Geographies of exploration and improvement: William Scoresby and Arctic whaling, 1782-1822

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 32, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 512-538

  Bravo, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Arctic; Exploration; Improvement; Maritime; Scoresby; Whaling

Indexed keywords

ARTISANAL FISHERY; ECONOMIC HISTORY; EIGHTEENTH CENTURY; EXPLORATION; WHALING;

ARCTIC;

ANIMALIA; WERNERIA;

EID: 33745218315     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2005.10.006     Document Type: Article

References (63)

1. Exploration underlined is Scoresby's emphasis. 'Plan proposed by Captain Scoresby for combining exploration with whale fishing, submitted to the Board of Trade', Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, Manuscript WHITM:SCO1294.
2. The story of Scoresby's bid to lead one of the Admiralty's two voyages of discovery in 1818, and his rejection by John Barrow, the Admiralty Second Secretary, has been told in most studies of Scoresby's life, most of which understandably portray this episode as an injustice against a meretricious and moral man. Studies of Scoresby's life include R.E. Scoresby-Jackson, The Life of William Scoresby, London, 1861; C. Stamp and T. Stamp, William Scoresby: Arctic Scientist, Whitby, 1976; H. Montgomery, William Scoresby: Arctic Explorer (1789-1857), Edinburgh, 1984. Scoresby's scientific authority in relation to the Northwest Passage expeditions is discussed to some extent in L.P. Kirwan, The White Road: A Survey of Polar Exploration, London, 1959, 73-98; M.T. Bravo, Science and discovery in the Admiralty search for a North-West Passage, 1815-1825, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Cambridge, 1992; T.H. Levere, Science and the Canadian Arctic: A Century of Exploration, 1818-1918, Cambridge and New York, 1993; C.I. Jackson, The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger, Series 3, 12, London, 2003. However none of these examines Scoresby's exploration or his writing after 1818 when he continued to explore the Arctic Seas, and none considers his extensive authority on Arctic matters after he retired from his life at sea in 1823. The relationship between his evangelical commitments and his studies of magnetism in situ in the Arctic is discussed in A. Winter, 'The Island of Mesmeria': the politics of mesmerism in early Victorian Britain, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Cambridge University, 1993.
3. W. Scoresby, Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery, Edinburgh, 1823.
4. For details of Scoresby's visit to Paris, see Scoresby-Jackson, The Life of William Scoresby; Stamp and Stamp, William Scoresby, 102-105. There is a substantial body of literature in the history of science comparing the sciences in France with those in England and Scotland in this period. For example, see M.P. Crosland, The Organization of Science in France at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century, London, 1967; M.P. Crosland, Science under Control: The French Academy of Sciences 1795-1914, Cambridge, 1992.
5. E. Sabine, An Account of Experiments to Determine the Figure of the Earth by Means of the Pendulum Vibrating Seconds in Different Latitudes; as well as on Various Other Subjects of Philosophical Inquiry, London, 1825.
6. The story of the reception of Scoresby's voyage is discussed in Stamp and Stamp, William Scoresby, 90-91, but there is scope for a fuller study of the reception of Scoresby's journals and surveys.
7. An excellent illustration of the politics of a controversy about Arctic toponyms is U. Wraakberg, The politics of naming: contested observations and the shaping of geographical knowledge, in: M. Bravo and S. Sörlin (Eds), Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practices, Canton, MA, 2002, 155-199.
8. I acknowledge that the controversy between Scoresby and Barrow can be constructed in greater detail, but the point is sufficiently established here for my purposes.
9. For a fuller discussion of the seconds pendulum and how it could be used to create a natural standard for the yard and the metre, see Bravo, Science and discovery, Chapters 1, 3.
10. My use of the term 'ocean-space' to draw attention to competing accounts and perspectives on the materiality and agency of the oceans is drawn from P.E. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean, Cambridge, 2001.
11. P. Peck, Some Observations for the Improvement of Trade, by Establishing the Fishery of Great Britain, Preface, London, 1732.
