Out of the Shadow of a Giant
Page 26
There is no evidence that any significant amount of treasure was ever recovered from the wreck, and some evidence of the difficulties involved in a note by Pepys in the Naval Minutes of ‘Mr Halley’s having his vessel taken from him by a privateer when he was at work in diving upon a wrack’. But Halley left a detailed account of his diving work with the Royal.
The diving bell, sometimes referred to as a ‘tub’, was a truncated cone, three feet wide at the top, which was closed, and five feet wide at the (open) bottom. A stopcock at the top could be opened to let stale air out, and there was a small window made of thick glass. The bell was sunk with weights totalling one and three-quarter tons, and had a bench running around the inside just above the bottom ‘for the men below to sitt on when they should be cold and whereon a man might sett with all his clouths at any depth drie’. Halley’s own description of a descent in the device echoes Hooke’s experiments in a vacuum chamber:
When we lett down this engine into the sea we all of us found at first a forceable and painful pressure on our Ears which grew worse and worse till something in the ear gave way to the Air to enter, which gave present ease, and at length we found that Oyle of Sweet Almonds in the Ears, facilitated much this admittance of the Air and took of the aforesaid pain almost wholly.
The pain was caused, of course, by the build-up of pressure as the bell descended and water was pushed up into it from below. Every fifteen feet or so, the lowering was halted while more air was added to push the water out by increasing the air pressure inside the bell. This was the technique involving barrels of air that Halley had invented. Each cask was of about forty gallons capacity, sealed by being covered in lead. If such a cask of air was simply opened inside the diving bell, with the air inside the cask at normal atmospheric pressure, high-pressure air from the bell would rush in to the cask. Halley’s ingenious idea, which he called ‘the principall invention I can bost of’, was to have a stoppered hole at the bottom of the cask and a valve at the top. When the top of the barrel was inside the bell, the bottom was kept below the water level and the stopper was released, while the valve in the top was open. Water flowing into the barrel forced the air out into the bell, and when the cask was full of water the valve was closed and it was hauled back to the surface. This was repeated until the water level inside the bell had dropped to the desired level. The technique worked:
By this means I have kept 3 men 13⁄4 [hours] under the water in ten fathomsfn1 deep without any the least inconvenience and in as perfect freedom to act as if they had been above.
Halley also designed a diving suit, made of leather with a helmet attached by hoses to the diving bell to provide air. And he noted the changed appearance and colours of objects underwater, and the way sounds were transmitted. Newton mentioned the optical effects in his Opticks:
… the upper part of [Mr Halley’s] Hand on which the Sun shone directly through the Water and through a small Glass Window in the vessel appeared a red Colour, like that of a Damask Rose, and the water below and the under part of his Hand illuminated by light reflected from the Water below look’d green. For thence it may be gathered, that the Sea-Water reflects back the violet and blue-making Rays most easily and lets the red-making Rays pass most freely and copiously to great Depths.
It seems the scientific aspects of the diving were more successful than the salvage.
