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Columbus: The Rejected Explorer

7/25/2016

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PictureRoutes of the four voyages. Wikimedia
Roger M McCoy

     Columbus certainly was not the first arrival to the New World, Asians beat him by 10,000 years or more. Neither was he the first European to make a settlement in the New World. Leif Erikson beat him by almost 500 years, albeit with a very brief settlement. What Columbus accomplished that none other had was to report his discovery to a receptive Renaissance population eager for exploration, new settlements, exploitation, and wealth. Spain and Portugal were the primary seafaring nations and in the best position to seize the opportunity. They hit it big with shiploads of gold filling their coffers. Soon the Spanish had settlements and governments set up in the Caribbean islands of Cuba and Hispaniola (now Haiti and Dominican Republic). Planters came and created plantations of crops for the settlements and for export back to Europe. Spain’s presence spread to the mainland in Mexico and Florida, then north and south into two continents claiming immense tracts of land. England and France joined the game and the Columbian Exchange continued for nearly 400 years until two entire continents were transformed. For better or worse this is Columbus’s legacy.
    Unfortunately Columbus could not foresee all the recognition that was to come. In fact during his lifetime he felt unappreciated, unrecognized, and extremely frustrated with his ill-treatment by the Spanish king and queen. More on that later.

First Voyage.
    The three now famous ships, Niña, Pinta, and Santa Maria, left Spain in early August, 1492 and sailed west in steady trade winds. But the voyage was not without some troubles. The Pinta was not fully seaworthy, resulting in a lost rudder and a serious leak requiring constant pumping. There was a delay while the rudder was replaced and the leak stopped. Later the crew became very restive at the failure to find land, but mutiny was averted by a promise to turn back if land was not sighted in three more days. Luck was with Columbus and land was sighted the third day. The first landing was in mid-October on an island that Columbus named El Salvador. Some controversy exists concerning which island was the site of the landing, but the consensus now is either Watlings Island or Samana Island in the Bahamas.
    The Spaniards were welcomed by the Arawaks who were immediately named Indians on the assumption they were in the “Indies”—another 9,000 miles westward. Columbus took an Arawak man to act as pilot as they searched for other islands. The Arawak identified one large island by the name of Cuba and Columbus believed it to be Cipango (Japan), which of course was just what he was looking for. In his log he wrote, “I am sure Cuba and Cipango are one and the same.” He also discovered the large island of Hispaniola. Bad luck hit again when the flagship, Santa Maria, ran aground on a coral reef at Hispaniola. They salvaged wood from the ship to make a fort, named La Navidad because the wreck occurred on Christmas Eve, and a contingent of thirty-nine men were left behind to establish the first European settlement in the New World. The Niña and Pinta returned to Spain where the Spanish monarchs, pleased with the gold artifacts and Indians, bestowed great honors on Columbus. Immediately the king and queen approved another voyage. Often the story stops here with a statement that he made three other trips to the New World. 

Second Voyage.
    In late September, 1493, a fleet of seventeen ships returned to the new world with instructions to establish colonies, initiate trade, and further explore the “Indies.” When Columbus reached Fort Navidad he found the inhabitants dead or missing. The first settlement had lasted less than a year due to infighting, disease, and hostile natives. He relocated to another site on Hispaniola where many of the new settlers also became ill and died. Workers sent out to explore the area came back with large nuggets of gold and the others abandoned their work to gain sudden riches, leaving crops abandoned. Nearly all the Spaniards began roaming the interior finding gold and terrorizing the natives. When the Indians resisted they were killed, tortured, or enslaved. Soon Columbus sent twelve ships back to Spain loaded with twenty-five captured natives, a wealth of gold nuggets, and some “Oriental” spices. Columbus wrote that he shipped 500 slaves back to Spain. 
    In March, 1496, after two and a half years as governor of the new colony, Columbus returned to Spain with two ships and a cargo of slaves. Men on the under-provisioned ships were near starvation when they arrived in Cádiz. The monarchs had heard poor reports on Columbus’s colonial management and their enthusiasm toward him cooled considerably. It took  two years for him to get their support for another voyage.

Third Voyage
    In May, 1498, Columbus returned with three ships intending to continue searching for the Eurasian continent he knew must be near. He sailed farther south and discovered the coast of South America at present day Venezuela. When he reached Hispaniola he found conditions in the colony had worsened. Many enslaved Indians died of hard labor or cruel mutilations and rebellion was brewing.     
    Queen Isabela and King Ferdinand let it be known they were unhappy about the way Columbus handled the new colony. They expressed concern about treatment of the natives but were especially bothered that the flow of gold had dropped—due in part to the ill-treatment of the natives. The monarchs hoped to rectify the situation by replacing Columbus. They sent Francisco de Bobadilla as their viceroy and he immediately arrested Columbus, sending him back to Cádiz in irons. He stayed in jail for six weeks before he was called to an audience with the queen and king. Columbus hoped he could change their opinion of him, but instead they dumped him as governor of the Indies and appointed Nicolás de Ovando. The only bright side was that Columbus was allowed to make a fourth voyage—far better than staying in prison.
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Fourth Voyage
    The objective for this voyage was to find a passage through that annoying land obstruction and find a way to the real Indies. Columbus left Cádiz with four ships in May, 1502. When he reached the settlement of Santo Domingo on the island of Hispaniola, Columbus requested permission to harbor his ships for protection from a coming hurricane. The new governor, Ovando, spitefully refused. At the same time Ovando sent thirty ships filled with treasure off to Spain. Columbus must have felt some vindication upon learning that only one of those ships made it safely through the hurricane to Spain.     
    He sailed west to explore the coast of Central America from Honduras to Panama. His four ships were obviously in very poor condition. He had to abandon one ship that simply collapsed from rot. He lost another ship from worms boring into the wooden hull. The two remaining caravels required constant pumping just to keep afloat. The two ships limped along as far as Jamaica, arriving with their decks almost awash. He ran the ships aground and remained there almost two years dependent on the natives for food and shelter. He eventually got a message to Ovando requesting rescue and nine months later Ovando sent him one caravel. Columbus finally reached Spain in November 1504. Eighteen months later he died at fifty-four, a resentful and bitter man. He had led Spain to an immense empire and unimaginable riches yet he was cast aside. 
    The Crown had promised Columbus ten percent of all the revenues from the new lands in perpetuity, and he initiated lengthy litigation that was continued by his sons with modest success. Legal disputes finally ended in 1790, almost 300 years later. He and his family certainly felt he deserved more recognition.
    History has since bestowed ample acclaim on Columbus. Only fifty years after Columbus’s death, the historian Francisco López de Gómera wrote that his first voyage was the “greatest event since the creation of the world.” He did indeed change the world but historians now recognize that the change resulted in many losses of Native American cultures. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, wrote that Columbus’s governance was tyranny. "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit atrocities had taken place." 
    An anonymous writer quipped that Columbus, “didn’t know where he was going, when he got there he didn’t know where he was, and when he got back he didn’t know where he had been.” For one so unaware he certainly changed everything. 


Sources
There are countless excellent sources on Columbus. Morison is my favorite.

Fuson, Robert H. The Log of Christopher Columbus. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing Co. 1987.

Jeans, Peter D. Seafaring Lore and Legend. Camden, ME: International Marine Publishing Co. 2004.

Morison. Samuel E. The European Discovery of America: The Southern Voyages A. D. 1492 - 1616. New York: Oxford University Press. 1974.
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Morison, S.E. Admiral of the Ocean Sea. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1991. Originally published 1942.




    
    
  
    
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Life at sea in the 16th century

6/26/2016

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Picture
Sailor standing at left has clothing typical of 16th century.
Picture
By the 18th century clothing had changed and a mess cabinet with fold-down table was provided.
Link to "Know the Scientists" blog