12. W. Scoresby, Sr. and W. Scoresby, Jr., 'Outline of a Plan for the examination of the Coasts of Greenland, Spitzbergen, etc. in search of new Whale-Fishing Stations; and for the improvement of the Geography of the said Lands, which is respectfully submitted to the Honorable Board of Trade', mss., Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, SCO648.
13. M. Berman, Social Change and Scientific Organization: The Royal Institution, 1799-1844, London, 1978; R.H. Drayton, Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World, New Haven, 2000; J. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment: Useful Knowledge and Polite Culture, Cambridge and New York, 1994, 185-236; J. Gascoigne, Science in the Service of Empire: Joseph Banks, the British State and the Uses of Science in the Age of Revolution, Cambridge and New York, 1998, 65-110.
14. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 188-196.
15. J. Brewer, The Pleasures of the Imagination: English Culture in the Eighteenth Century, London, 1997.
16. Drayton, Nature's Government; L. Koerner, Linnaeus: Nature and Nation, Cambridge, MA, 1999.
17. Gascoigne, Joseph Banks and the English Enlightenment, 208.
18. Steinberg, The Social Construction of the Ocean.
19. See for example a discussion of James Rennell's contribution to creating a visual language for ocean currents in. Bravo M.T. James Rennell: antiquarian of ocean currents. Ocean Challenge 4 (1993) 41-50
20. C.W.J. Withers, Geography, Science, and National Identity: Scotland since 1520, Cambridge and New York, 2001; L. Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837, New Haven, 1992; Koerner, Linnaeus. Recent works dealing more thoughtfully with the oceans as geographical spaces are: L. Koerner, Daedalus hyperboreus: Baltic natural history and mineralogy in the enlightenment, in: W. Clark, J. Golinski and S. Schaffer (Eds), The Sciences in Enlightened Europe, Chicago and London, 1999.
21. Mayhew's polemic against anachronism is outlined in his introduction in: R.J. Mayhew, Enlightenment Geography: The Political Languages of British Geography, 1650-1850, Basingstoke, 2000. The most vexed debate about anachronism in eighteenth-century geography has concerned the meaning, adoption, and significance of quantitative methods. Interestingly enough, the significance of measurement has been most hotly debated around the work of Alexander von Humboldt, a figure whose place at the end of the eighteenth century raises important questions about the relationship between quantification, the end of enlightenment, and epistemological discontinuity. A Kantian-inspired account of quantification as geographical progress, for example, is M. Bowen, Empiricism and Geographical Thought: From Francis Bacon to Alexander Von Humboldt, Cambridge Geographical Studies, Vol. 15, Cambridge, 1981. For an aesthetic and literary reading of measurements in Humboldt's scientific travels, the key works are M. Dettelbach, Global physics and aesthetic empire, in: D.P. Miller and P.H. Reill (Eds), Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of Nature, Cambridge and New York, 1996, 258-292; A. Godlewska, Geography Unbound: French Geographic Science from Cassini to Humboldt, Chicago and London, 1999.
22. For a reading of accuracy in measurement as an index of social mobility between artisanal and polite cultures, see M.T. Bravo, Precision and curiosity in scientific travel: James Rennell and the orientalist geography of the new imperial age 1760-1830, in: J. Elsner and J.P. Rubiés (Eds), Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel, London, 162-183.
23. In relation to the history of navigation instruments, see J.A. Bennett, The Divided Circle: A History of Instruments for Astronomy, Navigation and Surveying, Oxford, 1987. On longitude specifically, see D. Howse, Greenwich Time and the Discovery of Longitude, Oxford, 1980. For a more recent and popular, if somewhat flawed account, D. Sobel, Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time, New York, 1995. For an account of precision instruments in relation to the oceans, consult A. McConnell, No Sea too Deep: The History of Oceanographic Instruments, Bristol, 1982. Immensely important for historians of science understanding of the profound contribution of artists on voyages of discovery has been B. Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific, 2nd Edition, Sydney, 1985; see also Miller and Reill (Eds), Visions of Empire; D.G. Burnett, Masters of All They Surveyed: Exploration, Geography and a British El Dorado, Chicago and London, 2000.
