Horatio Ross

Horatio Ross (1801-1886) was a celebrated sportsman and a pioneer amateur photographer.

Background and early life

Ross was born at Rossie Castle, near Montrose, on 5 September 1801, the son of Hercules Ross, a rich landowner who had acquired a substantial fortune in Jamaica. He was named after his godfather, Horatio Nelson, his father’s intimate friend.

As a young man, he embarked on a brief military career, with a commission in the 14th Light Dragoons, and an equally brief political career as MP (first for Aberdeen Burghs and then for Montrose Burghs, between 1831 and 1835. However, he was reluctant to engage too deeply in any activity that might distract him from his primary and abiding passion for field sports.

porting activities

His sporting activities were numerous and were recorded in "Sportascrapiana" (1867), a collection of anecdotes edited by C.A.Wheeler. He was a fine cricketer, a sculling champion and a prize-winning yachtsman. In 1826, on Clinker, he won a famous steeplechase against Captain Douglas, on Radical, a horse owned by Lord Kennedy. He was also a remarkable pedestrian. On one occasion, Lord Kennedy had engaged in a walking match with Sir Andrew Leith Hay for £2,500. Ross was asked to act as umpire. Despite having just finished a full day’s shooting, he set off at 9.00pm to walk nearly 100 miles from Banchory, Kincardineshire, to Inverness. He walked through the night, the following day and the next night, arriving at Inverness at 6.00am. His boots having disintegrated, he completed the last 25 miles or so barefoot.

hooting

However, Ross’s greatest feats were as a marksman. He took part in many matches with the leading shots of the day, such as General Anson, and was much assisted by his extraordinary fitness and stamina, which lasted into his old age. On his 82nd birthday, he killed 82 grouse with 82 shots. On one occasion he challenged the Honourable George Vernon to a shooting match at 100 yards, which he won, despite using a pistol while Vernon used a rifle.

He and his sons regularly carried all before them at the most prestigious annual rifle competitions at Wimbledon. Perhaps his most remarkable feat with the rifle was performed in 1867. In that year he won the cup of the Cambridge Long Range Rifle Club against nearly all the best shots of the three kingdoms. The competition extended up to eleven hundred yards, a test of nerve, judgment, and, most of all, of eyesight, which it would seem wholly impossible for any man in his sixty-sixth year to stand successfully.

In 1899, the English Illustrated Magazine described him as “undoubtedly the deer stalker of the expiring century.”

In the society amid which Captain Ross spent his youth challenges were no uncommon occurrence. He himself never appears to have been in any danger of figuring as principal. But he acted as second no less than sixteen times, and was justly proud of the fact that on every single occasion he had prevented a shot being fired. This was stated by him in his latter days in a published letter in which he emphatically condemned the system of duelling.

Photography

In the mid-1840s Ross took up photography. He was a daguerrotypist from 1847 and a calotypist from 1849. In 1856 he was a founding member of the Photographic Society of Scotland, of which he later became the President. He took numerous photographs, in particular, of Highland scenery, stalking and fishing. His work is now much sought after by collectors.

Family

On 26 December 1833 Ross married Justine Henrietta Macrae, the daughter of Colin Macrae of Inverinate. They had five sons, who inherited a fair share of their father’s sporting prowess. Ross’s way of life, though in many ways enviable and not conventionally extravagant, was not profitable and, as time went on, he found himself obliged to retrench. He ended his days in the Scottish Highlands to which he had devoted so much of his life, dying on 6th December 1886.

Sources

* C.A.Wheeler, "Sportascrapiana" (1867)
* Pluscarden Benedictines, "News & Notes" (Summer 2005)
* [http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/3/3_pss_members_ross_horatio_photographer.htm edinphoto.org.uk/]