Roger M McCoy                                                    

Part 1              To see Part 2 click here.
    We may read accounts of early explorers sailing to unknown lands in the New World, but we seldom learn details about their ships or about the life of a sailor on those small caravels and carracks. 
    To become a sailor a boy started as an apprentice no later than age fourteen. The boy’s parents, if they had the means, paid a ship’s master or first mate a hefty sum to train the boy for up to nine years as an unpaid apprentice. In return the ship’s master would see that the boy learned everything about sailing. Boys with such training could expect rapid advancement after the apprenticeship ended, and could anticipate becoming a first mate or a ship’s master by their mid-twenties.
    Boys from poor families could be accepted without a payment to the ship’s master, but there would be little hope of advancing above the level of able seaman after the apprenticeship. Without a payment the boy often became little more than the master’s servant. Whether wealthy or poor, apprentices were bound to years of unpaid service to the ship’s master. After the apprenticeship, they began to receive some wages, which were paid in a lump at the end of a voyage.
    A sailor’s work included many different tasks. Before starting a voyage any ship needed some repair from her previous voyage. Masts, sails, and hull may have been damaged and required refurbishing— replacing masts or yards, sewing up sails. Also the constant strain from wind against the masts and waves battering the hull weakened joints between boards on the decks and hull, requiring extensive scraping, re-caulking, and tarring. Even the best of ships had leaky hulls and required frequent pumping of the bilge. These tasks filled a sailor’s time in preparation for a voyage and continued throughout the time at sea. 
    As the time neared for departure sailors loaded and stowed the food, water, and other ship’s stores. Besides food, provisions included all the necessary supplies: candles, firewood, brooms, buckets, rope, pots and pans, tools, beer, wine, and dozens of items needed for self-sufficiency during the voyage. Sometimes the ship’s carpenter had to build stalls and coops for pigs, chickens, sheep, or cattle.
    The food provided for the English explorer Martin Frobisher’s second voyage to North America in 1577 was considered sufficient for 120 men for up to four months. Included in the food list on Frobisher’s ship were: one pound of biscuit (known as hardtack) per man per day; one gallon of beer per man per day; one pound of salt beef or pork per man on meat days, plus one dried codfish for every four men on fast days; oatmeal and rice were loaded as back-up in case the fish supply ran out; one quarter-pound of butter and one half-pound of cheese per man per day; honey (sugar was still a rare luxury then); a hogshead (64 gallon barrel) of cooking oil; a pipe (equal to two hogsheads) of vinegar. These sailors ate and drank well, as they must with the amount of energy expended in their daily work. Upon reaching land they planned to hunt game animals and birds to supplement the meat supply. Also they carried fishing gear for periods of sailing in good fishing areas. 
    During a voyage there were always food losses from spoilage of both food and beer, and leakage from barrels. If fresh meat was supplied for the voyage it had to be eaten in the first few days. Livestock on board could make fresh meat later in the voyage as well, but explorer’s ships seldom made room for animals.
    The main food staple was hardtack biscuit and its main advantage was that it had a very long shelf life. The hard, dry biscuit had to be moistened with water or beer to make it easier to chew. Typically the hardtack already had weevils even before it was loaded onto the ship because it was made months in advance. A typical menu for seamen might be: salted meat with pease porridge consisting of dried fish in a thick mixture of pea soup accompanied, of course, by a hardtack biscuit. Although this sounds like a wholesome meal, as the weeks went by the meat might spoil, the butter turn rancid, the beer go sour, and the many biscuits reduced to dust by the weevils. For drink the officers were usually provided with wine or spirits. Sailors in the English navy had a daily ration of beer, but French seamen often preferred fermented cider to beer. A cook-box was set up on a bed of sand or rocks below the forecastle, where sailors would go to get their bowls filled and eat wherever they could find a spot to sit. Some larger ships eventually began to provide a mess area where the crew could sit and eat.
    While underway a sailor’s work held some real hazards, especially climbing the shroud lines up to the yards and standing on foot-ropes working thirty to fifty feet above the deck. Sails could be furled (rolling the sail up and securing it to the yard), reefed (shortening the sail to a length appropriate to the strength of the wind). A fall from the yard was almost always fatal whether the sailor fell into the sea or onto the deck. If he fell into the sea he usually drowned before the ship could rescue him. Normally there was little if any effort made to rescue, especially if the water was very cold as he would live only minutes. Often hazardous work needed to be done at night in the midst of a howling storm when the sails needed to be reefed or furled to compensate for the strong wind. This meant that sailors had to know the rigging well enough to work in total darkness with fingers numb from the cold. Work on the deck during a storm was almost as dangerous due to the chance of being washed overboard as the sea spilled onto the deck.
    A sailor brought his sea chest aboard with clothing and a few personal items. His clothing usually consisted of a woolen pullover shirt with hood, woolen knee-length trousers with long woolen stockings, and a knitted cap. They had shoes, but often went barefoot to avoid slipping on decks and ropes. No clothing provision was made for bad weather unless the sailor brought it himself. Some sailors had up to six changes of clothing to allow for drying soaked clothes and to avoid sleeping in wet clothes. A few sailors might include a fiddle, fife, or tin whistle in their sea chest and provide some music for song and dance in idle times. By the early nineteenth century harmonicas and concertinas were common aboard ships.
    During the sixteenth century sailors slept wherever they could find a vacant place on decks or cargo. Columbus saw natives in the Caribbean area sleeping in hammocks and some of his sailors adopted the idea, but hammocks were not widely used on ships until almost 100 years later. Cabins and bunks were provided for officers, but sailors often slept on the deck in the bow, or below in bad weather.    
    Reports of ships lost at sea without trace were real and frightening to men traveling the oceans. Such misfortunes were often believed to be the result some misbehavior of a crew member and a sailor might be ostracized for his deed. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (Coleridge, 1778) tells of a ship becalmed because a sailor committed the unforgivable blunder of killing an albatross and was forced to wear its carcass hung from his neck. This is the source of the expression “an albatross around my neck” to mean a great burden. Protection from dangers and misfortune was provided by the diligent practice of religion while at sea. Sailors keenly felt they were in the hands of the Almighty and made frequent prayers to God, the Virgin Mary, and patron saints for protection. In order to avoid any chance of offending God, many ship’s captains forbade swearing, blaspheming God, filthy stories, or any ungodly talk. Also gambling with dice or cards or fighting was forbidden on some ships. Morning and evening prayer services with readings from the Bible were often part of the required daily routine. Injunctions against foul language on board ships lasted through the nineteenth century. 
    Superstitions, sometimes mixed with the religion, also played a role.  A ship should not begin a voyage on Friday because it was the day Christ was crucified. When building a ship a silver coin must be placed under the base of the main mast. One must never destroy a printed page as it might belong to the Bible. Many sailors were illiterate and could not be sure if a page might be from the Bible so they took the safe position that all printed pages were scripture.  Some ship builders carried a burning fire brand through every part of a new vessel to drive out evil spirits.
    The greatest danger aboard ships on long voyages in the sixteenth century was scurvy (see Explorer’s Tales, 3/15/2014). Any fresh fruits, vegetables, or fresh meat on board were soon consumed, and the rest of the voyage was dangerously deficient of vitamin C. After about six weeks of salted meat and hardtack the first symptoms could begin to appear—swelling of the gums and loosening of teeth, then blotches on the skin followed by a deep lethargy often leading to death. Consumption of food containing vitamin C could quickly correct all these symptoms—except for death.
    Despite the dangers and risks sailors usually felt bonded to life at sea. Eric Newby told of both the dangers and the thrill of sailing when he wrote of his experience  as a young crewman aboard a big square-rigged ship in 1938. Sometimes fearing for his life he wrote, “At this height, 130 feet up, in a wind blowing 70 miles an hour, the noise was an unearthly scream. ... the high whistle of the wind through the halyards, and above all the pale blue illimitable sky, cold and serene, made me deeply afraid and conscious of my insignificance.” However standing on deck on a fair day Newby described the joy of sailing. “As time passed, the ship possessed us completely. Our lives were given over to it. A hundred times a day each one of us looked aloft at the towering pyramids of canvas, the beautiful deep curves of the leeches of the sails and the straining sheets of the great courses, listened to the deep hum of the wind up the height of the rigging, the thud and judder of the steering gear as the ship surged along, heard the helmsman striking the bells, signaling a change of watch or a mealtime, establishing a routine so strong that the outside world seemed unreal.”
    The sailor’s life was hard and once a man entered that life there was seldom a way out. Months at sea could be followed by periods of inactivity waiting for another voyage to begin. Even when countries had standing navies officers might be reduced to half pay during idle periods and ordinary seamen at no pay.

To read Part 2 of "Life at Sea in the 16th Century" click here. 
  
  
Sources
Earle, Peter. Sailors: English Merchant Seaman 1650-1775. London: Methuen, 1998.

McCoy, Roger M. On the Edge, New York: Oxford. 2012.

Newby, Eric. The Last Grain Race. Hawthorn, Australia: Lonely Planet Publications, 1999.

Watson, Harold Francis. The Sailor in English Fiction and Drama 1550-1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.

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Navigating Ships in the Sixteenth Century

5/28/2016

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Lunar distance for determining time.
Astrolabe
Compass rose
Cross staff for measuring angles
Quadrant
Traverse board
PictureFirst version of the Harrison clock, 1736, Wikipedia


(Let cursor hover over pictures above to see captions. Click image to enlarge.)
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​Roger M McCoy
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      We often read accounts of early explorers sailing to unknown lands in the New World, but we seldom learn about the art of navigating ships into the uncharted parts of the world with full confidence in finding the way home. Would they even have started if they thought they could not return? How did they do it? 
    Mariners first learned the skill of navigating by dead reckoning. To estimate their position by dead reckoning mariners must have some idea of speed, time lapsed at that speed, and direction of travel. They started from a port with a known latitude and longitude that astronomers had calculated by a complicated method known as lunar distance. From that known point mariners had to continually estimate their speed, time, and direction to determine their current location. You can imagine the potential for cumulative error using dead reckoning at sea for months at a time. Their skill, however, was astonishing. We may see big errors in their maps; but overlooking the errors, the surprise is that they were even in the ball park.
    The development of navigational instruments was merely an attempt to refine the estimates of direction (the compass), speed (the chip log), and time (the sand glass to measure short times, e.g., 30 seconds). Instruments for measuring angles of stars or the Sun above the horizon also became important for estimating latitude (parallels) north or south of the equator. But estimates of longitude (meridians) at sea relied on dead reckoning until the late eighteenth century.
    Early Greek sailors noticed that stars in the northernmost quarter of the sky merely rotated like a wheel without setting below the horizon. Their greatest interest was in a constellation made of seven stars, because of their high visibility and their nearness to the pivot point. This constellation was called variously, the Bear, the Plow, the Seven Oxen, or the Wain (wagon). Today we call it the Big Dipper or Ursa Major (Great Bear). The Little Dipper or Ursa Minor (Lesser Bear) being closer to the point of the turning axis, later became more important to navigators.