24. Fertile links between environmental history and history of science are being explored more thoroughly now, as for example at a recent conference on 'Environmental History of the Oceans', June 2-5, 2004, in Copenhagen. Recent contributions from the history of science to the history of the oceans include: H.M. Rozwadowski and D.K. van Keuren (Eds), The Machine in Neptune's Garden: Historical Perspectives on Technology and the Marine Environment, Sagamore Beach, MA, 2004; G. Wright et al. (UNESCO IOC) (Eds), Ocean Sciences Bridging the Millennia: A Spectrum of Historical Accounts, Paris and Beijing, 2004. Recent studies of the oceans in relation to the science of natural history includes: E.L. Mills, De Motu Marium: Understanding the Oceans before the Second Scientific Revolution, 1999;
25. McConnell A. L.F. Marsigli (1658-1730): early contributions to marine science and hydrography. International Hydrographic Review 5 N.S. 2 (2004) 6-15
26. M. Deacon, Scientists and the Sea, 1650-1900: A Study of Marine Science, 2nd Edition, Aldershot and Brookfield, 1997; M. Deacon, Oceanography: Concepts and History, Stroudsburg, 1978; D. Howse (Ed.), 500 Years of Nautical Science 1400-1900, Proceedings of the Third International Reunion for the History of Science (1979), Greenwich, 1981.
27. The only such study of the scientific equipment and experiments carried out on the Phipps expedition in search of the North Pole in 1773 is. Savours A. "A very interesting point in Geography": the 1773 Phipps Expedition towards the North Pole. Arctic 37 (1984) 402-428
28. B. Mansfield, Fisheries Development or Open Access? Creating Large-Scale Fishing on the U.S. West Coast, Proceedings of 'Marine Environmental Politics in the 21st Century' Conference, April 30-May 2 1999, MacArthur Program on Multilateral Governance, Institute of International Studies, U.C. Berkeley. Last accessed at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/macarthur/marine/papers/mansfield-0.html on 20 August 2005.
29. Some of the best examples of unlicensed, unwarranted, or misplaced trappings of improvement were made in satire, as for example: Swift's attack on corruption in Gulliver's Travels, 1726; or James Gillray's engraving of Sir Joseph Banks in The Great South Sea Caterpillar, transform'd into a Bath Butterfly, 1795.
30. D.W. Howe, 'Jacksonianism and the promise of improvement', review of D. Feller, The Jacksonian Promise: America, 1815-1840, Baltimore, 1995, in Reviews in American History 25 (1997) 58-62.
31. R. Barker, Cook's nursery: Whitby's eighteenth century merchant fleet, in: G. Williams (Ed.), Captain Cook: Exploration and Reassessments, New York, 2004.
32. Jackson, Introduction in The Arctic Whaling Journals, xxviii; Scoresby-Jackson, The Life of William Scoresby, 30-31.
33. G. Jackson, The Northern Fishery Boom, 1783-c.1808, The British Whaling Trade, London, 1978, 70-90.
34. W. Scoresby (the Younger), Memorials of the Sea: My Father: Being Records of the Adventurous Life of W. Scoresby Esq. of Whitby, London, 1851.
35. On Jameson's role as geological consultant for the Admiralty's Arctic expeditions, see. Sweet J.M. Robert Jameson and the explorers: the search for the North-West Passage. Annals of Science 31 (1974) 21-47
36. For Robert Jameson's exposition of his Neptunian position, see R. Jameson, Elements of Geognosy, Edinburgh, 1808. Of the many studies of the Huttonians vs. the Neptunists, for a study of Jameson's role, see J.M. Sweet and C.D. Waterston, Robert Jameson's Approach to the Wernerian Theory of the Earth, 1796, Edinburgh, 1967.
37. The most complete study of Jameson's scientific career is S. Hartley, Robert Jameson, geology and polite culture, 1796-1826: natural knowledge enquiry and civic sensibility in late enlightenment Scotland, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Edinburgh University, 2001.
38. Scoresby returned to university to read theology at Queens' College, Cambridge, as a 'ten years man', a term used for mature students who wanted to study part-time, without the same residency restrictions as other students.
39. W. Scoresby, On the Greenland or Polar Ice, Transactions of the Wernerian Natural History Society, Vol. 2, Edinburgh, 1818, 261-338. Although the published account suggests it was read on March 11, 1818, it was in fact read over the course of three meetings, as recorded in the Minutes of the Wernerian Natural History Society, Jameson papers, Edinburgh University Library archives.
