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Robert Le Mesurier McClure
Vice-Admiral Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure (28 January 1807 – 17 October 1873) was an Irish explorer of Scots descent who explored the Arctic. In 1854 he traversed the Northwest Passage by boat and sledge, and was the first to circumnavigate the Americas. Early life and career McClure was born in Wexford in the south-east of Ireland. His father was Captain Robert McClure from County Londonderry in Ulster, who was serving with the 89th Foot. McClure's mother (the daughter of Archdeacon John Elgee) and father had met and married while his father was stationed in Wexford in 1807; but, his father had died by the time of McClure's birth. He was a first cousin of Jane Wilde, the mother of Oscar Wilde, and spent his childhood under the care of his godfather, John Le Mesurier, governor of Alderney, by whom he was educated for the army. It is said that this branch of the McClures, who settled in County Londonderry in the 1650s, during the Plantation of Ulster, were actu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Wexford
Wexford () is the county town of County Wexford, Ireland. Wexford lies on the south side of Wexford Harbour, the estuary of the River Slaney near the southeastern corner of the island of Ireland. The town is linked to Dublin by the M11/N11 National Primary Route; and to Rosslare Europort, Cork and Waterford by the N25. The national rail network connects it to Dublin and Rosslare Europort. It had a population of 20,188 according to the 2016 census. History The town was founded by the Vikings in about 800 AD. They named it ''Veisafjǫrðr'', meaning "inlet of the mudflats", and the name has changed only slightly into its present form. According to a story recorded in the ''Dindsenchas'', the name "Loch Garman" comes from a man named '' Garman mac Bomma Licce'' who was chased to the river mouth and drowned as a consequence of stealing the queen's crown from Temair during the feast of Samhain. For about three hundred years it was a Viking town, a city-state, largely independ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ulster
Ulster (; ga, Ulaidh or ''Cúige Uladh'' ; sco, label= Ulster Scots, Ulstèr or ''Ulster'') is one of the four traditional Irish provinces. It is made up of nine counties: six of these constitute Northern Ireland (a part of the United Kingdom); the remaining three are in the Republic of Ireland. It is the second-largest (after Munster) and second-most populous (after Leinster) of Ireland's four traditional provinces, with Belfast being its biggest city. Unlike the other provinces, Ulster has a high percentage of Protestants, making up almost half of its population. English is the main language and Ulster English the main dialect. A minority also speak Irish, and there are Gaeltachtaí (Irish-speaking regions) in southern County Londonderry, the Gaeltacht Quarter, Belfast, and in County Donegal; collectively, these three regions are home to a quarter of the total Gaeltacht population of Ireland. Ulster-Scots is also spoken. Lough Neagh, in the east, is the largest lake i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Clark Ross
Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862) was a British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer known for his explorations of the Arctic, participating in two expeditions led by his uncle John Ross, and four led by William Edward Parry, and, in particular, for his own Antarctic expedition from 1839 to 1843. Biography Early life Ross was born in London, the son of George Ross and nephew of John Ross, under whom he entered the Royal Navy on 5 April 1812. Ross was an active participant in the Napoleonic Wars, being present at an action where HMS ''Briseis'', commanded by his uncle, captured ''Le Petit Poucet'' (a French privateer) on 9 October 1812. Ross then served successively with his uncle on HMS ''Actaeon'' and HMS ''Driver''. Arctic exploration Ross participated in John's unsuccessful first Arctic voyage in search of a Northwest Passage in 1818 aboard ''Isabella''. Between 1819 and 1827 Ross took part in four Arctic expeditions under William Ed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Franklin
Sir John Franklin (16 April 1786 – 11 June 1847) was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. After serving in wars against Napoleonic France and the United States, he led two expeditions into the Canadian Arctic and through the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, in 1819 and 1825, and served as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land from 1839 to 1843. During his third and final expedition, an attempt to traverse the Northwest Passage in 1845, Franklin's ships became icebound off King William Island in what is now Nunavut, where he died in June 1847. The icebound ships were abandoned ten months later and the entire crew died, from causes such as starvation, hypothermia, and scurvy. Biography Early life Franklin was born in Spilsby, Lincolnshire, on , the ninth of twelve children born to Hannah Weekes and Willingham Franklin. His father was a merchant descended from a line of country gentlemen while his mother was the daughter of a farmer. One of hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 Passage in the Canadian Arctic and to record magnetic data to help determine whether a better understanding could aid navigation. The expedition met with disaster after both ships and their crews, a total of 129 officers and men, became icebound in Victoria Strait near King William Island in what is today the Canadian territory of Nunavut. After being icebound for more than a year ''Erebus'' and ''Terror'' were abandoned in April 1848, by which point Franklin and nearly two dozen others had died. The survivors, now led by Franklin's second-in-command, Francis Crozier, and ''Erebus''s captain, James Fitzjames, set out for the Canadian mainland and disappeared, presumably having perished. Pressed by Franklin's wife, Jane, and others, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Great Lakes
