I’ve been rummaging through the Science Museum’s collections looking for objects related to terrestrial magnetism and scientific expeditions. I smiled when I came across the musical scores for “Northward Ho! or Baffled not Beaten” in a popular song catalogue from 1875 – it really brought home just how much Arctic exploration captured people’s imaginations in the second half of the nineteenth century. Commander John P. Cheyne of the Royal Navy, who penned the words for this dashing tune, was himself an Arctic […]