40. Stamp and Stamp, William Scoresby; Montgomery, William Scoresby, 53.
41. Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, Scoresby papers, SCO648.
42. Stamp and Stamp, William Scoresby; Montgomery, William Scoresby, 71.
43. The Times (Friday, March 27, 1818) 2 issue 10315; col F
44. Scoresby gives the example of his previous ship the Resolution whose total cost in 1803 was around £8000. He financed this with eight subscriptions of £1000 each.
45. W. Scoresby to J. Banks, November 1817, Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society, Box H, SCO576.
46. Scoresby to Banks, September-October 1817, Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
47. Scoresby to Banks, November 1817, Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society.
48. W. Scoresby, The 1806 Log Book: Concerning the Arctic Voyage of Captain William Scoresby, Whitby, 1981.
49. A good example of the division of an institutional work into two volumes, one devoted to natural history, and the other to human history, is D. Cranz, The History of Greenland: Containing a Description of the Country, London, 1767.
50. The best discussion of the relationship between evangelicalism and economics in the late Georgian period is B. Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795-1865, Oxford, 1988.
51. W. Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions, Vol. 2, Edinburgh, 1820, 1-2.
52. Winter, 'The Island of Mesmeria'.
53. Jackson, The British Whaling Trade.
54. C.W.J. Withers, 'Geography, Enlightenment, and the public sphere' offers a masterful study of the meanings of the terms 'local' and 'national', and how they emerged in relation to each other, in what is a geography of the practice of enlightened geography in Scotland, in Withers, Geography, Science, and National Identity; M. Heffernan examines the local settings of purported universal theories of progress in 'On geography and progress: Turgot's Plan d'un ouvrage sur la géographie politique (1751) and the origins of modern progressive thought; Political Geography 13 (1994) 328-343. See also the important collection of R. Porter and M. Teich (Eds), The Enlightenment in National Context, Cambridge and New York, 1981; D.N. Livingstone, Putting Science in Its Place: Geographies of Scientific Knowledge, London and Chicago, 2003; see also M. Ogborn, Spaces of Modernity: London's Geographies, 1680-1780, New York, 1998.
55. Withers, Geography, Science, and National Identity; C.W.J. Withers and P. Wood, Science and Medicine in the Scottish Enlightenment, 2002.
56. C.A. Bayly, Imperial Meridian: The British Empire and the World 1780-1830, London, 1989.
57. The southern boundary was laid down in the legislation for whaling bounties (subsidies) in 26th Geo. III. cap. 41.§ 16. The difference between the legal and vernacular definitions of the Greenland Seas is discussed in Scoresby, An Account of the Arctic Regions, Vol. I, 172.
58. The key economic history of the Greenland whale fishery in the long eighteenth century is Jackson, The British Whaling Trade.
59. The circumpolar chart in Scoresby's An Account of the Arctic Regions (1820) draws attention to his own considerable survey work in improving the hydrographical knowledge of the Greenland Seas while also formally acknowledging the discoveries of Captain Ross in the cartouche. Scoresby's bitterness towards Barrow did not extend to the naval officers appointed to the expeditions, who kept up an intermittent correspondence with Scoresby, generally seeking his advice on Arctic matters.
60. W. Scoresby, 'On some Circumstance connected with the Original Suggestion of the Modern Arctic Expedition' manuscript, Box M SCO746, subsequently published in the New Edinburgh Philosophical Journal 20 (1835-1836).
61. The Encyclopaedie of Diderot and D'Alembert is one of the most explicit examples of an intention to formalise and make explicit craft knowledge and in the process to obviate its private and potentially capricious nature.
62. For an important study of natural philosophical appropriation of early nineteenth-century artisanal knowledge, see. Sibum H.O. Reworking the mechanical value of heat: instruments of precision and gestures of accuracy in early Victorian England. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 26 (1994) 73-106 For an especially nuanced analysis of negotiation across the epistemological and class lines in natural history
63. see. Secord A. Corresponding interests: artisans and gentlemen in nineteenth-century natural history. British Journal for the History of Science 27 (1994) 383-408