The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lakes, which are Lake Superior, Superior, Lake Michigan, Michigan, Lake Huron, Huron, Lake Erie, Erie, and Lake Ontario, Ontario and are in general on or near the Canada–United States border. Hydrologically, lakes Lake Michigan–Huron, Michigan and Huron are a single body joined at the Straits of Mackinac. The Great Lakes Waterway enables modern travel and shipping by water among the lakes. The Great Lakes are the largest group of freshwater lakes on Earth by total area and are second-largest by total volume, containing 21% of the world's surface fresh water by volume. The total surface is , and the total volume (measured at the low water datum) is , slightly less than the volume of Lake Baikal (, 22–23% of the world's surface fresh water ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Back
Admiral Sir George Back (6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer of the Canadian Arctic, naturalist and artist. He was born in Stockport. Career As a boy, he went to sea as a volunteer in the frigate in 1808 and took part in the destruction of batteries on the Spanish coast. In the following year, he was involved in combat in the Bay of Biscay, until he was captured by the French. Back remained a prisoner at Verdun until the peace of early 1814; during this time he studied French and mathematics and practised his skills as an artist, which he later put to use in recording his travels through the Canadian Arctic. Following his release, Back served on and as a midshipman before volunteering to serve under John Franklin in his first expedition to the Arctic in 1818. Back also served under Franklin in his two overland expeditions to survey the northern coast of North America, first on the Coppermine expedition—when Back was respon ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against France. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century; the oldest of the UK's armed services, it is consequently known as the Senior Service. From the middle decades of the 17th century, and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century, it was the world's most powerful navy until the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing and defending the British Empire, and four Imperial fortress colonies and a string of imperial bases and coaling stations secured the Royal Navy's ability to assert naval superiority globally. Owing to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, to ref ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plantation Of Ulster
The Plantation of Ulster ( gle, Plandáil Uladh; Ulster-Scots: ''Plantin o Ulstèr'') was the organised colonisation (''plantation'') of Ulstera province of Irelandby people from Great Britain during the reign of King James I. Most of the settlers (or ''planters'') came from southern Scotland and northern England; their culture differed from that of the native Irish. Small privately funded plantations by wealthy landowners began in 1606, while the official plantation began in 1609. Most of the colonised land had been confiscated from the native Gaelic chiefs, several of whom had fled Ireland for mainland Europe in 1607 following the Nine Years' War against English rule. The official plantation comprised an estimated half a million acres (2,000 km2) of arable land in counties Armagh, Cavan, Fermanagh, Tyrone, Donegal, and Londonderry. Land in counties Antrim, Down, and Monaghan was privately colonised with the king's support. Among those involved in planning and ov ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alderney
Alderney (; french: Aurigny ; Auregnais: ) is the northernmost of the inhabited Channel Islands. It is part of the Bailiwick of Guernsey, a British Crown dependency. It is long and wide. The island's area is , making it the third-largest island of the Channel Islands, and the second largest in the Bailiwick. It is around to the west of the La Hague on the Cotentin Peninsula, Normandy, in France, to the northeast of Guernsey and from the south coast of Great Britain. It is the closest of the Channel Islands both to France and to the United Kingdom. It is separated from Cap de la Hague by the dangerous Alderney Race (french: Raz Blanchard). As of March 2018, the island had a population of 2,019; natives are traditionally nicknamed after the cows, or else after the many rabbits seen in the island. Formally, they are known as ''Ridunians'', from the Latin . The only parish of Alderney is the parish of St Anne, which covers the whole island. The main town, St Anne, h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John Le Mesurier (Alderney)
John Le Mesurier (1781–1843) was a soldier and governor of Alderney. He resigned his patent to the crown in 1825 and was the last hereditary Governor of Alderney. Life John le Mesurier was born on 7 July 1781, the eldest son of Peter Le Mesurier, acting Governor of Alderney, and grandson of Governor John Le Mesurier, who died in 1793. Alderman Paul Le Mesurier and Commissary Havilland Le Mesurier were his uncles. In 1794 he was appointed ensign in the 132nd Highlanders, from which short-lived corps he was promoted into the 89th Foot, and became captain-lieutenant in 1796. He served with a flank battalion commanded by Colonel Stewart in the Irish rebellion of 1798, and afterwards with his regiment in 1799–1800 at the occupation of Messina after the blockade and capture of Malta under General Thomas Graham, Lord Lynedoch. He served in the campaign in Egypt in 1801, including the battles before Alexandria, the defence of Rosetta, and the surrender of Cairo. After the fal ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Oscar Wilde
Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel ''The Picture of Dorian Gray'', and the circumstances of his criminal conviction for gross indecency for consensual homosexual acts in "one of the first celebrity trials", imprisonment, and early death from meningitis at age 46. Wilde's parents were Anglo-Irish intellectuals in Dublin. A young Wilde learned to speak fluent French and German. At university, Wilde read Literae Humaniores#Greats, Greats; he demonstrated himself to be an exceptional Classics, classicist, first at Trinity College Dublin, then at Magdalen College, Oxford, Oxford. He became associated with the emerging philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin. After university, Wilde m ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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