    Measuring Angles. To aid in observations of angles a simple measuring instrument, the astrolabe, was developed. Although the astrolabe was developed around 200 B.C. as an aid to astrology, its application to navigation by European mariners probably began in the fifteenth century A.D.
    Improvements in the fourteenth century lead to the development of the cross-staff, which consisted of a wooden staff with a sliding cross-piece set perpendicular to it . A navigator would move the cross piece along the staff to a mark for the desired latitude, then sail north or south along a meridian until the perpendicular cross bar just fit between the horizon and the Pole Star (or the sun by day). He would then be at the latitude of his intended location, and could then sail along that course by compass to his destination. Frequent checks by astrolabe helped indicate any variation in latitude. This method of navigation, called “running down the latitude,” was in practice for many Atlantic crossings in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. During the day, the navigator would measure the angle of the noon sun above the horizon to compute latitude. This computation required knowing the latitude where the sun was directly overhead at noon on any given day of the year. In the fifteenth century this information was widely available to mariners in tables or diagrams compiled by astronomers.
    Another early angle measuring instrument was the quadrant, so named because it was one quarter of a circle. By the middle of the fifteenth century the quadrant was in use for measuring celestial angles aboard ships. Variations on the quadrant—including octants and sextants—gradually became more sophisticated with sun filters, mirrors, and sliding scales graduated in degrees. The sextant continued in use for navigation well into the twentieth century until inertial guidance and satellite positioning systems appeared. 

    Determining Direction. Soon after 1100 A. D. the unusual properties of a common iron oxide mineral called magnetite (lodestone) became known to Mediterranean sailors. Bewildered observers saw that magnetite would align itself with north. This was a mysterious phenomenon because nothing was yet known of Earth’s magnetic field. They also found that rubbing an iron needle against the lodestone passed the mysterious property to the needle. By sticking the needle through a piece of straw it would float in a bowl of water, then the needle would orient itself toward the north. The fact that the needle would point approximately north could not be explained except by some force in the polar constellations acting on the lodestone or on the needle that had touched it.  As Polaris was within six degrees of the stellar rotation axis and appeared to be motionless while other stars circled around. This made Polaris of much greater potential importance to navigators.Mariners did not adopt the magnetic needle quickly, but gradually began to use it only when visual methods failed, as during cloudy weather. 
    In order to protect the needle from wind and make it visible at night, the floating needle was put into a protective housing with a lamp, and thus the binnacle was created and is still in use today. For greater precision the compass must be something more than a needle floating in a bowl of water. Instrument makers by the end of the twelfth century had balanced the needle on a metal pivot point overlying a thirty-two point compass rose enclosed in the binnacle, and the modern compass was born.  
                   
    Distance. Now the mariner had the essential tools for navigation—astrolabe or quadrant, compass, and a sand glass for keeping time—essential for estimating distance. The other critical component of distance computation is speed.
    Distance traveled was a crucial bit of information for a seaman. He needed distance to estimate position and his rate of progress toward his destination. The only means available was “dead reckoning”—estimating the speed of the ship over a period of time. Remember that speed multiplied by time equals distance. Early navigators could make reasonable guesses of their ships’ speed by the feel of its movement through the water. Earliest estimates were made by pacing the deck alongside a small object thrown overboard and judging the rate of walking. A new device for estimating speed appeared in 1574—the log and lines.
    A piece of wood, originally a log, was tied to a long knotted cord and thrown overboard beyond the dead water at the stern of the ship. The log would remain roughly in place while the vessel moved away. A sailor counted the knots that paid out in thirty seconds, timing with a small sandglass, as the ship moved away from the log—clearly a two-man job. They counted the small uniformly spaced knots to measure the length of cord paid out in thirty seconds. The result was expressed as knots per hour. This procedure was repeated anytime the ship changed speed or course. The log was eventually modified to a small triangular, board, called a chip log, This method of measuring speed was a big improvement over former guesswork, but was also subject to error.
      The speed and direction information was pegged on a traverse board, transferred to the log book and used for estimating distance traveled. The traverse board had a thirty-two point compass rose drawn on its face with radial rows of eight holes along each of the thirty-two compass points. For each half-hour of a four hour watch, the helmsman inserted a peg in a hole of the compass direction they were traveling, beginning with the innermost hole and working outward. At the end of a four hour watch, all this direction and speed information was recorded in the log book and used to compute distance made good. 
    Because a ship sailing into the wind must tack back and forth rather than maintain a straight course to its destination, a navigator had to keep track of their actual location as well as their progress along the intended course, called “distance made good.” By plotting their location on the actual line of sail and drawing a perpendicular connection from that point to the line of the intended course, the distance made good is determined.
 
    The relationship between longitude and the steady turning of Earth at fifteen degrees per hour was well known, and by the early sixteenth century some navigators knew that a trustworthy clock at sea would solve the problem of finding longitude. If a navigator had a reliable clock set to the time at a place of known longitude, he could determine his local time by the sun and find the exact time difference. Fifteen degrees for each hour of time difference allowed easy computation of longitude. In the beginning, and through the Renaissance, every seafaring nation determined its own choice of a prime meridian as a starting point. Over time there have been many including an island of the Canaries, an island of the Azores, Paris, Greenwich, Brussels, Oslo, Rome, Florence, St. Petersburg, and others. Eventually the British published a comprehensive set of tables for calculating longitude using lunar angles based on the meridian at Greenwich. These tables became widely used and in the eighteenth century the Greenwich meridian became the world standard.
    It was the middle of the eighteenth century before John Harrison, an English carpenter and clock maker, undertook the challenge to create a ship’s clock with the needed accuracy. Many leading scientists of the eighteenth century still believed that a clock of such accuracy could never be made, so they pushed for greater application of the astronomical angles method of time telling. Finally in 1761 Harrison’s efforts produced a clock that passed a prescribed test by accurately determining longitude during a voyage. The clock evolved through several stages from a cumbersome machine the size of a large mantle clock to one that looked like an oversized pocket watch. With each iteration the design and accuracy improved. Unfortunately for Harrison, the judges were primarily proponents of the astronomical approach, and they denied him the £20,000 prize money because the success was deemed to have been a bit of good luck—a coincidence. Eventually the voyage was repeated, and Harrison created new versions of the clock—a total of five— before he finally received the last of the prize money more than a decade later in 1775, the year before he died.
    Like many useful innovations, adoption of Harrison’s clock was slow but by the middle of the nineteenth century, ships leaving London via the Thames River paused within sight of the Greenwich observatory to set their chronometers with the time-ball that fell at 1:00 P. M. daily. In the early 1920’s the ball drop was superseded by a radio time signal, which in turn has been replaced by the atomic clocks in the Global Positioning Satellite System. These innovations for finding position changed traditional navigation methods that had been used for centuries. Despite these more accurate means, the old method of finding location using clocks and sextants is still part of a navigator’s training.


Sources
May, William E. A History of Marine Navigation, Henley-on Thames: G. T. Foulis and Co., 1973.

Taylor, E. G. R. The Haven Finding Art: A History of Navigation from Odysseus to Captain Cook. New York: Abelard - Schuman, Ltd, 1957.
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Waters, David. The Art of Navigation in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times. Greenwich, England: National Maritime Museum, 1978.






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Lewis and Clark, Part 3: Aftermath

4/21/2016

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PictureThe Corps of Discovery meet Chinooks on the Lower Columbia, October 1805. (Artist: C. Russell, 1905) Wikipedia
Roger M McCoy

