Early Life and Career
He was born at Wexford, in Ireland, the posthumous son of one of Abercrombie's captains, and spent his childhood under the care of his godfather, General Le Mesurier, governor of Alderney, by whom he was educated for the army. He entered the navy, however, in 1824, and twelve years later gained his first experience of Arctic exploration as mate of HMS Terror in the expedition (1836–1837) commanded by Captain (afterwards Sir) George Back.
On his return he obtained his commission as lieutenant, and from 1838 to 1839 served on the Canadian lakes, being subsequently attached to the North American and West Indian naval stations, where he remained till 1846. Two years later he joined the Franklin search expedition (1848–1849) under James Clark Ross as first lieutenant of Enterprise.
Read more about this topic: Robert McClure
Famous quotes containing the words early, life and/or career:
“All of Western tradition, from the late bloom of the British Empire right through the early doom of Vietnam, dictates that you do something spectacular and irreversible whenever you find yourself in or whenever you impose yourself upon a wholly unfamiliar situation belonging to somebody else. Frequently it’s your soul or your honor or your manhood, or democracy itself, at stake.”
—June Jordan (b. 1939)
“We only seem to learn from Life that Life doesn’t matter so much as it seemed to do—it’s not so burningly important, after all, what happens. We crawl, like blinking sea-creatures, out of the Ocean onto a spur of rock, we creep over the promontory bewildered and dazzled and hurting ourselves, then we drop in the ocean on the other side: and the little transit doesn’t matter so much.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
—Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964)