A strange sail in the NE quarter…
ARCdoc is drawing on a number of sources to build up a picture of the climate of the far North Atlantic and the Arctic. The focus to date has been on transcribing weather observations from logbooks kept by the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) and whaling ships, with a view to turning our attention to the Royal Navy discovery ships’ logbooks, once this is complete.
When you are working on a particular source it is easy to think of those particular ships operating in isolation, but in fact the HBC, whalers and Royal Navy were all operating in similar areas at one time or another and on occasion, they did ‘bump’ into one another.
It is rather helpful when this occurs because this offers us the chance to compare their encounters. A rather nice illustration of this occurs in July 1821 when HBC ships the Prince of Wales and Eddystone, together with the Lord Wellington (transporting settlers) meet with the discovery ships HMS Hecla and Fury in the Davis Straits, off Resolution Island.
From the Prince of Wales logbook:
13th July 1821 “at 8 two ships in sight from the mast head WSW off us 12 or 14 miles appearing to be grappling which we take to be the discovery ships”.
16th July 1821 “the discovery ships grapple near us and Captain Parry sent his boat for me to go on board the Fury”
From the logbook kept on board HMS Fury:
14th July 1821: “At noon strangers ENE 7 or 8 miles”
16th July 1821: “At 8 moderate and cloudy, 3 strangers and Hecla close to. Hauled sails. Sent letters on board the Prince of Wales for England. Captain Davidson of that ship came on board”.
As well as the logbook observations, many of the Captains of the discovery ships later recounted their adventures in printed narrative accounts. These accounts can prove useful in providing more detailed information about the encounter, as we see in Parry’s description of their ships meeting in his ‘Journal of a second voyage for the NW passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, performed in the years 1821-22-23 in Hecla under the orders of Captain William Edward Parry RN,FRS and commander of the expedition’ London: 1824
The Meeting of the Hudson’s Bay Company Ships Prince of Wales and Eddystone with Captain W.E. Parry’s Ships Hecla and Fury
16th July 1821: “The ice being rather less close on the morning of the 16th, we made sail to the westward, at 7:45 am and continued ‘boring’ in that direction the whole day, which enabled us to join the three strange ships. They proved to be, as we supposed, the Prince of Wales, Eddystone and Lord Wellington, bound to Hudson’s Bay. I sent a boat to the former, to request Mr Davidson, the master, to come on board, which he immediately did. From him we learned that the Lord Wellington, having on board one hundred and sixty settlers for the Red River, principally foreigners, of both sexes and every age, had now been twenty days among the ice, and had drifted in various direction at no small risk to the ship. Mr Davidson considered he had arrived here rather too early for advancing to the westward, and strongly insisted on the necessity of first getting to the northward, or in-shore, before we could hope to make any progress; a measure, the expediency of which is well known to all those accustomed to the navigation of icy seas”.
Mr Davidson’s comment that he “considered they had arrived too early for advancing westward” is an interesting and useful one as it shows us how familiar the HBC master’s were with the environment they operated in and in particular, their knowledge of the timing and extent of sea ice in the Davis Straits.
When we come to the analysis stage of the project, combining the data from the ships’ logbooks with secondary sources such as the one above, will undoubtedly provide us with a richer picture of the weather conditions and presence of ice experienced on those voyages.
Visualising ships’ logbook data
Today I came across some great work done by Ben Schmidt who has taken positional data from ships’ logbooks and visualised them to show the voyages of British, Dutch, Spanish and other ships over a period of 100 years (1750-1850).
This visualisation uses positional data which were transcribed as part of the CLIWOC project back in 2001-2003 and include data from the Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) logbooks, a source we are continuing to work with as part of ARCdoc project.
In this visualisation you will see that the HBC ships start to appear from 1760 (further data are available and being transcribed as part of ARCdoc) travelling from the UK over to Hudson’s Bay.
Two interesting points to note are the small seasonal window in which these ships operated as they left the UK in June and returned in September or October in order to avoid the worst of the ice in the David Straits and the Bay and that although generally they would voyage north from the Thames up to the Orkney’s before heading west to Hudson’s Bay they would, on occasion, take a southerly route though the English Channel.
Visualisations such as the one above are an extremely useful tool for us, for several reasons:
- Quality control: they can show us where there are errors in the data. For example where positional data is plainly incorrect, e.g. a ship voyaging on land!