​    The Corps of Discovery had both political and financial objectives.The financial reason for exploring was to facilitate fur trade with the west coast of North America and to establish trade with Indians of the interior. The political motive was to establish an American presence in the newly acquired Louisiana Purchase and in the Oregon region, which included present day Oregon and Washington. French Canadians and British traders had been active in the Louisiana Purchase area for many years reaping a harvest of pelts, mainly beaver. It was important to let all foreign traders know that this was now United States territory and the United States had exclusive rights to trade. These objectives were achieved plus several other outcomes as well.      
    Thomas Jefferson’s choice of Meriwether Lewis was especially fortunate, as was Lewis’s selection of William Clark. Both men had remarkable intelligence, and their intelligence was the main reason for the many successes and enduring legacy of the expedition. They excelled in many ways: they averted serious confrontation with natives along the way; they had only one death, Sergeant Floyd, who died, it’s believed, from a ruptured appendix, and they had few injuries; the company of men was well-selected and well-disciplined, except for a few minor infractions and two desertions very early in the game. Much of their success can be attributed to good men with excellent leaders. They encountered many difficulties unfamiliar to their experience in the eastern part of the country. They faced the ruggedness of the Rockies, the Bitterroots, and the Cascade Mountains, the bitter winter of North Dakota, the soggy, bone-chilling winter of the northwest coast, and the raging waters of the Columbia River. Even their most experienced boatmen had never seen anything like the rapids on the Columbia River.  
    The most admirable skill of both Lewis and Clark was their success in personal dealings with Indian tribes. They succeeded in their relations with the Sioux, Mandan, Arikara, Nez Percé  where later men failed miserably. Both Lewis and Clark acted firmly without arrogance or threats. Always they were honest and fair and showed respect for individual dignity, different beliefs and customs. They demanded the same behavior from the men of the Corps. It is hard to overstate the importance of these good actions to the overall success of the expedition.
    Because of William Clark’s more gregarious nature, he was especially effective with the Indians. Clark did most of the medical treatment of the tribes and became known as the Red Headed Chief. Because of his medications for the Indians, Clark was regarded as a miracle worker. When Indians visited Saint Louis after the expedition they always asked to see Clark. When a fur company sent men into the mountains where the expedition had gone they first obtained letters of greetings and messages from Clark. Unfortunately many men who followed were not of Clark’s caliber, and good feelings toward white men ended. The Lewis and Clark expedition is a bright spot in a dark and bitter history. 
    Several other significant outcomes of the expedition should be listed.
    1. The long-held dream of a waterway to the Pacific was finally laid to rest. The search for such a waterway in the northern hemisphere began with Columbus (1492-93-98-1502), followed by Cabot (1497), Verrazzano (1524), and many others. This eventually led to overland expeditions in search of passage to the Pacific by Hearne (1770), Mackenzie (1792), and finally Lewis and Clark (1804-06). Settling the question of a water route was not the primary objective for the Lewis and Clark expedition, but it certainly ended all hope for such a route.
    2.  The United States’ claim to the Pacific west became a goal, and convinced Americans that the Oregon region should be theirs. Fur traders such as John Jacob Astor quickly moved in with his American Fur Company, established Fort Astoria, and helped resolve the contest with the British for the Pacific. Astor’s fur companies were established as a direct result of the Lewis and Clark reports.
    3.  The scientific collections and notes provided a wealth of benchmark information of lasting value on botany, geology, and ethnography. Lewis’s voluminous notes on Indian tribes formed the first survey of western tribes as they lived in 1804. This information has permanent importance for anthropologists and historians.
    4. The vast unknown area of Louisiana and westward became a real place on previously blank maps and in people’s minds: Americans now could imagine the great new territory as part of the United States. They had information about the native inhabitants, the mountains, rivers, plants, animals and climates. In 1814 a two-volume book was published with the exhausting title: A history of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean performed during the years 1804-5-6. Nicholas Biddle began the book and it was finished by Paul Allen. Lewis and Clark are usually listed as co-authors along with Allen. The History… is a narrative based on the records kept by Lewis and Clark, and is the first accurate and reliable information available to the general public about the west. It quickly became, and remains today, an important source for knowledge about the west and its inhabitants before American migration and settlement began. Lewis and Clark were the first, but there were many other western expeditions throughout the nineteenth century by men such as Fremont (1843-45), Steptoe (1854), Hayden (several expeditions from 1856 to 1871), King (1867), and Powell (1869). These expeditions each went to different parts of the west and provided volumes of information just as Lewis and Clark had done.
    After the expedition Meriwether Lewis received a reward of 1,600 acres of land and appointment as governor of the Louisiana Territory. He settled in Saint Louis and initially planned to publish the Corps of Discovery journals, but other events intervened. In September 1809 Lewis started an overland journey to Washington to resolve a controversy concerning a reimbursement of expenditures. He carried the journals with him to give to a publisher. Along the way he died, apparently by suicide brought about by depression and alcoholism. He was thirty-five. Allen (1814) wrote an account of the tragic end.

    He stopped at the house of a Mr. Grinder, who not being at home, his wife alarmed at the symptoms of derangement she discovered, gave him up the house and retired to rest herself in an out-house, the governor’s (Lewis) and Neely’s servants lodging in another. About three o’clock in the night he did the deed which plunged his friends into affliction, and deprived his country of one of her most valued citizens.

    William Clark was appointed brigadier general of the Louisiana Territory and the U.S. agent for Indian affairs and later governor of the Missouri Territory with headquarters in Saint Louis. Initially he tried to introduce assimilation programs, but in the end became involved in removing Indians from their ancestral lands. While in office Clark transferred millions of acres of Indian land to the United States. 
    Clark’s slave, York, went on the expedition and served as Clark’s valet,  worked as one of the Corps members, but without pay, and was given a voice in group decisions. Having experienced a degree of freedom during the expedition, York later asked Clark to free him based on his good service as hunter, scout and diplomat on the expedition. Clark at first refused, but eventually granted York his freedom—ten years later. Clark died in 1838 at age sixty-eight.

Sources
​Allen, Paul; Meriwether Lewis; William Clark. A history of the expedition under the command of Captains Lewis and Clark to the sources of the Missouri thence across the Rocky Mountains and down the River Columbia to the Pacific Ocean performed during the years 1804-5-6. New York: Bradford and Inskeep. 1814.

​DeVoto, Bernard. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1953.

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Lewis And Clark Part 2: Wintering in Forts Mandan and Clatsop

4/2/2016

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PictureMeriwether Lewis and William Clark, Wikimedia



Roger M McCoy

Fort Mandan
    The Corps of Discovery arrived in late October 1804 at the Mandan villages near the present day town of Washburn, North Dakota. They moved downstream about two miles near a grove of trees to begin building a log fort and winter quarters, which they named Fort Mandan. 
    The Mandan tribe had been trading with English and French traders for nearly 100 years prior to arrival of the Corps of Discovery, so were already familiar with Europeans and the kind of trade goods they carried with them. One of the first exchanges with Lewis and Clark occurred when the Chief of the Mandan villages came with an entourage and exchanged gifts: two bushels of corn for a new suit of western clothes.
    During that winter (1804-1805) one of the main activities was providing health remedies to the local villages. These included three Mandan villages in the vicinity of the fort and two Hidatsa villages a few miles upstream. William Clark was the one who usually treated Indians’ ailments, and the sick came to Fort Mandan in large numbers. One morning Clark reported more than forty patients awaiting his attention. Eye problems, which he treated with a zinc sulfate eyewash, were the most common complaint among the Indians but there were many instances of broken bones, many  were old breaks that had never been set properly. There were few ailments that could not be made better by a dose of Clark’s charm along with nostrums such as massages, eye drops, and elixirs. Apparently his remedies gave welcome relief as Clark became highly respected among the tribes.
    The medical treatments and a reputation for fair trading led to good relations with the Mandans and there was much friendly interaction. The men of the Corps and the Mandans would get together for entertainment involving music, dancing, sharing meals, and athletic contests. Many men of the Corps found female companions, which led to several outbreaks of venereal disease and more patients for Clark’s sick call. 
    In the autumn of 1804 a French Canadian named Charbonneau arrived at Fort Mandan with his two Shoshone wives, one of whom was Sacagawea. Charbonneau could speak several Indian languages, so Lewis asked him to join the expedition. The seventeen-year-old Sacagawea was also asked to come, along with her infant child, Jean Baptiste. As a Shoshone Sacagawea could interpret when they reached the Rockies, where they needed to acquire horses to help in their portage. Sacagawea’s presence also offered assurance that the Corps of Discovery was peaceful. 
    In early April 1805 the frozen Missouri River began to thaw and the Corps of Discovery abandoned the fort to continue their upstream trek to the headwaters. Lewis was eager to resume the “darling project of mine for the last ten years,” and declared the day of their departure one of the happiest of his life. The Mandans provided some information of the terrain ahead, but the Corps had little idea what to expect in the mountains or what kind of reception they might get from the Shoshones who lived there.      
​    As it turned out they had an unexpectedly long and arduous struggle through the Rockies. They expected each ridge they climbed would reveal the western slope of the range, but for weeks they saw only more ridges on the horizon…a far cry from Mackenzie’s 800-step portage in Canada.