Even while Halley was involved in this inshore work in the English Channel, plans were being laid for a much more ambitious nautical venture. The first we hear of it is in a rather cryptic entry in Hooke’s diary on 11 January 1693, which mentions talk of Halley ‘going in Middleton’s ship to discover [that is, explore].’ The Middleton referred to was Benjamin Middleton, who had been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1687 and was the son of a Colonel Thomas Middleton, who had died in 1672 but had been a Commissioner of the Admiralty, a friend of Samuel Pepys, and the man in charge of the dockyards at Chatham and Portsmouth at different times in his career. It seems that the younger Middleton was to be the financial backer for the project, offering to pay for the ‘Victualls and Wages’ if the Admiralty provided a ship, while Halley was the experienced sailor who would undertake the voyage, perhaps with Middleton on board. There is more detail in the Royal’s archive, where there is a petition for the Royal:
please to Lend their Assistance and Good offices to Obtaine of their Matys a vessel which may be Secure in all weathers, but not exceeding 60 Tunns burthen for a voyage to be undertaken by Benjamin Middlleton Esqr and Edmond Halley in order to discover … And the said Benj: Middleton for promoting the said Undertaking does oblige himself to goe [pay for] the Voyage and to Victuall and Man the said Vessell . . And the Care of Making the Necessary Observations is undertaken by the sd Edmund Halley, whose Capacity for Such Purposes is Supposed to be Sufficiently knowne …
Hooke’s diary entry for 12 April 1693 is a little more forthcoming than his earlier comment: ‘Hally & Middleton made proposals of going into ye South seas & Round the World’. This was the day the Royal Society formally endorsed the proposal, and the official records pick up the story on 12 July 1693, when the Commissioners of the Admiralty wrote to the Navy Board that:
Her Matyfn2 is graciously pleased to incourage the said undertakeing. And in pursuance of Her Mats pleasure Signified therein to this Board. We do hereby desire and direct you forthwith to cause a Vessel of about Eighty Tuns Burthen to be set up and built in their Mats Yard at Deptford as soon as may be, and that Mr Middleton be consulted with about the conveniences to be made in her for Men and Provisions, and that when she is built She be fitted out to Sea. and furnished with Boatswains and Carpenters stores for the intended Voyage, & delivered by Inventory to the said Mr Middleton to be returned by him when the Service proposed shall be over.
But what was the ‘Service proposed’ that drew such an enthusiastic response from the Admiralty? Nothing less than a survey of the variation of the Earth’s magnetic field from place to place across the seas, with a view to improving navigation – clearly, Halley’s brainchild.
The ship – the first vessel to be constructed specifically for the purpose of a scientific investigation – was ready to be launched in April 1694. It was one of a class known as a Pink, with a shallow draught for inshore work (originally a design from the Netherlands) and bulging sides, fifty-two-feet long, a beam of eighteen feet, and a draught of just nine feet seven inches;fn3 the displacement was roughly eighty-nine ‘Tuns Burthen’, not eighty, and she was named Paramore.fn4 The ship, it seems, was launched and ready to go – the other possible reason for the reference in Halley’s undated letter to him needing to go on board ‘my frigatt’. But soon after this the trail goes cold, and nothing more is heard of the project for two years. Perhaps the war with France made it too risky a venture, especially in the light of Halley’s encounter with a privateer, which may be why Halley took the job at Chester to fill in the time. It seems less likely that the job in Chester was attractive enough to be the reason for him postponing the voyage.
Whatever the reasons, the last mention of the Paramore in 1696 comes in August that year. Halley had been formally commissioned as Master and Commander of the vessel on 4 June, arrangements for funding the voyage had been made, and on 19 June Halley had drawn up a list of the proposed crew of the ship which ‘with myself, Mr Middleton and his servant will be in all twenty persons’, but then, on 15 August, out of the blue, the Admiralty ordered the ship to be laid up in wet dock awaiting further orders:
We do hereby desire and direct you to cause his Majestys Pinke the Paramour to be laid up in the wett dock at Deptford until further order, notwithstanding any former directions to the contrary.
Nothing more is heard of Middleton at all, and nothing more of the Paramore until 1698 and her loan to Czar Peter. But the story from then on is comprehensively known, from Halley’s own journals and the many official letters, reprinted in Norman Thrower’s account of the three voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore.fn5
With the Nine Years’ War over, and Peter having left, by the summer of 1698 plans were at last going forward for Halley to take the Paramore to sea to ‘discover’. The ship turned out to need some modifications to improve her sailing qualities, but on 9 August the Admiralty ordered that:
Whereas his Majesty has been pleased to lend his Pink the Paramour to Mr. Hawley for a Voyage to the East Indies or South seas, Wee do hereby desire and direct you, to cause her forthwith Sheathed and Fitted for such a Voyage, and that shee be furnished with Twelve Monthes Stores proper for her.