- Analysis: The ship’s progress in time and space and any instrumental observations recorded on board can be compared against various modern climatologies such as wind direction and strength, temperature, air pressure and extent and timing of sea ice.
A nice example of the latter is this visualisation created by one of the ARCdoc team Philip Brohan which shows the progress of HMS Hecla on its voyage to the Arctic in search of a NW passage from 1819-1820 with modern climatolological sea surface temperatures (SST) and sea-ice overlain:
As we collect more data we hope to make more visualisations, and in particular, it will be interesting to see the whaling logbooks represented.
Isles of ice
The logbook, kept by Master Jonathan Fowler Senior on board the Seahorse I on its outward voyage to Hudson Bay in 1754, provides us with a stark reminder of the often treacherous conditions in which the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) ships operated. Although HBC master mariners were highly experienced navigators, possessing a good understanding of the icy conditions they were likely to encounter as they voyaged north into the Davis Straits and into the Bay; they were still very much at the mercy of the natural environment.
In 1754 as the Seahorse and her ships in company voyaged north into the Davis Straits, ice was sighted on the 8th July “At 8am saw an isle of ice” and as the days passed, the presence of ice increased with Fowler noting on the 11th “At noon many isles of ice in sight”. By the 13th, the Seahorse I together with the Prince Rupert and King George reached 61° N and found themselves “enclosed in a body of ice” and in danger of being crushed.
On the 19th, Fowler states “Between 11pm and noon in a body of ice . Was drove by the tide within 20 yards of a large isle of ice that I think not inferior in bulk to St Pauls and the top of it not much lower which if we had touched the consequence might have been such as I pray god I may never have occasioned to wright (sic)”.
John Ross, watercolour, N.B. Sketch of an Island of Ice seen by H.M. Ship Scipion on Davis Straits, dated 1818. Source: Library and Archives Canada, Acc. No. 1973-9-4.
The ships remained locked in “a body of ice” for a month when finally, on 13th August, Fowler reports “At 2pm sailing though the open ice”.
It is possible, based on the positional data recorded in the logbook, that the ships fell in with what is known as the “middle pack”; a tongue of ice that reaches down from Baffin Bay into Davis Strait and sometimes, as far as the Labrador Sea. This southward moving ice stream is composed of deteriorating winter ice from the north and icebergs; the latter of which can be numerous and very large.
As we continue with our transcription and begin analysis of both the terminology and extent of sea ice encountered each year by the HBC ships, we hope to be able to put the experiences of the voyage of the Seahorse I in 1754 into context.
England’s oldest ship logbook?
Although the ARCdoc project has as its time frame the period 1750 to 1850, it is inevitable that other items will come to the team’s attention. Sure enough, team member Matthew Ayre, whilst working in the British Library, came across the logbook of William Baffin; a remarkable document that dates from his voyage to the Arctic in 1615. But Baffin was no stranger to those hazardous waters and this logbook is for his fourth voyage.
William Baffin by Hendrick van der Borcht
It is not known for certain, but it is widely believed that Baffin was born in 1584 of humble parentage, working his way to a respected position as navigator and explorer. He first ventured into the Arctic in 1612 under a Captain James Hall as chief pilot. He then spent time in the whaling grounds off Spitsbergen in the employ of the Muscovy Company who, at that time, controlled English whaling. The purpose of his 1615 voyage in the Discovery was however to find the fabled North West Passage, and whilst he enjoyed no more success in that direction than did his successors, he did put together a volume of scientific observations unmatched for two centuries and much admired by Sir Edward Parry (whose logbooks, incidentally, form part of the ARCdoc remit). Baffin Island and Baffin Bay both bear his name to this day.
Baffin returned to the Arctic the following year after which he took employment in the East India Company sailing to Surat in 1617. He died in 1620 of wounds received in an Anglo-Persian assault on a Portuguese fort in the Persian Gulf.
His logbook may yet prove to be the oldest such English document. It will be the object of study by the ARCdoc team who plan to write a short paper on this remarkable collection of observations and the equally remarkable author.
Hull History Centre
Last week I had the opportunity to visit the Hull History Centre. The Centre is the new home of the Hull City Archives, Hull Local Studies Library and Hull University’s Archives.