Fort Clatsop
    When Clark first sighted the Pacific from a distant mountain, he wrote, “Ocian in view! O! the Joy.” [Journal readers often comment on Clark’s creative spelling.] Two days later they reached the mouth of the river. The Corps of Discovery arrived at the coast on November 7th, 1805 somewhat later than expected because of difficulties crossing the Rockies. By now their clothes were tattered,  the men were exhausted, and the Corps was about out of trade goods. Lewis, Clark, and their men deserved a rest. During the past months, they had made the difficult trip from the upper Missouri River across the rugged Rockies, and down the Columbia River to the ocean, and an accurate map had been produced along the way
    William Clark had primary responsibility for surveying and mapping the route as they traveled from Saint Louis to the Pacific. He used chronometers for measuring longitude, sextants for measuring latitude, compasses for measuring direction, and various other surveyor’s equipment. Although Clark must have used instruments at certain points along the way, most of the day-to-day mapping was done by dead reckoning, i.e. keeping track of speed, time, and direction to estimate one’s position. Dead reckoning is prone to cumulative errors, but Clark, using occasional instrument checks, managed the process very well. When they arrived at the mouth of the Columbia River, a place with a known latitude and longitude previously determined by ships traveling in the Pacific, Clark’s estimate of their position was very close. After traveling about 3700 miles Clark’s error was only forty miles, an error of approximately one percent—remarkable for that era over such a distance. 
    After their initial soggy campsite on the north shore of the Columbia River near the mouth, the Corps moved to a more secure place on the south side well above tide level. The site was three miles up a tributary called Netul Creek, now named Lewis and Clark River. On December 7, 1805 they began construction of winter quarters, which they named Fort Clatsop after the local tribe. It took three weeks for the Corps to build the log fort, and it served as their shelter from January 1, 1806 until their departure on March 23, 1806. 
    Everyone found it impossible to keep dry, and their damp furs and hides rotted and became infested with vermin. They suffered from persistent colds and rheumatism. Excerpts form Lewis’s journal read: “It continued to rain and blow so violently today that nothing could be done…We have yet several days provision on hand, which we hope will be sufficient to subsist us during the time we are compelled by the weather to remain in this place…Many of our men are still complaining of being unwell.” Their main problem, however, was boredom. “Nothing worthy of notice took place today” was a frequent entry in both their journals. During their three months and two weeks at Fort Clatsop there were only twelve days without rain. Welcome to winter in the Pacific Northwest. 
    Fortunately hunters found ample game in the area providing more than 100 elk and twenty deer for their meals. Their diet consisted of elk meat, roots and berries, and dried salmon traded from local Clatsop and Chinook tribes. The Clatsops were friendly, Clark wrote, but he noted they were hard bargainers, which caused the Corps to rapidly deplete its supply of gifts and trading goods. This deficiency eventually caused  further resentment when some men of the Corps stole an Indian canoe because they had insufficient trade goods. This theft occurred just before departure and was the only breach of trust between the Corps and any of the tribes encountered during the expedition.
    After waiting days for the rain and wind-driven waves on the river to subside, Clark wrote, “the rain seased and it became fair about Meridian [noon]…& at 1 P. M. we left Fort Clatsop on our homeward bound journey.” They began their return on March 23, 1806 and arrived in Saint Louis at noon September 23, 1806. 
    En route home the Corps took an easier route through the Rockies that the Shoshones told them about. After reaching the plains they split into two parties because Lewis wanted to explore the Marias River northward to determine the extent of the new territory. Then Clark’s group split in two smaller units for a short time to explore additional land. This made sense from an explorer’s point of view, but smaller groups made each more vulnerable to unfriendly tribes. As a result they had several hostile encounters with the Blackfeet and Sioux tribes. The men of the Corps themselves were more tense and prone to fight than they had been during the westward trip. None of the men of the Corps were killed. After the groups rejoined travel went more smoothly, and they made good time traveling downstream on the Missouri River. As they approached Saint Louis they joyously fired guns in the air to announce their arrival and crowds came to greet them.
    Two days after their arrival a dinner was held for the Corps and eighteen toasts were drunk to their achievements. The last toast was to “Captains Lewis and Clark—their perilous services endear them to every American heart.” This tribute still rings true today as Lewis and Clark remain popular characters in our history. 
    
Sources:
    The full account of the Corps of Discovery is one of the most interesting in American history. There are numerous books, two of which are listed below, and a number of museums along the route that are devoted to the expedition. Two museums of interest on the subject of wintering sites are: the Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center operated by the Fort Mandan Foundation in Washburn, North Dakota, and the National Park Service reconstruction of Fort Clatsop on the site near Astoria, Oregon.

DeVoto, Bernard. The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1953.

Paton, Bruce C. Lewis and Clark: Doctors in the wilderness. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. 2001
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Lewis and Clark Part 1: Preparations for the Expedition, 1803

3/20/2016

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PictureRoute of the Corps of Discovery. Wikimedia Commons

​Roger M McCoy
    
    At the beginning of the nineteenth century little was known about the vast interior of the North American continent. When Louis Jolliet and Father Jacques Marquette explored the Mississippi in 1673 they passed the mouth of a large river coming from the west. Local natives told them that the river could take them to the western ocean. This bit of information led to the common knowledge that the Missouri River was the gateway to the west. Saint Louis still carries that theme with its giant arch symbolizing the gateway. In part, the early increase in North American exploration was tied to Napoleon’s misfortunes in Europe causing him to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States in 1803 to raise money.
    Years before Thomas Jefferson became president he was convinced that it would be very important to explore the interior of the continent, cross the distant mountains, and reach the Pacific by land. When Jefferson took office in 1801 he began planning a small expedition that would travel to the source of the Missouri, then portage their canoes and equipment a short distance, and float to the Pacific. His expectation for an easy portage was based on the experience of Alexander Mackenzie’s successful 1793 crossing of the Rockies in western Canada with a portage of only 800 paces. Jefferson owned a copy of Mackenzie’s report of that expedition. He felt the long term presence of British and French traders in the area was ample incentive for the Americans to also establish a presence in the territory.
    Soon after taking office in 1801 Jefferson asked Meriwether Lewis, a young army officer already known to Jefferson, to become his personal secretary. It is believed that Jefferson had his eye on Lewis to lead an expedition. In 1801 the land he wanted to explore still belonged to France. While the United States was involved in negotiations with France in 1803 for access and free trade to the port of New Orleans, Napoleon unexpectedly offered the entire Mississippi watershed west of the river. Napoleon agreed to $15,000,000 for the entire land grant. In today’s dollars that would be in the neighborhood of $300,000,000…still a bargain. The new, unknown area more than doubled the size of the young United States. Now the planned expedition would not be trespassing on foreign land, they would be in American territory most of the way. 
    In January 1803 Congress approved initial funds of $2,500 for the expedition’s preparations, but by the time the it was ready to leave they had spent $35,000 (approximately $700,000 today). Lewis immediately contacted his friend and fellow army officer about going with him on the expedition and Clark quickly accepted, “My friend I do assure you that no man lives with whom I would prefer to undertake Such a Trip &c. as yourself.”
    President Jefferson wrote a long statement of purpose for the expedition. In summary it was: to explore the Missouri River, to find its communication with the waters of the Pacific Ocean for the purpose of commerce, and to make observations of longitude and latitude at permanent points along the rivers. All observations were to be written in a journal with several copies for security. Jefferson warned them to avoid all confrontation and to back off rather than fight in the interest of the success of the expedition. There was to be no warfare or claiming land in the name of the United States. As Commander-In-Chief, Jefferson’s instructions constituted a standing order.
    Lewis had only eight months from the time funding was approved until they must embark from Pittsburgh on the journey to Saint Louis, which was to be their starting point the following spring. Then only twenty-nine years old, Lewis went to Philadelphia and visited the leading men of the time: experts in surveying for training with sextant and chronometer, botanists to learn the proper way of collecting and preserving plant specimens, geologists to learn identification of rocks, and physicians to learn how to treat ailments of his men and Indians along the way. President Jefferson had also written the appropriate men requesting the experts to meet with Lewis.
    The medical expert was Benjamin Rush, a renowned Professor of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence. Rush was a man of remarkable achievements. He started the first post office, organized the first free schools for poor children, promoted education for women, and helped develop treatment for mental diseases. This man was especially knowledgable about the culture and diseases of Indians. In addition to teaching Lewis about ailments he might encounter in the wilderness, Rush gave Lewis a list of questions to inquire of the Indians regarding their health and medical practices, morals, and religion. After William Clark joined the expedition, Lewis had to teach him all the material. Lewis especially drilled Clark on survey methods so when separated they could still complete the all-important map.
    Lewis acquired needed equipment, supplies, weapons, medicines, food, clothing, camping gear, scientific instruments, wood cutting and carpentry tools, and selected personnel. He arranged for the primary boat to be built and also a small collapsible boat. He arranged for everything to be shipped to the embarkation point in Pittsburgh PA at the beginning of the Ohio River. All this was completed between January and August using only the early-day postal service without the benefit of telephone, telegraph, or email. Arrangements were expedited as the President provided letters of instruction and introduction where needed.
    Lewis planned to take only a small amount of food as they expected to exist by hunting and trading with the Indians. Following is a summary of his shopping list that included some 170 different items: scientific instruments, clothing, arms and ammunition, gifts for the Indians, boats, medicines, mosquito nets, 150 pounds of portable soup, and bags of dried grain. The so-called portable soup was a gelatin made by boiling cows’ hooves, adding vegetables, and then allowing it to gel for transport. Water and heating would revitalize it into a tasteless glop. This concoction was held in reserve for times of dire need.
    Lewis bought 32 different medications. Keep in mind that the two major treatments for any ailment were bleeding and purging (laxatives, emetics, and enemas). The gastrointestinal tract must be thoroughly cleansed. Laxatives such as jalap, calomel (mercuric chloride), rhubarb, cream of tartar, Glauber's salts (sodium sulfate), magnesia, and nutmeg were used. He bought 5000 doses of these laxatives plus some pills prepared by Dr. Rush called Rush’s Thunderbolts. Emetics to induce vomiting included white vitriol (zinc sulfate), ipecac (from a plant root), and tartar.  They also took 3000 doses of Peruvian bark (a source of quinine) in case of malaria, which never occurred. He acquired medications for fevers, snakebites, opium for pain relief, mercury and irrigating syringes for venereal diseases, and a Kinepox (cowpox) solution as a protection against smallpox. There were surprisingly few treatments for wounds: instruments for probing and extracting bullets or arrowheads, and material for dressing  wounds but not for stitching. In the absence of antiseptics, wounds were best left open rather than being stitched closed. The medicines proved to be one of the most important items for developing smooth relations and trade with Indian tribes along the way.
    Another important task was arranging for men to join the expedition, which Lewis called the Corps of Discovery. The personnel were primarily soldiers, but boatmen and hunters/interpreters were also hired. Altogether fifty-nine people participated in the expedition, but some went only as far as the first winter quarters in present day South Dakota, and a few others joined them in North Dakota for the trip westward.
    Lewis bought an abundance of gifts for Indians (beads, calico shirts, colorful handkerchiefs, mirrors, scissors, thimbles, knives, fish hooks, combs, etc.), but there were not enough, and near the end of the expedition they were down to the last gifts and men had to bargain with their own clothes or for medical services. One of the notable gifts was a medal struck for the expedition, with clasped hands on one side and an impression of President Jefferson on the other side: large medals were for chiefs, smaller medals for other men.
    They left Pittsburgh on August 30, 1803, arrived near Saint Louis on December 13th, and built log cabins for their winter quarters on the east shore of the Mississippi. The Corps of Discovery embarked from Saint Louis for their wilderness expedition on May 14, 1804 with plans to reach the North Dakota Territory before winter. Part Two will focus on their two winters at the Mandan villages in North Dakota and Fort Clatsop on the Pacific coast. 

