From Machu Picchu to Darkest Africa at RGSSA

Monsters of the Deep & Men Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships

2012-02-10T22:53:00.000-08:00

Monsters of the Deep and Men Who Go Down to the Sea in Ships

Whaling andWhalers at RGSSA Library

“...withlouely dart,

Dinting his brest, had bredhis restlesse paine,

Like as the wounded Whale to shore flies fro the maine.”

—Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene,Book VI, Canto X

A little while ago I was watching amarvellous documentary about the history of American whaling on SBS, Into the Deep: Whaling and the World,which inspired me to see what works on whaling the Royal Geographical Societyof South Australia Library holds. Turns out we have something of ahiggledy-piggledy selection, presumably acquired over the years without anyfirm collection development policy in mind (serious librarians won’t approve!)—butto a picker up of unconsidered trifles like me, this makes it more interesting.

Most of the whaling books do, however, sitquite well with our huge collection of works on travel and exploration: nevermind the official version of history, it was in fact the whalers who firstventured into large tracts of the oceans hitherto unexplored by Westerners.When I was a kid growing up in New Zealand there was the most cursory mentionof “whalers and sealers” when we were being taught basic NZ history. These“whalers and sealers” had had small settlements here and there on the coast,evidently. But they obviously didn’t count. We all just absorbed this intelautomatically, like little goldfish in a tank opening their mouths as the mannafloats down from above—and I dare say most of us forgot it five minutes later,too! But looking back the attitude strikes as really weird. Was it because thewhalers and sealers weren’t Permanent Settlers, come to Open Up New Lands, and didn’tfit in with our perception of ourselves as the descendants of serious, determined,hardworking, and far-sighted people out to hack a better life out of the bush forthemselves and their families? Certainly they weren’t Sent by the King to OpenUp New Lands, maybe that let them out. And they weren’t Missionaries come with theserious purpose of Converting the Heathen, like “the Reverend Samuel Marsden.”—Igot so as I never wanted to hear that name again: it cropped up every year fromabout age 9 to 15. (The funny thing was, no-one ever told us what denominationhe was.)—No, well, the whalers and sealers were just hard-working stiffs, doinga dirty, difficult, at times very boring and at other times very dangerous job.Working-class blokes like all our ancestors, in fact! It’s a funny old world,isn’t it?

One of the things I really likedabout the documentary was the way it examined Herman Melville’s attitude to themen he worked with when he shipped aboard a whaler (or several—he jumped ship acouple of times and was thrown in clink once, too). He was a true egalitarianand found there was real solidarity amongst the men, and in most of them an innatesense of decency. No doubt they were as dirty, ugly and contumacious as therest of humanity, but Melville’s great virtue for his times was that he sawthem as real people.

“The City that LitThe World”*

Historic Buildings of New Bedford

Whaling is of course an horrific trade, butin the 18th and 19th centuries it was an extremely important aspect of worldcommerce and, I was fascinated to learn from the aforesaid dokko, a majorfactor in turning the United States into a global economic power—at one pointin the earlier 19th century New Bedford in Massachusetts, which had become acentre for the Nantucket whalers, was the wealthiest city in the world! TheCivil War destroyed many ships of the great American whaling fleet, and by thattime oil had been discovered in Pennsylvania and the heyday of the whale-oillamp was over. The whaling industry began to decline, and though it was tocontinue into the 20th century, killing even greater numbers of whales with thedevelopment of the mechanized harpoon, it was no longer a dominant factor inthe global economy.

You can read more about the whalers fromNew England in:

Verrill, A. Hyatt (Alpheus Hyatt), 1871-1954. The realstory of the whaler / by A. Hyatt Verrill. New York: Appleton, 1916.xv, 248 p.

* See the description of New Bedford, in “Localities”, History of Whaling, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_whaling

Spermaceti?Really?

“What spermacetti is, men might justly doubt, since the learnedHosmannus in his work of thirty years, saith plainly, Nescio quid sit.”

—Sir ThomasBrowne, Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646) (or Vulgar Errors), quoted by Hermann Melville, Moby Dick,Chapter 135, “Epilogue”.

I found out why the name “spermaceti”:inside the sperm whale’s head, which is where the poor creature stores thefluid, it is a clear liquid, but on exposure to the air it becomes opaque, resemblingsperm! The whales were so huge that, having stripped them of their blubber, peelingoff great slabs which could weigh a ton, and hoisted the hacked-off giant headsalongside (as Melville vividly describes, they were often too heavy to haul aboard),the whalers would sometimes actually get inside the head to release the prizedoil. It was a double whammy for the poor sperm whales, as they are the oneswith ambergris in their gut, still used today by many perfume manufacturers,although there are synthetic alternatives. (Unfortunately there don’t seem tobe any regulations about listing this on the bottles, so if you’re thinking ofbuying an expensive and I must admit delicious French perfume, you might liketo think again.) The American Cetacean Society provides a nice Fact Sheet onthe sperm whale, which was the species in Melville’s Moby Dick. It’s suitable for teaching purposes and may bedownloaded: http://www.acsonline.org/factpack/spermwhl.htm

We see in the diagram that alarge part of the head is called the “junk”.You won’t find a definition of “junk” in this sense in any online dictionary,and the modern print eds. quoted online make the same omission. Even The Free Dictionary online, whichactually includes a reference to Melville’s correct whaling use of the word,does not define it! However, my reliable old Concise Oxford does:

“lump of tissue in sperm whale, containing spermaceti.”