It is here where the UK’s largest collection of original whaling logbooks is kept under the watchful eye of Christine Brown, the Conservation and Preservation manager. Christine gave me an excellent guided tour of the Centre, through the public areas and then into the archives themselves. The archives are ‘state of the art’ to say the least, all the documents are kept in climate-controlled rooms with highly sensitive smoke detectors. It’s good to know so much work has gone into preserving the documents held here and their survival for future generations.
After the tour, Christine showed me the original whaling logs, that only a few decades ago could be taken out as library books! It was great to see the original logs having previously worked only with digital images.
Whaling Logs waiting to be imaged
Next it was time to see how the logs are being imaged. Imaging is important in the preservation of such documents as it provides a more accessible version of the document as well as a back up if something were to happen to the original. It’s not quite as simple as pulling out a camera, the Centre has a 100 megapixel document specific camera and rig, as well as various equipment for safely positioning the document before imaging begins.
Logbook all set up for imaging
This standard of imaging provides the best possible digital representation of the document. After each image is taken, Christine carefully crops the image and has the option to adjust the image settings if needed. It is a long and time consuming process, but Christine’s hard work is ensuring the continued survival of these historically important documents as well providing a medium that makes them readily available to anyone, anywhere in the world!
Thanks to Christine and Hull History Centre for a fascinating day
www.hullhistorycentre.org.uk
Visit to Shetland Museum and Archives and Lecture – Robb Robinson, University of Hull
In July I had the opportunity to visit Lerwick in Shetland to examine the whaling archives and discuss records with the museum staff. During this time I had discussions with various people including Ian Tait, Curator and Brian Smith, Archivist, both of the Shetland Museum and Archives as well as Bobby Gear – a PhD student jointly supervised by the North Atlantic Fisheries College, the Shetland Museum and the University of Hull – who is also very knowledgeable about the museum’s archives – and was able to study a number of records to ascertain their value for the ARCdoc Project.
Shetland Museum & Archives, Hay's Dock, Lerwick, Shetland
Background to Arctic Whaling and Shetland
The Shetland Islands had long-term involvement in the Arctic whaling trade. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries vessels voyaging northwards, particularly those heading for the Svalbard archipelago would call into the Bressay Sound to recruit additional crew and victual. Shetlanders made up a substantial proportion of the crew of the whaling ships that sailed northwards from the Bressay Sound. There were several reasons for their involvement. Firstly, Shetlanders were superb small boat handlers, thanks in particular to their involvement in the offshore cod fisheries and their skills were invaluable in the business of whaling and the second was that their rates of pay were low due to a dearth of other employment opportunities on the islands.
The whaling ships recruited crews from both Orkney and Shetland. Ships making a voyage direct to the Davis Straits might call into to Stromness in Orkney to engage additional crew whilst vessels voyaging to the Svalbard Archipelago would visit Shetland for the same purpose. However, vessels such as the Diana of Hull often made a preliminary sealing voyage to Svalbard early in the season and returned to the Bressay Sound to offload their catches before making their main whaling trip to the Davis Straits and so recruited their additional crews for both voyages in Shetland.
The Orkney and Shetland Islands were also to have an enduring interest in the whaling trade that lasted well into the modern whaling era with many islanders from both archipelagos joining twentieth century whaling activities in the southern oceans.
Much of the business of recruitment, victualling and the like were handled by agents, firms such as Hay and Company. My visit to the museum provided me with the opportunity to assess the usefulness of the records that survived.
Survey of the Records
The port of Lerwick was not a home port for whaling ships but, as I have said, a place where whaling ships could victual and recruit labour and this is reflected in the whaling archives to be found in the museum. The archives do not appear to include any ship’s whaling logs which is to be expected and therefore the opportunity to trace individual voyages, weather conditions and the like through this medium do not exist. However, a number of letters and short anecdotes from those involved in whaling voyages contained in the archive do furnish some qualitative information, the most substantive of these relate to the tragic voyage of the Hull whaleship Diana in 1866/7 during which ten Shetlanders and three Hull crew died.
The 'Diana' the last whaler out of Hull, locked in the frozen waters of the Arctic Circle from an original painting by Edward Holt 1989
They include a number of accounts of the voyage recalled by individuals themselves or recorded by commentators, though, of course, the Diana voyage was concerned with the post 1850 period.
