, Rear-Admiral John Ross led an expedition to find the Northwest Passage. He returned home claiming to have found massive mountains at the end of a strait. His peers were skeptical—and they were right. The mountains were a mirage, but the resulting controversy shaped Arctic exploration for decades.
During his 1819 voyage commanding the HMS Isabella, Ross entered Lancaster Sound. He encountered an optical phenomenon known as iceblink, which created the illusion of towering peaks at the end of the strait. Convinced they were real, he named them the "Croker Mountains" after a high-ranking official. However, his lieutenants—including William Edward Parry and Edward Sabine—insisted the mountains were a mirage. Ross chose to return to England regardless, a decision that severely damaged his reputation when the voyage's accounts were published.
The fallout of this "mountain" controversy was significant. While it ruined Ross's immediate standing, it provoked Parry to re-explore Lancaster Sound in 1819. This second effort successfully identified the Parry Channel as the main axis of the Northwest Passage. To salvage his career, Ross later secured private funding from a gin magnate to launch a high-tech expedition in 1829 using a side-wheel steamer, the Victory, equipped with an experimental high-pressure boiler.
The second voyage was a scientific success but a logistical nightmare. The crew spent years trapped in ice, eventually reaching the Gulf of Boothia and discovering that the northeast point of America extended to 74 degrees north latitude. While Ross's nephew, James Clark Ross, reached the North Magnetic Pole in 1831, John Ross faced further criticism for his cartography. In an attempt to impress King William IV, he later renamed islands discovered by his nephew and even added fictional ones to his charts.
Despite these controversies, Ross’s expeditions provided vital ethnological data and magnetic observations. His ability to survive the Arctic was partly attributed to befriending and learning from the Inuit people. He eventually retired as a Rear-Admiral, spending his final years consulting on Baltic tensions and writing critiques of contemporary rescue efforts.
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Sources
- Summary by Intellect · source: John Ross (Royal Navy officer)
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