Here is Melville on spermacetiand the anatomy of the sperm whale’s head: he explains both “junk” and “case”: “Regarding the Sperm whale's head as a solid oblong, you may, on an inclined plane, sideways divide it into two quoins, whereof the lower is the bony structure, forming the cranium and jaws, and the upper an unctuous mass wholly free from bones; its broad forward end forming the expanded vertical apparent forehead of the whale. At the middle of the forehead horizontally subdivide this upper quoin, and then you have two almost equal parts, which before were naturally divided by an internal wall of a thick tendinous substance. The lower subdivided part, called the junk, is one immense honeycomb of oil, formed by the crossing and re-crossing, into ten thousand infiltrated cells, of tough elastic white fibres throughout its whole extent. The upper part, known as the Case, may be regarded as the great Heidelburgh Tun of the Sperm Whale. ... the tun of the whale contains by far the most precious of all his oily vintages; namely, the highly-prized spermaceti, in its absolutely pure, limpid, and odoriferous state. Nor is this precious substance found unalloyed in any other part of the creature. Though in life it remains perfectly fluid, yet, upon exposure to the air, after death, it soon begins to concrete; sending forth beautiful crystalline shoots, as when the first thin delicate ice is just forming in water. A large whale's case generally yields about five hundred gallons of sperm, though from unavoidable circumstances, considerable of it is spilled, leaks, and dribbles away, or is otherwise irrevocably lost in the ticklish business of securing what you can.” –Moby Dick, Chapter 77, “The Great Heidelburgh Tun”: from: http://melville.thefreelibrary.com/Moby-Dick-LXVIII-CXXXIV/1-10

The Wonderful Whalers From Whitby: William Scoresby x 2

I thought I was going nuts when I startedchecking our bibliographic records for William Scoresby (1789-1857), becausealthough the dates were the same, there seemed to be two different meninvolved: one was a whaler and one was a clergyman! Could the entries on theLibraries Australia database possibly be wrong? Well, in this instance, no.I’ve now found out that there weretwo whalers called William Scoresby, and they were father and son—but ourWilliam, who is the younger, was in fact both a whaler and a clergyman.Extraordinary, isn’t it? He was anextraordinary man, and so was his father.

WilliamScoresby, Snr., (L.) & Jnr. (R.)

They came of farming stock near Whitby inYorkshire, England. (Yep, if you’re thinking of Captain Cook you’re not wrong!)William Scoresby, the father (1760-1829), was the first to break with traditionand go to sea. Maybe the family wasn’t badly off, by the standards of the day,but William didn’t have much formal education: he left school when he wasonly 9. He was working for another farmer and it was this man’s treatment ofhim that drove him to run away to sea, round 1779-80. By 1785 he had joined a whaling ship andthereafter whaling became his trade. By 1790, when he was only 30, he hadbecome captain of the ship and in the course of his 30 trips until hisretirement in 1822 racked up a score—he was well named, yes—of 533 whales,making him Whitby’s most successful whaling captain.* And a very richman—whaling captains weren’t in it for fun—or for revenge, à la Melville.

It sounds as if he was both an energetic andan intelligent man, as well as an adventurous one. Whitby-ites claim him as theman who invented the ship’s “crow’s-nest”. (It seems obvious after the event tostick a railed platform up the mast, but it was one of those things that nobodyelse had thought of. His design was a wooden-framed box covered with canvas andleather, and it afforded the best possible view of the whales. There was ahatch at its base, so as you didn’t have to risk your life by climbing over itsside, and Scoresby put in a telescope and a speaking trumpet—very cluey!)

He wasn’t a posh Royal Navy captain with aninfluential family, and he didn’t get a “sir” like the Rosses, uncle andnephew, to name but two of the polar captains with gongs, but his voyage of1806 sailed to 520 miles from the North Pole (Lat. 81º 30'), which was a recordfor a ship. The record stood for 21 years, and even then that expedition wentpart of the way over the ice, not by ship. Incidentally, Scoresby taughthimself navigation, determinedly reading up on the topic from the age of 19,while he was waiting out the winter to ship aboard, and carrying on studying asa common seaman, regardless of the jeers of his peers. He was a big man, verystrong, and could have clobbered them easily, but held back until the time twoof the cowards attacked him together, when he routed both of them, in factlaying one out cold. After that he was not only left only, he was respected. **

The online newsletter, The Whitby Seagull, describes him as “aforward thinker ... [who] became involved in Whitby public life in 1816.” Hewas a member of the Whitby Literary & Philosophical Society, a churchgoer, andquite a philanthropist, paying for a public pump to help the poor who wereshort of water. “Some of his ideas were considered too radical for the day butironically since 1828 many of his far-sighted schemes have been carried out inmodern times just as he had laid down originally. He believed that theunemployed could be paid to deepen the harbour, build quays and construct a newbridge.” *** It’s amazing to think that this was the boy who left school at 9years of age. Everything he knew he taught himself. No wonder that his son wasso proud of him that he wrote a book about him! **

William Scoresby (1789-1857)was equally adventurous and even brighter. The title page of his memoir of hisfather refers to him as: “The Rev. William Scoresby, D.D., Fellow of the RoyalSocieties of London and Edinburgh; Member of the Institute of France; of the AmericanInstitute, Philadelphia, etc. etc.” Well done, William, Jnr.! And let’s notforget that you had an intelligent father who obviously encouraged you to workhard and study hard.