Sources
DeVoto, Bernard, The Journals of Lewis and Clark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. 1953.
​
Paton, Bruce C. M.D., Lewis and Clark: Doctors in the wilderness. Golden, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. 2001.
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Stefansson finds unknown Arctic islands

2/21/2016

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 Picture Route of Stefansson's trek among the Arctic islands, 1913-1916.













By the beginning of the twentieth century, most of the Canadian Archipelago had been mapped except for some blank spots in the far northwest. It was not known if more islands existed and, if so, where anyone should look for them. Exploring and mapping the remaining parts of Arctic North America fell to men like Otto Sverdrup (see Explorer’s Tales blog of 1/9/2016) and Vilhjalmur Stefansson. These hardy men were not seeking a new passage as in the past, nor were they vying to reach the North Pole. They simply explored as discoverers wanting to fill in blanks on the map of the Arctic. Stefansson (1879 - 1962) undertook to explore the unknown areas in the northwest.
Stefansson, born in Canada to Icelandic immigrant parents, was trained as an anthropologist with a focus on the native people of the Arctic. During his studies of the Arctic Stefansson became skilled in survival, exploration, and mapping methods, and these assets became the basis for the Canadian government’s support of his major exploration project in August, 1913. Unfortunately the project began badly when Stefansson’s expedition ship, Karluk, commanded by Captain Bartlett, became locked in ice near Point Barrow, Alaska. Stefansson left the ship and walked over the ice twenty-five miles to Point Barrow.
The story of the ill-fated Karluk is an interesting saga by itself, but here it will suffice to say that the icebound ship drifted westward toward Siberia, was eventually crushed, and sank in January, 1914. Twenty-five survivors and sixteen dogs then walked 80 miles over the ice to Wrangle Island, existing on rations salvaged before the ship sank. Captain Bartlett and one man walked from Wrangle Island another 200 miles over the ice to the Siberian coast, then east to the Bering Strait where they boarded a ship to Alaska and arranged for a rescue. A ship finally arrived in September and the remaining survivors were rescued. Eleven of them had died during the six-months waiting for rescue. Captain Bartlett became a hero.
Stefansson, on the other hand, met some criticism for having left his ship as soon as it became icebound. He explained that he left with five men, two of whom happened to be his exploration party, for a ten-day hunting trip, and the ship drifted away while he was gone. When he discovered he could not return to the Karluk, Stefansson hiked to Point Barrow, Alaska. After wintering at Point Barrow, in March,1914 Stefansson, with his crew of two men, began their long-lasting trek of discovery on foot with one dogsled. Stefansson’s previous experience had taught him to live off the land, so they carried no provisions. His party reached Banks Island where they established a base camp for the winter of 1914-15. In spring of 1915 they began their exploration for new land by going westward onto the ice of the Beaufort Sea.
Stefansson had been told by Eskimos there would be no seals over the deep water seas. Also he had heard this same information from whalers and from seasoned Arctic experts such as Robert Peary and Fridtjof Nansen. Stefansson assumed that none of those informants, including the Eskimos who always stayed close to land, had ever actually tried to hunt seals in deep water areas. His hunch was correct and he discovered that seals existed far from land in sufficient numbers to sustain his party of three men and six dogs indefinitely. He commented that two seals per week were enough for their needs. Because Stefansson carried no provisions, they essentially lived off the sea for five years. In his studies of Eskimos he learned that for a period of up to nine months their diet was nearly 100% meat and fish, with no carbohydrates. By adapting to this diet his exploration party proved that people accustomed to a European diet could adapt to a diet of only fat and meat, including animal entrails.
Stefansson described in great detail the technique for hunting seals that he had learned from the Eskimos. To approach a seal basking on the ice, one must begin by crawling and wriggling seal fashion from about three hundred yards away. By keeping such a low profile the hunter will probably be unnoticed by the seal until he is about two-hundred yards away. The seal is napping but raises its head every few minutes, scanning the area for polar bears. The hunter must crawl forward when the seal’s head is down, and stop when the seal looks up. When the seal sees the hunter’s approach, the hunter must stop, turn his body to the side, and make seal-like motions, such as raising his head, or rolling on his back and raising his knees toward his chest briefly to imitate the scratching movement made by seals. If the hunter were to stay perfectly still, the seal would become suspicious and slide into the nearby water. Eventually the hunter will come within one-hundred yards of the seal and can easily make a successful rifle shot to its head. In this way Stefansson managed to live in the Arctic subsisting on the land and sea.
Finding no new lands to the west in the Arctic Ocean, Stefansson returned to Patrick Island to complete the survey done by Leopold M’Clintock in 1853 as part of the Belcher expedition in search of Franklin. Stefansson’s party found no game on Patrick Island, but found seals on the ice. They completed the mapping and returned to base camp on Banks Island for the winter of 1915 where they were met and resupplied by a ship that Stefansson had arranged in advance.
In the spring of 1916 the three men began a grand loop by dogsled that included surveys of Brock Island and Borden Island, which were the first new and uncharted islands they had encountered. Stefansson claimed these islands “in the name of King George V on behalf of the Dominion of Canada.” The process of making a formal statement and a map validated the claim. They found two more unmapped islands, Meighen Island and Lougheed Island, before returning to their base camp. On the return to Banks Island they passed by Mercy Bay where McClure and crew on the Investigator had been icebound for two winters. They found some articles from the McClure expedition of 1852 and updated the map of the area. In the spring of 1917 Stefansson’s party pushed northward onto the ice of the Arctic Ocean, but finding no additional islands returned to base camp, ending the field work of the project.
Stefansson became well-known among Arctic professionals by demonstrating that expeditions could be sustained for extended periods of time on the ice, even though some of the smaller islands lacked game. He found several new islands and compiled a great amount of scientific data on ocean depths, ice movements, winds, and currents. Stefansson gave high praise to his two companions, Storker T. Storkerson and Ole Andreason, who spent so much time with him. “They are as well-suited for this work as it is easy to imagine. Neither of them worries or whines and both are optimistic about the prospects. This last is important. Traveling with an empty sled and living off the country is no work for a pessimist."
After Stefansson’s discoveries, the map of the Canadian Archipelago was essentially completed and the period of extensive mapping expeditions using dog sleds came to an end. His expedition achieved its objectives but marked the end of an era. The previous time of ships intentionally becoming icebound for the purpose of exploration and mapping gave way to the new practicalities of aviation. Soon an exploration party could be airlifted to a site in a day rather than months, and planes could return to resupply them at regular intervals. Radio contact now kept workers in the Arctic in constant touch with the outside so help could arrive on short notice when needed. The days of a few courageous, hardy explorers disappearing into the wilderness for months with no outside contact were rapidly coming to an end.

Sources
McCoy, Roger M. On the edge: Mapping North America’s coasts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.
​
Stefansson, Vilhjalmur. The Friendly Arctic: The Story of Five Years in Polar Regions, New York: The MacMillan Company, 1921.
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Otto Sverdrup claims Arctic islands for Norway.

1/9/2016

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PictureCanadian Arctic islands showing Sverdrup's survey area.


