William Speirs Bruce FRSE was a British naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer. He organized and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements, the expedition established the first permanent weather station in Antarctica. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory in Edinburgh, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were abandoned.
About William Speirs Bruce in brief
William Speirs Bruce FRSE was a British naturalist, polar scientist and oceanographer. He organized and led the Scottish National Antarctic Expedition to the South Orkney Islands and the Weddell Sea. Among other achievements, the expedition established the first permanent weather station in Antarctica. Bruce later founded the Scottish Oceanographical Laboratory in Edinburgh, but his plans for a transcontinental Antarctic march via the South Pole were abandoned because of lack of public and financial support. His failure to mount any major exploration ventures after the SNAE is usually attributed to his Lack of public relations skills, powerful enemies, and his Scottish nationalism. He died in 1921, after which he was almost totally forgotten. He was the fourth child of Samuel Noble Bruce and his Welsh wife Mary, née Lloyd. His middle name came from another branch of the family; its unusual spelling, as distinct from the more common “Spiers”, tended to cause problems for reporters, reviewers and biographers. William passed his early childhood in the family’s London home at 18 Royal Crescent, Holland Park, under the tutelage of his grandfather, the Revd William Bruce. In 1892 he joined the Dundee Whaling Expedition to Antarctica as a scientific assistant. This was followed by Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemlya, Spitsbergen and Franz Josef Land. In 1899 Bruce, by then Britain’s most experienced polar scientist, applied for a post on Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition, but delays over this appointment and clashes with Royal Geographical Society president Sir Clements Markham led him instead to organise his own expedition, and earned him the permanent enmity of the geographical establishment in London.
He abandoned his place at UCL, and enrolled instead in the medical school at the University of Edinburgh. In recent years, following the centenary of the Scottish Expedition, efforts have been made to give fuller recognition to his role in the history of scientific polar exploration. Bruce was recommended to the expedition by an acquaintance from Robert Mill, who was now the librarian in London in 1892. The expedition was back in Scotland in May 1893, and only gave limited opportunities for scientific work. The four ships sailed from Dundee on 6 September 1892 under Captalaena Alexander Fairweather. Active in four whaling ships: Balaena, Diana, Diana and Polar Star. Bruce did not hesitate to take up his duties with William Burnweather as an assistant; with William Gordon Murdoch as his assistant he took up duties on his own. He worked under Dr John Murray and his assistant John Young Buchanan, and gained a deeper understanding of oceanography and invaluable experience in the principles of scientific investigation. In 1907 and 1920 Bruce made many journeys to the Arctic regions, both for scientific and for commercial purposes. He also worked with Patrick Geddes and John Arthur Thomson, and included sections on botany and practical zoology in his courses at the recently established Scottish Marine Station at Granton on the Firth of Forth. In 1919 his health was failing, and he experienced several spells in hospital before his death.
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