Scoresby, William, 1789-1857. The Arctic whaling journals ofWilliam Scoresby the younger / edited by C. Ian Jackson London :Hakluyt Society, 1811-1820. (Works issued by the Hakluyt Society. 3rd ser. ; v.12, 20, 21) 3 v.

Scoresby, William, 1789-1857. An account of the Arctic regionswith a history and description of the northern whale-fishery / by W.Scoresby. Illustrated with twenty-four engravings. Edinburgh : Printed for A.Constable & Co.; [etc.] 1820. 2 v.

The picture shows an episode at Spitsbergenin 1816 when the ship’s hull was stovein by an underwater projection from an iceberg. William’s attempt to turn itupside-down for proper repairs didn’t work, they only got it on its side (youcan see the men hauling at it), so he had to stuff the hole instead.

Scoresby, William, 1789-1857. Journal of a voyage to thenorthern whale-fishery : including researches and discoveries on the easterncoast of west Greenland, made in the summer of 1822, in the ship Baffin ofLiverpool / by William Scoresby Junior. London : Hurst, Robinson and Co1823. xliii, 472 p.

Young William started off as abad little boy who stowed away on his dad’s ship at the age of 11. You canimagine the scene! Not to mention what his poor mum must have felt when shefound he’d disappeared! They were headed north via the Shetlands and his father tried to leave him there ratherthan take him on the risky trip to arctic waters, but he found a boatman totake him out to the ship again just as she was leaving. His father gave in andlet him come. By 1803 he’d taken young William on as a proper apprentice. Theywent whaling together, the younger William eventually captaining his own ship, until the father retired.

Whalers in the northernhemisphere had to lay off for the winter, and during several of these periodsyoung Scoresby attended classes in natural philosophy and chemistry atEdinburgh University. I wonder how he got on there, amongst the sons of the properupper-middle class? However difficult it might have been socially,intellectually he was obviously very, very bright. Whaling life consists oflong periods of boredom alternated with short bursts of frantic activity—notonly chasing and catching the whales but stripping them (“flenching” orflensing”), boiling the blubber, and extracting the spermaceti oil or thewhalebone. (Different species. Sperm whales are toothed whales. Baleenwhales—blue, grey and right whales—have the whalebone.) William kept up hisstudies at sea during the slow times. There’s quite a full article on him inWikipedia**** which tells us that in 1807 he “began the study of themeteorology and natural history of the polar regions. Earlier results includedhis original observations on snow and crystals; and in 1809 Robert Jamesonbrought certain Arctic papers of his before the Wernerian Society of Edinburgh,which at once elected him to its membership.” 1809? He’d only have been 20! Imagine how proud and thrilled he andhis dad must both have been!

His studies continued along with his whaling.By the mid-1810’s he was married, captaining a ship, and researching thetemperature of the polar ocean: he was the first to establish that it’s warmerat a great depth than on the surface. If you’ve read anything about the searchfor the Northwest Passage you’ll know that it loomed large in the naval andscientific minds of the time, but you may not know that it was William Scoresbywho gave the whole thing its initial impetus by pointing out to Sir JosephBanks, with whom he was now corresponding, that as ice levels in the Greenlandregion were relatively low in 1817, now would be the time. Sir John Barrow’ssending out the first of the Royal Naval Northwest Passage expeditions in 1818was in direct response to Banks’s intel.

William’s book of 1820, An account of the Arctic regions with ahistory and description of the northern whale-fishery, includes notonly descriptions of his adventures during his voyages, but a lot of scientificdetail on ice forms and arctic zoology. He provides pictures of narwhals, polarbears and the beluga whale or white whale, a smaller toothed whale found inarctic waters.

By the time the book came out Williamhad been elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and wascontributing a paper to the Royal Society: Onthe Anomaly in the Variation of the Magnetic Needle—an interest which wasto continue for some time.

His whaling trip to Greenland in 1822 was tobe his last. Like Captain Cook (they had a lot more than Whitby in common) hewas an excellent cartographer: the charts he made during this trip were thefirst accurate ones of the eastern coast of Greenland. It’s this trip which isdescribed in his second whaling book, also held by the RGSSA Library: Journal of a voyage to the northernwhale-fishery : including researches and discoveries on the eastern coast ofwest Greenland, made in the summer of 1822, in the ship Baffin of Liverpool.

