Stewartry U3A was entertained by Janet Ross-Mills at their May monthly meeting in Castle Douglas. Her topic was Sir John Ross, the local man from Wigtownshire who carried out three arctic expeditions to find the North West Passage. The second of these involved the discovery of the magnetic north pole by his nephew James Clark Ross who accompanied him on his expeditions and later explored Antarctica.
Sir John was born in Inch in Wigtownshire in 1777 and joined the navy at the age of 10 on the death of his parents. He served until 1818 when he was commissioned to try and find the North West Passage. His first expedition was un-successful and he returned to Stranraer where he built North West Castle, now a local hotel. His second expedition was sponsored by the gin magnate Felix Booth and used one of the very early steam powered ships and did find much of the Passage. After this they abandoned their ship the Victory and walked for 16 months across the ice back to a whaling station where no one believed their story, as they had assumed they were all dead after that length of time.
Janet illustrated the talk with historic maps and pictures and showed us a painting she has commissioned of his arrival back in Stranraer to a mutiny by the crew and gin-fuelled riots. After his last expedition he retired to Scotland and died in 1856. By then he had faded into comparative anonymity until Janet started to research his history having come across a portrait which looked very much like her father and made her assume that she was related to Sir John.