  
Roger M McCoy

  During the 400 hundred years before the end of the nineteenth century most Arctic exploration was motivated either by the search for a water passage through North America or by the search for Sir John Franklin. Most of the nineteenth century expeditions produced maps and scientific observations although their main motives were searching for passages or lost people.  Between the years 1898 and 1902 a Norwegian named Otto Sverdrup undertook an expedition for the sole purpose of mapping very large areas of the Canadian Archipelago that were still unknown and for collecting scientific information. 
    At this time the hottest lure of the Arctic was not the Passage but the North Pole, already the object of several failed expeditions. But Sverdrup’s expedition involved no search for the Northwest Passage and no rush to the North Pole. In fact, Sverdrup regarded the race to the Pole as something akin to an international sports event and had no interest in playing that game. There was no glamour to his exploration project, just mapping and science. Sverdrup became known among Arctic explorers when he accompanied Fridjof Nansen as second in command on an odyssey of drifting with Arctic currents while purposely locked in the polar ice from 1893-1896. Nansen’s expedition hoped to drift to the North Pole, but failed to reach it. The Fram eventually emerged in the North Atlantic Ocean after starting offshore of Siberia.
    When asked if he would lead an expedition in 1898, Sverdrup noted, “There are still many white spaces on the map which I was glad for the opportunity to color with the Norwegian colors, and thus the expedition was decided.” Canada claimed rights to all the islands already discovered by the British, but other countries still viewed the unclaimed areas as open for whalers and the claims of explorers. Thus Sverdrup acquired huge areas of land for Norway. 
    On this new venture Sverdrup commanded the Fram, the same ship that Nansen’s expedition used for drifting in the polar ice for nearly four years. It was a 128-foot, three-masted schooner with a shallow draft, strengthened hull, thick insulation, and rounded bow and stern for better maneuvering in ice-clogged water. The ship had an auxiliary steam engine and a crew of fifteen well-chosen men. When word spread that a seasoned explorer like Sverdrup was planning an expedition, applications arrived from many parts of the world. The group he selected included some experienced seamen to operate the ship, a Norwegian army cartographer, a Swedish botanist, a Danish zoologist, a Norwegian physician, and a Norwegian geologist. This was a model expedition, precisely planned and executed. In June, 1898, the expedition departed from Kristiansand, on the south coast of Norway and headed for Ellesmere Island to begin their work.    
    They remained in the area until 1902, during which time they traveled by dog sleds and mapped all the west coast of Ellesmere Island, the entire island of Axel Heiberg Land, and two islands, Ellef Ringnes and Amund Ringnes, which were named for two brothers who owned a brewing company and who had helped equip the expedition. Near the end of the expedition, Sverdrup reached the northernmost point on the west coast of Ellesmere, which he named Lands Lokk (Land’s End). The north coast of Ellesmere had previously been surveyed by Pelham Aldrich in 1878 while looking for a suitable starting point for the dash to the Pole as part of the Nares expedition. Robert Peary had also traversed the north coast of Ellesmere for the same reason.
    Because Robert Peary had previously surveyed a piece of the north coast of the island, Sverdrup no doubt knew of him and knew that Peary had a driving ambition to become famous by being first to reach the North Pole. One day in 1898 Peary happened onto Sverdrup’s encampment on the east coast of Ellesmere, and assuming that Sverdrup was a competitor in the race to the Pole, Peary was cool and would not discuss anything lest he give away his intentions. He left abruptly and doubled his efforts northward to make certain that Sverdrup could not steal his glory. Sverdrup regarded the brief incident with amusement. Sverdrup himself was already well-known among Arctic explorers, so it is not too surprising that an ambitious person like Peary might view him as a competitor.
    In 1904 Sverdrup wrote, with significant input from his colleagues, a two-volume narrative of the expedition—the English translation edition is titled New Land. The tone of the writing is upbeat and gives the impression of competent and brave men who relished their experience. He told the exciting experience of his second in command, Victor Baumann, on a survey of the west coast of Ellesmere Island. Baumann took some time to hunt musk oxen and suddenly found himself the target of a charging herd of thirty animals. The nature of the surrounding terrain and the speed of the charge left him no escape. His only options were to stand and be crushed, or to counter-charge the herd.
    “The animals suddenly became aware of me, and wheeled right round and headed straight for me at a full gallop. So close on each other were their horns that they seemed to form an unbroken line. The animals sunk their heads until they almost touched the ground, and they snorted, blew, and puffed like a steam engine. There was no time for prayer or reflection. If this was to be the end of me then, in Heaven’s name, let me rush into it rather than standing still. So, with a horrible yell, and waving my arms, I charged the line. This did some good, for as I came nearer I saw the rank open, and I ran straight through it. The nearest animals were not a yard from me. Before I had time to think the whole herd wheeled round, coming towards me again, and I once more charged the line. As before the ranks opened, and I slipped through unscathed.” 
    Next the herd broke into smaller groups and began to come from all sides. Poor Baumann felt doomed this time. His dogs arrived on the scene in the nick of time and dispersed the herd long enough for him to escape.
    After returning to Norway, Sverdrup’s team of scientists wrote thirty-five scholarly publications. Maps made during Sverdrup’s expedition became widely known, and he was given the Grand Cross of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav, and a medal from the Royal Geographical Society. Norway honored Sverdrup for his achievements, but took little interest in their rights on the land he had mapped. The Canadian government, however, had a great interest in claiming all the lands of the Arctic Archipelago. In 1930 the Norwegian government ceded their claim of the islands to Canada. Sverdrup sold his maps and notes to the Canadians for $67,000 Canadian dollars, a handsome sum in 1930. Alas, two weeks later Sverdrup died at the age of seventy-six.  


Source
Sverdrup, Otto. New Land. London: Longmans, Green and Company. 1904.
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Smallpox: The scourge that came with explorers and settlers.

12/13/2015

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PictureNative Americans: smallpox. Artist, Granger, 1853. Fine Art America.
Roger M McCoy

    The story of the Columbian Exchange (Explorer’s Tales, 8/1/2015) covered various transfers of crops, animals, and diseases in both directions between the Old World and the New. Of these exchanges smallpox deserves more elaboration because of its profound effect on the outcome of the European venture into the New World. The other diseases included influenza, typhus, measles, whooping cough, diphtheria, and tuberculosis, but smallpox was by far the most deadly. 
    Smallpox was introduced at numerous points in the New World, but the first was in 1493 when Columbus made his second voyage. This expedition consisted of a fleet of seventeen ships carrying 1,200 men and enough supplies to establish permanent colonies on the island of Hispaniola, which today contains the nations of Haiti and Dominican Republic. Among this large contingent were a few smallpox carriers.
    Britain’s first Medical Officer of Health, John Simon, wrote a 1857 report on smallpox. He said, “...smallpox epidemics, concurred with sword and famine to complete the decimation of the native Taino population in Hispaniola. Then moving to Mexico, it even surpassed the cruelties of conquest, suddenly smiting down 3,500,000 and leaving none to bury them.” The estimates of total population and numbers of dead vary widely and their accuracy is uncertain, but they consistently show devastating losses of 50% to 90% during each of several smallpox epidemics in the New World during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These enormous losses meant a shortage of labor for tending crops and working the silver and gold mines. This labor shortage was in fact an early incentive for the Spanish to bring slaves from Africa to the Caribbean colonies as early as 1503. Some Africans had immunity but a few carried the disease and helped spread it.    
    When explorers arrived they had the advantage of superior weapons and tools, not to mention the novelty of their many accoutrements, armor, horses, and guns. The potential disadvantage for Europeans was their small numbers relative to the indigenous people. If the native people sensed an impending hostile takeover they could sometimes overwhelm the small number of invading Europeans. 
      When Hernán Cortés first tried to conquer the Aztecs in 1519 he had 600 men but was defeated and escaped with only a third of his army (Explorer’s Tales, 5/3/2015). It is possible his army carried the smallpox to Mexico for when he returned in 1520 they defeated Aztec defenders whose numbers had been already reduced by smallpox. The entire Aztec population was reduced by half, or more, and the survivors were demoralized by this mysterious illness that killed them but appeared to spare the seemingly invincible invaders. Francisco Pizarro had a similar experience in Peru. He was defeated twice in efforts to conquer the Incas of Peru, but was successful the third time in 1531 following a smallpox epidemic.
    The Incan empire covered an immense area including Peru, Ecuador, much of Bolivia, northern Chile, and Argentina, with the Andean city of Cuzco, Peru as the administrative center. The empire’s population was estimated to be as high as sixteen million. They had an excellent network of roads, enabling them to assemble and large army to repel intruders. So how could a small army conquer such a place? There are many parts to the answer, including superior weapons, armor, and cavalry. The Spaniards in their steel armor mounted on horseback seemed invincible against the weaker weapons in the hands of Incan foot soldiers. The Incan culture was so strongly focused on their god-like absolute monarch, that when Pizarro captured and killed Atahualpa the power structure collapsed in the Incan empire. Even these advantages might not have been sufficient against the massive Incan army if not for the ravages of smallpox that invaded the Incas prior to Pizarro’s third attempt in 1531.
    The smallpox virus had been transmitted to Peru overland from Mexico and reached Cuzco in 1524, six years before Pizarro arrived. The disease had killed the ruler and his son, causing turmoil and ultimately a civil war to determine the successor. An estimated 200,000 people died from the disease and an additional number from the civil war. In the midst of this weakened population Pizarro arrived with only 600 men. He easily defeated the Incan defenders, executed their leader, and assumed full control by 1533.  
    Smallpox epidemics again struck Peru in 1558 and 1585. One witness account described the horrible results: “They died by scores and hundreds. Villages were depopulated. Corpses were scattered over the fields or piled up in the houses. The fields were uncultivated, the herds untended. Many escaped the foul disease, only to be wasted by famine.”
   European fishermen off the coast of North America are believed to have made contact with native people and initiated smallpox in that region. By the time Spanish explorers entered the present day South Carolina area they found many empty villages. In North America smallpox moved from tribe to tribe preceding the arrival of Europeans. Population estimates suggest there were more than 20 million Native Americans in North America in the early seventeenth century. By the end of that century the population was reduced in some areas by as much as 90%. Some entire tribes and their culture disappeared. When the Pilgrims came to Massachusetts in 1620 they found the area around Plymouth very sparsely populated. A smallpox epidemic had preceded them by two years and killed almost 90% of the native population along the Massachusetts coast. That particular epidemic is believed to have spread from French settlements in Nova Scotia. Similar disasters occurred as the disease spread westward in North America, usually occurring before the arrival of Europeans in an area.
    When Hernando de Soto marched through the area now called the southeast United States in 1540-41 he found some Indian villages completely abandoned. It is believed they had been vacated two years earlier because of a smallpox epidemic transmitted from coastal Indians to the interior Indians living along the Mississippi Valley. The most highly organized group in North America, the Mississippian Culture, virtually disappeared from the Mississippi River region before Europeans ever made their first settlement in that area.
    Colonists in New England regarded smallpox among the Indians as a gift from God. One Puritan clergyman wrote, “The Indians began to be quarrelsome concerning the land they sold to the English, but God ended the controversy by sending the smallpox amongst the Indians. Whole towns of them were swept away, in some of them not so much as one Soul escaping the destruction.” Many colonists praised God for bringing smallpox. With the native population gone or greatly weakened the colonists could help themselves to land and resources. There are documented instances of colonists presenting the local tribes with blankets that had been used by smallpox victims.
      History might have taken quite a different course if diseases had not come with the arrival of Europeans at a time when no one understood how diseases were contracted and spread. It is hard to know the full effect of disease during the Columbian Exchange, except that it was very great. Hence smallpox had a particularly lasting influence on the history of the New World. 