When he got back he found thathis wife (his first wife) had died. Presumably this was an influence which promptedhim to take Holy Orders. He was, in any case, a religious man, and hisbiography of his father stresses throughout the influence of a benevolent Providence.

William had posts as a vicar invarious parts of England, eventually settling in Torquay with his third wife.He kept up his scientific studies and his religious ones, gaining his D.D. in 1839.He had been a Fellow of the Royal Society since 1824, and in 1827 became an honorarycorresponding member of the Académie des sciences. He was an active member of the British Association for theAdvancement of Science (founded in 1831). He had a wide-ranging mind, and researched the topic of optics as well as keepingup his interest in terrestrial magnetism, producing many papers on it.

Although his days as a whaler were over, he wasstill interested in arctic exploration. One of the big topics of the period wasthe fate of Sir John Franklin’s arctic expedition, an incredible number ofother expeditions being despatched in search of its remains, and in 1850William published a work urging that the search be continued, with his conclusionsabout arctic navigation from his ownexperience. His days at sea weren’t over, either: he went to America in 1844and 1848. Being William Scoresby, he didn’t just sit back aboard, but madescientific observations on the height of the Atlantic waves. In 1856 theterrestrial magnetism thing still beckoned and he sailed to Australia in questof more data. (The visit is commemorated by the name of the Melbourne suburb, Scoresby.)His scientific report was published posthumously; RGSSA Library also holds thiswork:

Scoresby, William,1789-1857. Journal of a voyage to Australia and round the world, for magneticalresearch / by the Rev. W. Scoresby ; edited by Archibald Smith. London: Longman, Green, Longman, & Roberts, 1859. xlviii, 96, 315, 24 p.

William took after his father in taking anactive interest in social problems. He must have been one of those people withrelentless energy. His picture certainly looks as if he was: a wiry, keen, yetthoughtful man. He published on religious topics as well as all his otherinterests, so if you look him up in a very big catalogue you may well find suchworks as Zoistic Magnetism and Jehovah Glorified in His Workslisted together with the whaling books under Scoresby, William, 1789-1857!

* Some of theinformation about the senior William Scoresby is from The Scoresby Page, whichalso gives the family’s genealogy and mentions a link, curiously enough, toSouth Australia: http://www.users.on.net/~rdblair/scoresby.htm

** This story isrecounted by William Jnr. in Memorials ofthe Sea : My Father : Being Records of the Adventurous Life of the Late WilliamScoresby, Esq. of Whitby / by his son. London : Longman, Brown, Green, andLongmans, 1851. The other references quoted take most of their material fromthis biography. It is available to download free from Gutenberg Books: http://www.gutenberg.org/3/5/1/8/35183

*** The WhitbySeagull, http://www.thewhitbyseagull.co.uk/famous_people_and_whitby_william_scoresby_senior.html

**** William Scoresby, Wikipedia,

SOME MORE OF THEBOOKS

Here are some more of the RGSSA’s interestingtitles in the order in which, more or less, they were written (not necessarilythe date of publication, as you’ll see).

The Very EarlyDays

17th Century

Edge, Thomas, d. 1624. A brief discouerie of the northernediscoueries of seas, coasts, and counties, deliuered in order as they werehopefully begunne, and haue euer since happily beene continued by the singularindustrie and charge of the worshipfull society of Muscouia merchants ofLondon, with the ten seuerall voyages of Captaine Thomas Edge the author. In:Purchas, Samuel, 1577?-1626. Purchas hisPilgrimes. London : Printed by William Stansby for Henrie Fetherstone, 1625,vol.. 3, book 3, p. 462-473.

The work by Purchas is variously known as“Purchas his Pilgrimes” or more often “Purchas his Pilgrimage.” RGSSA holdsseveral editions with variations of the title. Edge’s description of whaling,quoted by Melville in the Epilogue,gives an idea of the size of the whale’s head:

“While the whale is floating at the stern of the ship,they cut off his head, and tow it with a boat as near the shore as it willcome; but it will be aground in twelve or thirteen feet [of] water.”

Thomas Edge (1587 or 88 - 1624) was an English whalerand sealer working for the London-based Muscovy Company in the earlier 17thcentury (which at that period claimed Spitsbergen for Britain.) His workpublished in Purchas’s collection of early voyages and discoveries recountsseveral of his whaling expeditions in the decade 1610-1620. He was a leadingcaptain, being in command of more than one ship and from 1613 commander orco-commander of the English fleet: by that time, therefore, he must alreadyhave been a successful and experienced sailor and trader. During the voyageshis ships encountered all the hazards of arctic waters, including unstable ice,groundings, a boat’s getting separated from the fleet, a ship’s capsizing, andunfriendly encounters with rival Danish and Dutch ships. They hunted walrus aswell as whales. Edge did extremely well out of his adventures and was able tobuy two properties and to retire comfortably. As a measure of his success, hereports that on his 1611 trip their first catch of a Bowhead whale, “yieldedtwelve Tuns of oil, being the first Oil that ever was made in Greenland.”* Heis remembered by the naming of Edgeøya or Edge Island, which the Englishwhalers rediscovered in 1616.

