Horatio Ross was a celebrated sportsman and a pioneer amateur

Amateur

An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....

 photographer.

Background and early life

Ross was born at Rossie Castle, near Montrose, Angus

Montrose, Angus

Montrose is a coastal resort town and former royal burgh in Angus, Scotland. It is situated 38 miles north of Dundee between the mouths of the North and South Esk rivers...

 on 5 September 1801, the son of Hercules Ross

Hercules Ross

Hercules Ross was a Scottish merchant, who made a fortune in Jamaica, became an intimate friend of Horatio Nelson and figured prominently, if briefly, in the campaign for the abolition of the slave trade.-Origins:...

, a rich landowner who had acquired a substantial fortune in Jamaica

Jamaica

Jamaica is an island nation of the Greater Antilles, in length, up to in width and 10,990 square kilometres in area. It is situated in the Caribbean Sea, about south of Cuba, and west of Hispaniola, the island harbouring the nation-states Haiti and the Dominican Republic...

. 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

14th King's Hussars

The 14th King's Hussars was a cavalry regiment in the British Army, first raised in 1715. It saw service for two centuries, before being amalgamated into the 14th/20th Hussars in 1922....

, and an equally brief political career as MP (first for Aberdeen Burghs

Aberdeen Burghs (UK Parliament constituency)

Aberdeen Burghs was a district of burghs constituency which was represented from 1708 to 1800 in the House of Commons of the Parliament of Great Britain, and from 1801 to 1832 in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom...

 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.

Sporting 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

Sculling

Sculling generally refers to a method of using oars to propel watercraft in which the oar or oars touch the water on both the port and starboard sides of the craft, or over the stern...

 champion and a prize-winning yachtsman. In 1826, on Clinker, he won a famous steeplechase

Steeplechase (horse racing)

The steeplechase is a form of horse racing and derives its name from early races in which orientation of the course was by reference to a church steeple, jumping fences and ditches and generally traversing the many intervening obstacles in the countryside...

 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

Banchory

Banchory is a burgh or town in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, lying approximately 18 miles west of Aberdeen, near where the Feugh River meets the River Dee.- Overview :...

, Kincardineshire

Kincardineshire

The County of Kincardine, also known as Kincardineshire or The Mearns was a local government county on the coast of northeast Scotland...

, to Inverness

Inverness

Inverness is a city in the Scottish Highlands. It is the administrative centre for the Highland council area, and is regarded as the capital of the Highlands of Scotland...

. 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.

Shooting

However, Ross’s greatest feats were as a marksman

Marksman

A marksman is a person who is skilled in precision, or a sharpshooter shooting, using projectile weapons, such as with a rifle but most commonly with a sniper rifle, to shoot at long range targets...

. 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. On the same day, he won £100 from Henry Baring

Henry Baring

Henry Baring , of Cromer Hall, Norfolk, was a British banker and politician. He was the third son of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, the founder of the family banking firm that grew into Barings Bank His grandfather John Baring emigrated from Germany and established the family in...

 by hitting a hat with his pistol at one hundred yards' distance.

He and his sons regularly carried all before them at the most prestigious annual rifle competitions at Wimbledon, London

Wimbledon, London

Wimbledon is a district in the south west area of London, England, located south of Wandsworth, and east of Kingston upon Thames. It is situated within Greater London. It is home to the Wimbledon Tennis Championships and New Wimbledon Theatre, and contains Wimbledon Common, one of the largest areas...

. 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

Deer stalking

Deer stalking is a British term for the stealthy pursuit of deer for sporting purposes, historically with dogs such as Scottish Deerhounds, or in modern times typically with a high powered rifle fitted with a telescopic sight to hunt them....

 of the expiring century.”

In the society amid which Captain Ross spent his youth challenges and duel

Duel

A duel is an arranged engagement in combat between two individuals, with matched weapons in accordance with agreed-upon rules.Duels in this form were chiefly practised in Early Modern Europe, with precedents in the medieval code of chivalry, and continued into the modern period especially among...

s were no uncommon occurrence. He himself never appears to have been in any danger of figuring as principal. But he acted as second no fewer 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 early photography. He was a Daguerrotypist from 1847 and a Calotypist

Calotype

Calotype or talbotype is an early photographic process introduced in 1841 by William Henry Fox Talbot, using paper coated with silver iodide. The term calotype comes from the Greek for 'beautiful', and for 'impression'....

 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

Scottish Highlands

The Highlands is an historic region of Scotland. The area is sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Highlands". It was culturally distinguishable from the Lowlands from the later Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands...

, 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 6 December 1886.

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