​Sources    
Diamond, Jared. Guns, germs, and steel: The fates of human societies. New York: Norton & Company. 1997.

​Glynn, Ian & Jennifer. The life and death of smallpox. London: Profile Books. 2004.

Peters, Stephanie True. EPIDEMIC! Smallpox in the New World. New York: Benchmark Books, 2005.
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John Rae: The Unsung Hero

10/25/2015

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PictureJohn Rae painted by Stephen Pearce 1862. Wikimedia Commons
Roger M McCoy

    After serving my readers a heavy dose of Sir John Franklin’s disastrous first and third expeditions, we should have a look at an explorer who was thoroughly adept at surviving in the Arctic. Dr. John Rae became well-known for his remarkable feats of overland travel in the Arctic using skills learned from the local Inuit people. Chronologically this story of John Rae fits better between  parts 2 and 3 of the Franklin account, so keep in mind that M’Clintock had not yet found their actual remains at the time of this account.
    Rae was born in 1813 on the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland—a chilly, wet environment that favors hardy souls. He graduated with a degree in medicine from the University of Edinburgh and became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. He soon went to Canada to work as a company doctor for the Hudson’s Bay Company at Moose Factory at the south end of Hudson Bay. During his ten year stay in Canada he traveled to various HBC trading posts treating ailments of company employees. In this time he became adept at travel under harsh Arctic conditions, a skill he learned from the indigenous people employed by the HBC.
    The Hudson’s Bay Company wisely developed a practice of exploring and mapping the vast region extending roughly from Hudson Bay to the Rocky Mountains. They had a Royal Charter granted in 1670 by King Charles II giving them a monopoly on the fur and other resources. They could easily see their advantage in mapping coasts, rivers, and resources within their realm. To this purpose the HBC decided to send a surveyor well-suited to travel, map, and find resources in remote areas in the harshest conditions, and John Rae was the man.
    First Rae had to learn how to survey, so he was directed in 1844 to go to the Red River Colony, about 700 miles to the west of Moose Factory. There he found the surveyor gravely ill and unable to teach. Rae then trekked east along the north shore of Lake Superior to Sault Saint Marie for instruction and and then on to Toronto for additional training. Most of this 2000 miles of travel was done by dog sled in winter. Then in 1846 he began his first surveying expedition on the north coast. By this time Rae was a well-seasoned and tested traveler and survivor in harsh conditions. Rae could build an igloo in an hour, eliminating the need for heavy canvas tents. He used clothing and bedding made of animal skins with the fur on the inside. The fundamentals were simple: keep clothing dry, learn to build snow houses, learn to hunt seals, wear clothing made of animal skins. Rae provided his Arctic survival knowledge to the Admiralty but it was ignored.
    In 1853 while search parties were still looking for Sir John Franklin in other locations, John Rae went to explore and map the south end of the Gulf of Boothia. He approached from Repulse Bay at the north end of Hudson Bay and the following spring of 1854 crossed the isthmus of land now named for him. He continued across Boothia Peninsula, showing it to be a peninsula, and then crossed to King William Island, proving it was not connected to Boothia. By then Rae was somewhat east of the dead remains of the Franklin expedition. He met Eskimos who told him of thirty to forty white men who had starved to death several years earlier at a location farther west. Rae remarked that his knowledgeable informant wore a band around his head that came from the place of the dead men. Rae bought the Eskimo’s headband and told him he would also buy any other relics from the site of the dead men. Rae could not determine where the items came from or if the starved men had been part of the Franklin expedition. However he did not doubt that he had found the first clue to the Franklin party’s fate. Who else could it have been? Rae believed in the Eskimo’s truthfulness, having no reason to think the man would make up such a tale. He did not go to investigate the site himself because his first interest on this expedition was to continue mapping the Arctic coastline before winter began. He had made several important discoveries distinguishing between islands and peninsulas in the Boothia region, and was intent on finishing that job. He was, after all, a Hudson Bay Company employee and had been instructed to map rather than find Franklin.
    In the autumn of 1854 he heard additional details about the Franklin party. Eskimos there told him that bodies had been found near the estuary of the Great Fish River. Given  this information Rae was certain that the bodies were part of Franklin’s party. Furthermore the Inuits showed Rae more items found from the scene, including silver forks and spoons with crests of officers on Franklin’s ships. Other items included a plate with Franklin’s name, a gold watch, a vest, and numerous other items. The Eskimos could not say what happened to the ships, but their most surprising information was that the corpses’ bones had knife marks—definite signs of cannibalism. This was the first real information about the fate of the Franklin expedition, and Rae decided to travel to England immediately with the news.
    In England his news was met with shock and disbelief. The relics he brought definitely proved that he had found news of Franklin, but no one believed that an Englishman would eat another Englishman. Everyone doubted Rae and thought he had been too gullible. Since they did not accept his story, the public made up an explanation that involved massacre by the Inuits. The alternative was simply too horrible to accept. Rae was further criticized for returning to England without first going to the site where the bodies were found. This criticism led to the accusation that he had been too eager to claim the £10,000 reward for finding evidence of Franklin. Public opinion ran high against Rae as the bearer of bad news and against the Inuits as murderous and barbaric people not to be believed.
    Lady Jane Franklin held Rae in great contempt for his unbelievable story. She, like most of the public, disliked this “unrefined, coarse man” for standing by the Inuits’ story. Rae maintained they were telling the truth, but Lady Jane retorted that he had believed lies told by “savages.” In her outrage Lady Jane recruited important people for support, including none other than Charles Dickens who wrote several pamphlets condemning Rae for daring to say that British sailors could have resorted to cannibalism. She urged the Admiralty to delay the reward until further investigation by others. The Admiralty had doubts of their own about Rae’s credibility, and he was forced to appeal many times for the prize money, which he eventually received and distributed a fifth of it to members of his party. Other Arctic explorers were knighted for their work, some of whom made less significant contributions to the knowledge of the Arctic. Rae received the money, but no knighthood. It was Rae’s discoveries that convinced Lady Jane that further search should be made in the King William Island area, leading her to send M’Clintock to investigate (see, Sir John Franklin: The failed hero, Part 3, 10/1/15).
    John Rae's accomplishments, surpassing all nineteenth-century Arctic explorers, were certainly worthy of honors and international fame. No explorer ever approached Rae's prolific record: 1,776 miles surveyed of uncharted territory; 6,555 miles hiked on snowshoes; and 6,700 miles navigated in small boats. Yet he was denied fair recognition for his discoveries because he dared to utter the truth about the fate of Sir John Franklin and his crew. A bitter smear campaign by Franklin's supporters denied Rae a knighthood and left him in ignominy for over 150 years. Finally some recognition came in 2014 when the British Parliament, urged by representatives from Orkney, announced that a plaque dedicated to John Rae would be installed in Westminster Abbey.

Sources
Berton, Pierre. The Arctic Grail: the Quest for the Northwest Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909, New York:Viking Penguin, 1988.

McCoy, Roger M. On the Edge: Mapping North America’s Coasts. New York: Oxford University Press. 2012.

McGoogan, Ken. Fatal Passage: the True Story of John Rae, the Arctic Hero Time Forgot. New York: Carroll and Graf Publishers. 2002.









 

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