* Wikipedia http://en.wuikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edge

Gerritsz, Hessel, 1581?-1632 and Brugge, Jacob Segerszvan der, fl. 1634. Early Dutch and English voyages to Spitsbergen in the seventeenthcentury / edited with introduction and notes by Sir W. Martin Conway.London : Printed for the Hakluyt Society 1904. (Works issued by the HakluytSociety ; no. 11) xvi, 191 p.

Contents: Histoire du Pays nomméSpitsberghe / Hessel Gerritszoon van Assum ; translated into English by BasilH. Soulsby -- Journael of Dach-register gehouden by seben Matroosen in haerOverwinteren op Spitsbergen in Maurits-Bay / Jacob Segersz. van der Brugge ;translated into English by J.A.J. de Villiers.

Spitsbergen, whichis the largest island of the Svalbard archipelago, now belonging to Norway, bordersthe Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea. It was a greatwhaling base for centuries: the picture shown under Scoresby’s An account of the Arctic regions with ahistory and description of the northern whale-fishery is a scene there.Edge’s whaling ventures were based there.

Here BeWhales: The Growth of an Industry,

18th-early19th centuries

PersonalAccounts:

1839

Beale, Thomas, 1807-1849. The natural history of the spermwhale : its anatomy and physiology, food, spermaceti, ambergris, rise andprogress of the fishery, chase and capture, “cutting in” and “trying out”,description of the ships, boats, men, and instruments used in the attack; withan account of its favourite places of resort, to which is added a Sketch of aSouth-Sea whaling voyage, embracing a description of the extent, as well as theadventures and accidents that occurred during the voyage, in which the authorwas personally engaged / by Thomas Beale. [2nd ed.] London : John vanVoorst 1839. [12], 393 p.

Beale’sillustration “Boats attacking whales”: it reappears in different forms in theliterature

This second, very much enlarged edition ofBeale’s book was immensely popular with the reading public, and providedMelville with some of his background for MobyDick. Beale was not a scientist but a medical man; nevertheless hisscientific data was a valuable contribution to the knowledge of the time.

Thegraphic story below of one of the whaling boats being attacked by a sperm whaleis typical of the exciting content of the less scientific sections of the work.It also describes exactly how a whale is first harpooned, then chased, thenlanced. Because the lance is aimed at the lungs, the poor thing in effectchokes to death on its own blood. It is horrific, yes. What the whalers callits “flurry” is in fact its death throes.

“On the morning of the 18th June, 1832,while we were still fishing in the ‘off-shore ground’ of Japan, we fell in withan immense sperm whale, which happened to be just the sort of one we requiredto complete our cargo. Three boats were immediately lowered to give him chase;but the whale, from some cause or other, appeared wild in its actions longbefore it had seen any of our boats, although it might have been chased the daybefore by some other ship. It was greatly different in its actions to mostother large whales, because it never went steadily upon one course. If he‘peaked his flukes,’ or went down going to the southward, we expected he wouldcontinue that course under water, but when he again rose perhaps he was two orthree miles away from the boats to the northward; in this sort of manner hedodged us about until near four P.M., at which time the men were dreadfullyexhausted from their exertions in the chase, which had been conducted under abroiling sun ... About half-past four, however, Captain Swain contrived, by themost subtle management and great physical exertions, to get near to themonster, when he immediately struck him with the harpoon with his own hands;and, before he had time to recover from the blow, he managed with his usualdexterity to give him two fatal wounds with the lance, which caused the bloodto flow from the blow-hole in abundance. The whale, after the last lance,immediately descended below the surface, and the captain felt certain that hewas going to ‘sound,’ but in this he was much mistaken, for a few minutes afterhis descent he again rose to the surface with great velocity, and striking theboat with the front part of his head threw it high into the air with the menand everything contained therein, fracturing it to atoms and scattering itscrew widely about. While the men were endeavouring to save themselves fromdrowning by clinging to their oars and pieces of the wreck of the boat, theenormous animal was seen swimming round and round them, appearing as ifmeditating an attack with his flukes, ... but this was not attempted. They hadnow nothing to hope for but the arrival of the other boats to relieve them fromtheir dangerous situation, rendered more so by the appearance of several largesharks, attracted by the blood which flowed from the whale ... After they hadremained in the water about three quarters of an hour, assisting themselves byclinging to pieces of the wreck, one of the other boats arrived and took themin.... But although these brave whale fishermen had been so defeated, they werenot subdued: the moment they entered the boat which took them from the ocean,their immediate determination was for another attack upon the immense creature,which remained close by ...

“Lancing the whale” –another picture which was reprinted many times

“Captain Swain, with twelve men in oneboat, therefore made another attack upon the whale with the lance which causedit to throw up blood from the blow-hole in increased quantities. ... Soon afterthe arrival of the third boat, the whale went into its flurry and soon died,when, to the dismay of the boats’ crews, who had endured so much danger andhardship in its capture, it sunk, and never rose again...”