DIANA RELIC – Ref SEA 74146: Manuscript pages from a notebook containing verses.
The archive also includes an extensive run of material from Hay and Company who had a long involvement with whaling ships from various ports involved in the whale fishery and these seem to provide material relating to voyages in terms of people recruited, repairs to vessels and victuals etc rather than climatic details and the like.
Furthermore, the archive also includes some interesting surveys from the Napoleonic War period of the inhabitants of various parts of the archipelago which appear to provide detail on the proportion of members of households involved in the whale fisheries and Royal Navy Service. These may prove to be of particular value for social historians of the whaling trade.
Lecture and Radio Broadcast
During my visit I gave a very well attended public lecture on fisheries and whaling in the Shetland Museum and was able to use this opportunity to explain the role of ARCdoc and distribute information and records. This provoked some interesting questions. I also repeated the lecture for broadcast of Radio Shetland and took the opportunity to do some filming for the BBC on the voyage of the whaleship Diana.
- SEAMAN’S DISCHARGE PAPER
Robb Robinson, 2011
The Hudson’s Bay Company and it’s ships’ logbooks
The ARCdoc project is drawing on three sources of ships’ logbooks: those kept by the Royal Navy, Whaling ships and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The latter represents a particularly interesting and important source because it provides marine meteorological observations for the far North Atlantic (60N+), a region which remains largely data deficient for the pre instrumental (before 1850) period.
Who are the Hudson’s Bay Company?
The Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC), which is still in operation today, dates back to 1670. Following the successful voyage of the vessel Nonsuch to trade for beaver pelts with the Cree Indians near James Bay, the company was granted a Royal Charter by Charles II and for nearly 2 centuries the company expanded to control one third of present day Canadian territory, and, latterly, large areas of the present northwestern USA.
From its London headquarters, the HBC extended its communication and trade routes, using a fleet of merchant vessels. These frigates were described by Falconer’s Dictionary of the marine (1780) as ‘light, nimble’ ships, ‘built for the purposes of sailing swiftly, these vessels mount from twenty to thirty eight guns, and are esteemed to be excellent cruisers’.
These ships sailed annually between London and the HBC trading posts in the bay, leaving the Thames estuary around the 31 May. Once out of the Thames, they sailed northwards along the east coast of the British Isles to Stromness in the Orkney Islands, where Company servants were hired and fresh water and provisions were embarked. From here, the ships headed west, sailing a round Cape Farewell in Greenland and into Hudson Strait, south of Resolution Island. Once in the bay, the routes diverged, either south to Moose Factory or more westerly to Churchill or York Factory. On the return voyage, the majority of ships travelled back to London again via the Orkney Islands, but occasionally some took a more southerly route towards the English Channel and Thames Estuary; arriving late September or early October.
Hudson’s Bay Company logbooks
The original logbooks of the vessels are kept in the HBC archives of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada but microfilm copies, together with additional company records, are held at the National Archives in London. The ships’ logbook record extends from 1751 to 1920, with each logbook documenting the daily record of the vessel’s progress whilst at sea. All the logs are hand-written with the majority authored by the chief mate or master, although by the nineteenth century, journals were composed by the chief officer, mate, second mate, third mate, chief engineer, engineer, purser and surgeon.
All the logbooks contain information on hours, speed, course, location (latitude and longitude) wind strength and direction, weather, and observations of sea ice. It’s these observations, when handled carefully, which can be used to extend our scientific knowledge of the climate of the far North Atlantic into the pre instrumental period.
Encounters of Land and Sea, the 6th ESEH conference. Turku, Finland, 28 June – 02 July 2011
I travelled down to London feeling nervous, excited and intrigued. I had never been to a conference so wasn’t sure what to expect. Travel arrangements went smoothly and soon enough me and Catharine had arrived in Turku, greeted by blue skies and sunshine (24 hours a day!). First up was a guided tour of the excellent maritime museum: the Forum Marinum, followed by a reception aboard the Suomen Joutsen. 
Thursday morning and we were one of first to present, I was very nervous but the presentation went well and generated alot of interest in ARCdoc, with questions following thick and fast, allowing for plenty of discussion that continued beyond the scope of our timeslot.
