Alexander Armstrong

Arctic expedition

In 1842 he joined the Royal Navy as an assistant surgeon. He travelled throughout the British Empire and many parts of the world, including the Mediterranean Sea, Pacific Islands, North and South America, and the West Indies.

In 1850, Armstrong left London aboard as a surgeon and naturalist. The ship was part of the McClure Arctic expedition tasked with finding Franklin's lost expedition. The ship completed the tracing of the Northwest Passage and tried to sail around Banks Island, but became trapped by the ice at Mercy Bay in 1851, and spent two winters trapped there.

Armstrong and the crew were rescued by in 1853. Armstrong was unable to bring his animal and plant collection with him, but did retrieve his journals against the orders of his captain Robert John Le Mesurier McClure,

Later life and death Armstrong completed many seagoing appointments with the Royal Navy.

Legacy Croton armstrongli is named for Armstrong, after he collected a sample of the tree on an expedition to Port Essington. In the 1980s, the Conservation Commission of the Northern Territory surveyed the closed forests of the area and could not find a specimen of C. armstrongli. It is possible that the location of the specimen's collection was incorrectly labelled.