1840

Bennett, Frederick Debell. Narrative of a whaling voyageround the globe, from the year 1833-1836 : comprising sketches of Polynesia,California, the Indian Archipelago, etc. with an account of southern whales,the sperm whale fishery, and the natural history of the climates visited. London: Richard Bentley, 1840. 2 v.

Bennett was another source used by Melvillein Moby Dick. Here is the quotationhe gives in his “Epilogue” (Chapter 135): “The Cachalot (Sperm Whale) is notonly better armed than the True Whale (Greenland or Right Whale) in possessinga formidable weapon at either extremity of its body, but also more frequentlydisplays a disposition to employ these weapons offensively and in manner atonce so artful, bold, and mischievous, as to lead to its being regarded as themost dangerous to attack of all the known species of the whale tribe.” –The interpolationsin brackets are Melville’s.

Historical Study of the Period:

1913

McNab, Robert,1864-1917. The old whaling days : a history of Southern New Zealand from 1830 to1840. Christchurch, N.Z. : Whitcombe and Tombs, 1913. 508 p.

Good for McNab! At least someone recognised that therewere Europeans in NZ before those famous “Early Settlers”! Pity no-one tookmuch notice of the fact.

Floreat Physeter:The Whaling Industry as a Global Powerhouse, mid-19th century

Science and Economics:

1849

Enderby, Charles, 1798?-1876. The Auckland Islands : a shortaccount of their climate, soil, & productions : and the advantages ofestablishing there a settlement at Port Ross for carrying on the southern whalefisheries / by Charles Enderby. London : Pelham Richardson, 1849. iv, [vi] 57 p.

1851

Wall, William S. (William Sheridan). Historyand description of the skeleton of a new sperm whale lately set up in the Australian Museum;together with some account of a new genus of sperm whale called Euphysetes.Sydney : W.R. Piddington, 1851. 66 p.

Personal Accounts:

There was a great fashion in the 19thcentury for writing the “journal” or “diary” of one’s adventures. Not all ofthese got published at the time, true, as we can see from the examples below.However, in the later part of the century true-life accounts of whalingadventures, non-fiction or fictionalized, remained as popular as they had beenwhen Melville’s novels Typee (1846), Omoo (1847), and Mardi(1849) first came out. The romanticized aura of such stories of derring-do inthe South Seas had great appeal. But Melville’s Moby Dick, a much more serious and wide-ranging book, whichincludes a lot of references to the non-fiction works he consulted in hisresearch, was panned by the critics of the day and sank like a stone. It wasnot to be until the anniversary of his birth in 1919 that the book would berediscovered and its author recognised as one of America’s greatest writers.

1860s-1870s

Hempleman, George, d. 1880, and Anson, F. A. (FrederickArthur). The Piraki log (e Pirangi ahau koe), or, Diary of Captain Hempleman :with introduction, glossary, illustrations and map / by the presentowner. London : H. Frowde, Oxford University Press, [1910?]

Markham, Albert Hastings, Sir, 1841-1918. Awhaling cruise to Baffin’s Bay and the Gulf of Boothia, and an account of therescue of the crew of the Polaris. London : S. Low, Marston, Low andSearle, 1874. xxiv, 319 p.

Smith, Charles Edward, 1838-1879. From the deep of the sea : beingthe diary of the late Charles Edward Smith, M.R.C.S., surgeon of the whale-shipDiana, of Hull / edited by his son, Charles Edward Smith Harris. London: A. & C. Black, 1922. xi, 288 p.

20THCENTURY: FROM SCIENCE TO WHALE-WATCHING

Sperm whale (foreground) and bottle-nosed whale

Serious Stuff: 20th-CenturyScience

1912

Waite, Edgar R. (Edgar Ravenswood), 1866-1928. Guideto the whales and dolphins of New Zealand : with special reference to the skeletonsof the Okarito Whale and the cast of the Allandale Whale in the CanterburyMuseum. Christchurch, N.Z. : Canterbury College (University of New Zealand), 1912. 21 p.

1998

Lawrence, Susan and Staniforth, Mark, 1957- (eds.) Thearchaeology of whaling in Southern Australia and New Zealand. Gundaroo,N.S.W. : Brolga Press for the Australasian Society for Historical Archaeologyand the Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology, 1998. (Specialpublication (Australian Institute for Maritime Archaeology) ; no. 10). 115 p.

Personal Accounts:

1939

Gottgens, Tommy. Dad's diary : the chronicle of an insurance salesman who went whaling. Claremont,South Africa : Pretext 1998. 99 p.

