Booth Sir F
NAME: Booth, Sir Felix.
ACHIEVEMENT(S): Financed Ross Arctic expedition. Chairman Booth’s Gin.
NICKNAME/ALIAS: None.
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 1775, in Mangham's Hill, Hertfordshire, England.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 25 January 1850, in Brighton, Sussex, England. Aged 74.
DISCIPLINE: Businessman.
FIELD: Business.
LANGUAGE: English.
PARENTS: Philip Booth and ?.
SIBLINGS: Two elder brothers.
SPOUSE: None.
CHILDREN: None.
EDUCATION: Liberal education.
MAJOR WORK: Booth & Co Distillers.
LIFE AND TIMES: As a City of London merchant, Booth set up a successful company of gin distillers, Booth & Co. By the start of the nineteenth century, gin had acquired a fashionable image, particularly among naval officers and, as a result, had become a very profitable product.
During the first quarter of the 19th-century, Booth brilliantly exploited the market, had made a great deal of money and achieved high social position. He became the Deputy Lieutenant of Middlesex and then, in 1828, was made a Sheriff of London and Middlesex.
One of Booth’s friends was John Ross*, the explorer who, in 1818, had failed in his attempt to find the Northwest Passage, the sea route linking the North Atlantic with the North Pacific.
Across the previous two hundred years or more, many people had searched for the fabled Northwest Passage, in order to find a better route to the East than sailing round the Cape of Good Hope. By the time of Ross’s attempt, the quest had become more a geographical challenge than a commercial one, in an attempt to understand and map the empty spaces in the Arctic regions of North America.
Although Ross’ trip in 1818 had in many respects been successful, he hadn’t found the passage because of a huge error of judgement. He had seen a mirage ahead that he took to be a mountain blocking the route, which he named ‘Crocker’s Mountain’ and then turned back.
Throughout the 1820s, Ross had been trying to raise the money from the Admiralty for a second expedition, with no success. At the time, Britain had a huge navy with little to do and the Second Secretary to the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow, wanted to find the polar sea before the Russians did. He was able to persuade the Sea Lords to finance a series of British naval expeditions, most led by William Parry. None of the expeditions was successful in finding an ice-free Polar Sea.
In 1829, in the face of yet another rejection by the Admiralty, Ross approached Booth with a proposal of a further search for the Northwest Passage, this time a privately funded expedition by steamship. Booth agreed ‘for the credit of his country and to serve Captain Ross, thinking he was slighted in his old expedition’, adding £17,000 to the £3,000 that Ross himself had contributed.
Ross set off in the steamship ‘Victory’ in 1829 and returned four years later. Although he hadn’t found the Passage, he nevertheless achieved many successes. Remarkable for the length of time spent in the ice, Ross and his men had discovered many new territories, including those that named after Booth: the Gulf of Boothia, the Isthmus of Boothia, Cape Felix, and the Boothia Peninsula, the latter being the northernmost part of North America, reaching latitude 71° 58' N in Canada.
James Clark Ross*, John’s nephew and joint leader of the expedition achieved fame as well, when he established the location of the North Magnetic Pole on the Boothia Peninsula's western coast in 1831.
For his involvement in the prestigious project, Booth was rewarded with a baronetcy in March 1835.
In 1845, Booth successfully drove a bill through Parliament that removed excise duties on exported gin, which opened up new global markets for British distillers and made his own company even more successful, making him a very rich man when he died five years later.
ASSESSMENT: Felix Booth made his fortune in the distilling business, and was the main investor in the second attempt by John Ross to find the Northwest Passage through the Arctic.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: Portrait painted by Sir T. Lawrence*
Victim of blackmail by cousin of the same name.
ONELINER: Felix Booth, gin-maker and Arctic exploration freak
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Savours, Ann, The Search for the North West Passage, London: Chatham Publishing, 1999.