author
Edward L. (Edward Lawton) Moss
1843–1880
An Irish-born Royal Navy surgeon, artist, and Arctic traveler, he is best remembered for his vivid account of the 1875–76 British Arctic Expedition. His life joined medicine, exploration, and sketching in a way that still feels remarkably adventurous.
1 Audiobook
Shores of the Polar Sea: A Narrative of the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6
by Edward L. (Edward Lawton) Moss
About the author
Born in Dublin in 1843, Edward Lawton Moss trained in science and medicine before joining the Royal Navy as a surgeon. Archival and library sources describe a career that took him far beyond the hospital ward, with service in the Caribbean, on Canada’s Pacific coast, in the Balkans, and in the Arctic.
Moss is most closely linked with the British Arctic Expedition of 1875–76, where he served as surgeon and also worked as an artist-observer. His book Shores of the Polar Sea helped preserve the expedition in both words and images, and museum collections still hold a large body of his polar artwork.
He died in 1880, only 37 years old. Although he is not widely known today, later biographical work has highlighted how unusually varied his life was: physician, naval officer, explorer, and illustrator all at once.