One of the most unusual items in thecollection. It is held only in South Australia and I couldn't find it listedonline elsewhere, not even by the National Library of South Africa. The authoris the “Dad” of the title, Tommy Gottgens. He was a Dutchman who settled inSouth Africa. In 1939 the South African economy was at a low ebb and he took ajob on board a Danish whaling ship so as to support his family. The diarysimply recounts the day-to-day details of his whaling life—with quite anemphasis on the meals, which were clearly the highlights of each day! The foodwas surprisingly good and would doubtless have astounded the whalers of the 19thcentury. Tommy was obviously a very bright man: he’d travelled quite widely andspoke 7 languages including several Asian languages. And he was very capableand conscientious: they had a wait before leaving South Africa and he stayedaboard and put in some hard yacker, so the captain made him a foreman. Thismeant he didn’t get some of the dirtier jobs once they started whaling, likecleaning out the barrels, which were so smelly that they made several of themen feel faint. Tommy doesn’t complain but he mentions his aching muscles: theworks seems to have been as hard and dirty as it was 100 years before. TheDanish ship was designed in Germany and as World War II had broken out, inorder to protect her the captain had her decked out as a Germanwarship—extraordinary!. It must have worked, though. The diary wasn’t publisheduntil 1998 because Tommy wouldn’t let the family read it, although it had beenwritten with them in mind. But it recounts nothing shocking—perhaps, as he wasa modest man, he just felt shy about letting the kids reads his literaryeffort. It’s an easy read—very different from Melville’s overblown style!

Telling the Tale: Stories forBig & Little People:

1928

Bootes, Henry H. (Henry Hedger) Deep-sea bubbles, or, The cruiseof the Anna Lombard. London : Ernest Benn, 1928. 261 p.

A fictitious account of avoyage in a 19th-century whaling-ship.

1985

Nesdale, Iris. The bay whalers / Ira Nesdale ;illustrated by Joan Saint. Kenthurst, [N.S.W.] : Kangaroo Press, 1985. 112 p.

An exciting story for childrenof whaling in small boats off the South Australian coast in the mid-19thcentury.

History of Whaling At Home & Abroad:

1924

Hawes, Charles Boardman, 1889-1923. Whaling. London :Heinemann, 1924. 358 p.

1926

Cook, John Atkins. Pursuing the whale : a quarter century ofwhaling in the Arctic. London : Murray, 1926. 344 p.

1969

Colwell, Max. Whaling around Australia. Adelaide :Rigby [1969] 168, [10] p.

1980

Kerr, Margaret and Kerr, Colin, 1912-1982. Australia's early whalemen. Adelaide: Rigby 1980. (Pageant of Australia) 64p.

Looking Back: Local History, South Australia

1947

Borrow, K. T. (Keith Travers). Whaling at Encounter Bay.Adelaide : Pioneers' Association of S.A, [1947] [16] p.

1981

Parsons, Ronald, 1923- Port Lincoln shipping : whalers, disasters, and the sea link with Adelaide. Magill [S. Aust.]: R.H. Parsons 1981. iii, 73 p.

Whale Watching in SouthAustralia:

1999

Royal Geographical Society of South Australia. Tothe whales and back, 12 to 18 September, 1999. [Adelaide] : RoyalGeographical Society of South Australia Inc., [1999]

41 leaves.