I was surprised at the diversity of topics being presented through-out the conference, so many infact I was unable to go to all presentations I wanted to!
I will say two papers I found very enjoyable were ‘The Emergence of Early Specialist Fishing Communities in Iceland: AD 1000 to AD 1800′ by Stuart Morrison and ‘The Paradox of David Stead and the Australian Sea’ by Lif Lund Jacobsen. Abstracts for both can be found here: http://eseh2011.utu.fi/?page_id=88
Before I knew it, it was Saturday and time to fly back to the UK. Turku is a beautiful city and I thoroughly enjoyed the conference. On behalf of the ARCdoc team I would like to thank Timo Myllyntaus and the University of Turku for their hard work in creating such a welcoming, diverse and well organised week. My first conference experience has definately been a good one. Matt
Despite temptation we resisted a visit to Moomin World
ARCdoc builds on past experience
The ARCdoc project is innovative in its attention to ships’ logbooks from the Arctic regions, but logbooks have been a subject of growing interest for the past decade. They provide an unrivalled source of detailed, often daily, information for the climate of the oceans over the past three centuries. The first coordinated attempt to establish the true scientific character of these often venerable documents was the CLIWOC project (Climatological Database for the World’s Oceans:1750 to 1850). This project was funded by the European Union and included many of the team members of ARCdoc. It’s website can be found at http://www.ucm.es/info/cliwoc/ where the datbase and much additional information can be accessed free of charge. As the project title suggests, concern here was with global scale data assimilation and it used, for that purpose, logbooks from the UK, Spain, France and the Netherlands all of whose imperial powers once extended widely across the planet. More recently the CORRAL (UK Colonial Registers and Royal Navy logbooks) paid closer attention to the logbooks of the great voyages of discovery undertaken by British explorers such as Cook, Flinders and Bligh. These logbooks were imaged in their entirety recognising their historical as well as scientific importance, and can be found at http://www.corral.org.uk/ . It is on the basis of this earlier work that we have now turned our attention to the study of the Arctic region and the remarkable legacy of documents that chronicle human endeavour in this inhospitable region.
A page from the logbook of the Hull whaler "the Eagle". this is typical of the time with details of the whales caught but also, importantly, the weather and sea ice conditions at the time.
The voyage begins..
This post marks the beginning of a three year project called ARCdoc. The project, which has been generously funded by the Leverhulme Trust, seeks to clarify and enhance our knowledge of climate change in the Arctic region using historical marine meteorological observations made on board Royal Navy,whaling and commercial (The Hudson’s Bay Company) ships, between 1750 and 1850.
The Arctic constitutes a key part of the global climate system, responding to, and in turn influencing conditions beyond its boundaries. However, the region’s complex climatic character, although of global significance, is amongst the most poorly chronicled and its climatic history therefore, remains poorly understood.
This project seeks to address this problem of data deficiency by extracting weather information from the largely overlooked logbooks kept by the ships of the Royal Navy, Whaling industry and the Hudson’s Bay Company. The study period commences with the earliest logbooks (1750) and concludes with the advent of organised gathering of marine observations in the mid-nineteenth century.
All the logbooks contain non instrumental observations of wind force and wind direction, supplemented by additional information on the state of the sea, sea ice cover and the prevailing weather conditions. Preparation of instrumental observations (air pressure and temperature) were not common practice until the mid nineteenth century, although there are exceptions: those being the Hudson’s Bay Company logbooks, which start to contain observations in the early part of the 180o’s and in the logbooks of Royal Navy discovery ships voyaging in search of the North West Passage, from 1819 onwards.
The geographical range of the study region includes the seas around Greenland, including the Denmark Strait, Labrador Sea and Davis Strait. Records from Whaling vessels in Baffin Bay take the study region west of Greenland to nearly 80N. In addition, records from much of the ‘sub-Arctic’ Atlantic, north of 55N allow the project to include notable quantities of data from the far North Atlantic, which have never been used before.
These marine meteorological observations will provide an improved picture of the Arctic climate (wind circulations, ice coverage, temperature and air pressure) between 1750 and 1850, allowing us to set our findings against the current understanding of conditions at the time and in doing so, provide for more reliable predictions of future climates based on models that require calibration against such ‘historic’ information.
