James Booth Lockwood was descended from Richard Lockwood, who settled on the Eastern Shore of Maryland about the beginning of the eighteenth century. The son of Henry Hayes Lockwood, artillerist and brigadier-general of volunteers during the Civil War, and Anna (Booth) Lockwood of Delaware, he was born on October at Annapolis, Maryland, United States where his father was serving as professor in the Naval Academy.
He attended a private school at Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and St. John's College, Annapolis.
Lockwood entered the army in 1873, as second lieutenant, 23rd United States Infantry. He served with his regiment at various posts in the Trans-Mississippi region until he volunteered in June 1881 for duty with the Lady Franklin Bay Arctic Expedition, under the command of Lieut. A. W. Greely. During the autumn of 1881 he made scientific observations at the headquarters, Lady Franklin Bay, Grant Land, and was engaged in preliminary field work for future explorations.
In March 1882 he crossed Kennedy Channel to Greenland, visited the observatory and grave of Charles F. Hall, examined caches, and explored the various routes in northwest Greenland to the Polar Ocean which might be used for future travel. This journey of ten days, covering a distance of 135 miles, was made in temperatures seventy-four degrees below freezing, without injuries of any kind. On April 3, 1882, Lockwood started again, under orders charging him with "the full control and arrangement of the most important sledging and geographical work of this expedition, the exploration of the northeastern coast of Greenland and the extension of knowledge regarding lands in the Polar circle". Supported by a man-drawn-sledge party to Cape Bryant, he left that point with a dog sledge, accompanied by Sergeant D. L. Brainard and Christiansen, the Eskimo, and, traveling entirely over the ice-floes of the Arctic Ocean, after incredible efforts and great suffering, reached his farthest, Lockwood Island, 83° 24' N. , 40° 46' W. , on May 13. From a mountain top his vision reached Cape Washington, nine miles south of the northernmost land of the world. This expedition, also, returned without injury, although the journey out and back involved travel of 1, 070 statute miles, in average temperatures below zero for sixty days and at times eighty-one degrees below freezing. The journey gained the honors of the highest north, held continuously by England for three centuries.
It proved that extreme north Greenland was a mountainous, glacier-covered region; the 124 miles of new coast was indented by eight inlets of unknown depth; the main ice of the Arctic Ocean was marked by a tidal crack, sometimes a hundred feet wide, through which a sounding of 840 feet failed to reach bottom. An attempt to surpass this northing in 1883 was prevented by Lockwood's finding extensive open water at Black Horn Cliffs, Greenland, which his orders forbade his passing. This trip failing, he was ordered to attempt the crossing of Grant Land to the western ocean, whose indistinct limits had been seen from Mount Arthur by Greely in 1882, crossing from the head of Archer Fiord.
With Brainard, Christiansen, and a dog team, Lockwood started on April 25, 1883, and on May 15, after an extraordinarily difficult journey overland, discovered and camped in a great inlet of the western ocean (Greely Fiord), in 80° 48. 5' N. , 78° 26' W. , making in his two trips one-eighth the way around the world north of the eightieth degree. The divide between the two oceans was 2, 600 feet, and from a mountain over 4, 400 feet high Lockwood discovered the remarkable configuration of Grant Land. It is an ice-free, vegetation-covered region, bounded on the north by the mountains discovered by Greely in 1882, and by similar mountain peaks to the south, which were fronted for a hundred miles by an unbroken glacial front varying from 140 to 200 feet in perpendicular height.
Greely Fiord was about sixty miles long, and from ten to fifteen miles broad. One mountain was called Fossil from the great quantities of fossils found there--petrified wood, shells, and fish. Seals were seen in Greely Fiord and much game abounded in the country, and the extended trip was only possible because game supplied food after the rations gave out.
Following his return to headquarters, Lockwood was ordered, June 1, 1883, to take over the duties of naturalist of the expedition, and he prepared an inventory of the specimens collected. During the boat retreat, beginning in August, and the starvation winter at Cape Sabine, 1883-1884, he distinguished himself by his manly attitude, and when the crossing of Smith Sound was considered, asked that in his weak state he be left behind so as not to lessen any other comrade's chance of life. He died at Cape Sabine some two months before the survivors of the party were rescued.