Notes to accompany a coach tour to Eyre Peninsula andthe head of the Great Australian Bight to watch whales.

~~~~~~~

Have I bored ontoo long about the whalers and their books? Mm. Call me Ishmael.

From Machu Picchu to Darkest Africa By Way of the Northwest Passage

2011-12-02T14:47:00.000-08:00

FROM MACHU PICCHU TO DARKEST AFRICA

BY WAY OF THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE:

The Unexplored Delights of the Historical Travel Books of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia

Intrepid 19th-century women explorers, the British Raj in its heyday, first ventures to the sources of the Nile, Napoleon on Saint Helena, early Royal Visits by Queen Victoria’s family members to the far-flung outposts of the British Empire, dotty Great White Hunters happily slaughtering the wildlife of Africa and India, efforts to find the Northwest Passage, with the entire history of the lost Franklin Expedition to the Arctic, earnest missionaries endeavouring to convert the natives from Hawaii to Papua New Guinea and back again, their bishops writing detailed accounts of diocesan visits to Newfoundland, Labrador, the Cape of Good Hope, Barbados, Australia, New Zealand... These are just some of the unexplored delights of the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia’s extensive collection of 19th and early 20th century published works of “travels”.

Up until now these books have only been documented by an ancient card catalogue, largely handwritten. (An interesting artefact in itself!) Consequently the travel books have remained a well hidden secret, though the RGSSA Library is open to the public. But the catalogue of the entire collection, which includes manuscripts, photographs, artefacts and maps, is now being published on the Internet (http://rgssa.slimlib.com.au:81/vufind/ or follow the link at the Society’s web page, http://www.rgssa.org.au/ ). The complete book collection, about 20,000 titles, is twice the size of the travel collection, and includes a large number of old, rare and valuable volumes, plus a lot of early Australiana and a huge number of publications relating to the exploration and history of South Australia. Thanks to the good offices of the State Library of South Australia ready-made electronic catalogue records were available for these, and they are now in the Society’s web catalogue.

Currently cataloguing of the travel books is under way, and so far we’ve done about 5,000 titles, with about as many still to go. It's been a fascinating and rewarding exercise! New curiosities pop up every day of the project and for me, as Chief Volunteer Cataloguer (I think I need a hat like a volunteer fireman’s), a lot of the interest is in checking and correlating incoming records so that the catalogue successfully links like materials. You could easily be misled by the Society’s name into assuming the collection is an entirely geographical one, but as you can see from the examples above, it isn’t. Well, geography in the very widest sense, yes! Some sage once told me that while maths is maths and English is English and biology is biology, geography covers everything—and that’s about it! Our travel books aren’t just accounts of what was seen and where, they’re intriguing social documents, throwing a bright (and often scary) light on the attitudes and conventions of the time. It’s okay to kill off another country’s unique fauna, archaeological artefacts exist for the purpose of being brought Home (to England, natch!), lesser breeds without the law are mildly amusing and definitely in need of conversion to Our religion, “unexplored” countries exist for the purpose of opening up and of course economic exploitation, and here’s a lovely manual, early settlers, telling you what to expect when you emigrate to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa... (We’ve got a bunch of those, at a guess written by an Englishman whose sole experience of long voyages was punting on the Isis.) It’s a world where wogs begin at Calais, abroad for the majority stops at Monte, Victoria’s on her throne and all’s right with the world.

Yes, we can condemn it as jingoistic, racist and White Imperialist, and it is all of these things when looked at from our perspective, but the really fascinating thing is that the books show us that world as its contemporaries experienced it. The collection is a compelling documentation of the social history of the period.

THE SAD CASE OF THEODORE VOGEL, 1812-1841

And some of that history is very frightening – giveth one seriously to think, kind of thing. Take the Darkest Africa books, of which we’ve got a-many—not just the standard volumes from the pen of Henry Morton Stanley (the “Dr Livingstone, I presume?” man, the guy who coined the phrase “darkest Africa”), but lots from lesser writers, or perhaps writers who weren’t such successful self-publicists as the enterprising and energetic Stanley! Sometimes the biographical information turns up in unexpected places, too, as in the case of Theodore Vogel. The Royal Geographical Society of South Australia holds a copy of the book Niger Flora. More properly,

Niger flora, or, An enumeration of the plants of western tropical Africa : collected by ... Theodore Vogel, botanist to the voyage of the expedition sent by Her Britannic Majesty to the river Niger in 1841, under the command of Capt. H.D. Trotter, R.N., &c.; including Spicilegia gorgonea, by P.B. Webb, and Flora nigritiana, by Dr. J.D. Hooker ... and George Bentham, with a sketch of the life of Dr. Vogel / edited by Sir W.J. Hooker. London : H. Bailliere, 1849.

Theodore Vogel was born in Berlin on 30 July 1812. He attended the University of Berlin, particularly studying natural history, and obtaining his doctorate in 1837, his thesis being on the genus Cassia. He then published many articles and essays, especially on the Leguminosae. In August 1839 in Bonn he met a member of the African Civilization Society, set up in London under the patronage of Prince Albert as an anti-slave trade endeavour. The British government was fitting out three ships to go up the Niger River from its entrance at the Bight of Benin on the western coast of Central Africa to make treaties and set up a trading post. A botanist was needed (largely for economic botany) and Vogel agreed to go, being eager to explore a region whose plant life was almost unknown. The expedition finally took off in May 1841. Vogel kept a journal and wrote copious notes and letters as they went. On the way he collected a lot of plants from Sierra Leone. The expedition reached the mouth of the Niger on 9th August, and the confluence of the Niger and the Tschadda on 11th September. When they bought a piece of land he began to amass a large plant collection. About a month later the members of the expedition, who had been unwell off and on, came down with a violent tropical fever, and they went downriver to Clarence Cove on the island of Fernando Po in the hopes of benefiting from sea air. Vogel’s last letter was written from there on 22 November. In December the heavy monsoonal rains hit and, still weak from his earlier bout of fever, Vogel came down with dysentery. He died, peacefully according to the account in Niger Flora, on the 17th December.

Poor Theodore Vogel! It’s such a sad little story, isn’t it? What a brilliant, earnest and dedicated young man he must have been.

The RGSSA’s collection is full of such intriguing insights into the very real dangers of travel in the 19th century. I often think it’s a wonder any of the early explorers survived. No proper medicine, no communications, no decent transport... Since working with the collection I’ve developed a strong impulse to tell the know-it-alls of the 21st century who state loftily that Burke and Wills would have survived their journey north through the centre of Australia if they'd been better bushmen, or that Robert Scott should of course have used sled-dogs to reach the South Pole, to choke on their ruddy mobile phones and put their GPS systems where they’ll do the most good. They’ve got no idea what it was really like! Sure, the 19th-century writers’ style is often long-winded and verbose, and their pontificating can be hard to take—but heck! They were there! They did it. Their world won’t come again.

I’m very gradually upgrading the catalogue records with biographical notes about the travellers and explorers. You can read them by searching for a catalogue record (you’ll get the short display format) and then looking at the full display. Any contributions would be gratefully received, as I’m not going to get through 10,000 titles this century! Email me (Kathy) at infoteam@senet.com.au And we’re always looking for volunteer cataloguers! Know MARC and AACR2? Cringing at the thought of switching to RDA? Me, too! Contact me or the RGSSA Library - library@rgssa.org.au - if you’d like to help out.

More posts about shoes and ships and sealing wax from the RGSSA collection to come...