CaptainDaniel Ross, FRS (11 November 1780 – 29 October 1849) was a British naval officer and hydrographer. Famous for his care and regard for scientific accuracy, he was known as "the Father of the Indian Surveys".[1]
Ross was the illegitimate son of Hercules Ross, a Scottish merchant in Jamaica, and Elizabeth Foord, a freed slave. The sportsman and pioneer photographer Horatio Ross was his half-brother.
Career
Survey of part of the south coast of China by Ross
In 1823, Ross was appointed Marine Surveyor General at Calcutta and remained in that position until he resigned his appointment in November 1833. After his resignation he retired to Bombay, where he was Master Attendant, and was appointed President of the Geographical Society of Bombay in 1838.[3] Following his retirement as president on grounds of ill-health in 1849, shortly before his death, the Bombay Geographical Society appointed him Honorary President. The minutes of the Society record that:
"Captain Ross had established for himself a European reputation of a high order, as one of the most practical and correct of Eastern Hydrographers; and the fortunes of many merchants, and the lives of many mariners, have been saved by the results of his patient and scientific labors."[4]
Family
In 1809 Ross married Maria Rosa Theresa Pepin. They had six children before she died in 1828.[5]
References
↑Clements R. Markham, A Memoir on the Indian Surveys (1871), at pages 7 to 10
↑Stephen Davies, American Ships, Macao, and the Bombay Marine, 1806-1817, in Americans and Macao, ed Paul Van Dyke (Hong Kong University Press, 2012), at pages 33 to 48