The ambitious idea of a round-the-world voyage, seven decades before the voyages of Captain Cook, seems, probably wisely, to have been dropped. But this is clearly now Halley’s solo project, and on 19 August his Commission as Master and Commander was renewed, with his name entered in the wages book of the navy.
This appointment was remarkable in itself. Halley was not travelling as a passenger on a ship commanded by a naval officer. He had been appointed as a naval officer, to take full command of the ship. This is the only recorded occasion that such a ‘landsman’ was given such a command. The crew was being supplied by the navy, but Halley was in command of the expedition and would be giving orders to the crew, so he had to be a naval officer entitled to give them orders. He became known as Captain Halley, because the commander of a Royal Navy ship is always given the courtesy title Captain, whatever his substantive rank.fn6
Over the next few weeks the crew was completed while the stores and the modest armament of the Paramore (six three-pounders and two swivel guns) were installed. There was one other naval officer, Edward Harrison,fn7 a Lieutenant who was officially second in command, but seems to have been expecting to be allowed a free hand to run the ship, and a Midshipman, John Dunbar. The Lieutenant, in accordance with usual practice, would be the navigating officer of the ship, responsible for making sure it got to the places the Captain ordered. The Boatswain/Gunner, John Dodson, was the most senior of the other ranks, and there was a surgeon, George Alfrey. Halley himself drew up the official orders for the expedition, which the Admiralty then issued to him formally on 15 October 1698, addressed to ‘Captn. Edmd Halley Commandr of his Mats Pink the Paramour’. They clearly spell out the scientific purpose of the voyage:
You are to make the best of your way to the Southward of the Equator, and there to observe on the East Coast of South America, and the West Coast of Affrica, the variations of the Compasse, with all the accuracy you can, as also the true Scituation both in Longitude and Latitude of the Ports where you arrive. You are likewise to make the like observations at as many of the Islands in the Seas between the aforesaid Coasts as you can (without too much deviation) bring into your course: and if the Season of the Yeare permit, you are to stand soe farr into the South, till you discover the Coast of the Terra Incognita, supposed to lye between Magelan’s Streights and the Cape of Good Hope, which Coast you are carefully to lay downe in its true position. In your return home you are to visit the English West India Plantations, or as many of them as conveniently you may, and in them to make such observations as may contribute to lay them downe truely in their Geographicall Scituation And in all the Course of your Voyage, you must be careful to omit no opportunity of Noteing the variation of the Compasse, of which you are to keep a Register in your Journal.
Phew! All on a ship fifty-two-feet long with a crew of twenty, including Halley.
The voyage began on 20 October, but quickly ran into teething troubles. Rough weather in the Channel revealed gaps in the badly caulked seams, so the ship took in water, and then the sand used as ballast clogged the pumps when the water was being pumped out. Halley had to put in temporarily to Weymouth (where, typically, he took astronomical and magnetic observations), then went back to Portsmouth to have the gaps in the planking recaulked and the sand ballast replaced by shingle. Bad weather then delayed the expedition, but on 29 November Paramore sailed again, this time in company with a squadron commanded by Rear Admiral John Benbow, on his way to the West Indies, which gave them protection from any possible pirate attack until they parted company with Benbow at Madeira. It was after they were left to their own devices that Halley began to have trouble – not with pirates, or with the ship, but with his crew.
Carrying out his orders to the letter, by early February 1699 Halley was heading for the island of Trinidada, in the Atlantic at 20º South, when the ship became becalmed in the Doldrums for so long that water ran low. So he altered course for Fernando Loronho, at 4º South. But on 17 February, while the Boatswain was on watch, between two and three in the morning Halley looked out to find that the Boatswain was steering north-west, instead of heading due west for the island. He concluded that this was a deliberate ‘designe to miss the Island, and frustrate my Voyage’. With the course corrected, they sighted the island some twelve hours later, and made landfall the following day. After a brief stop, they reached Brazil on 26 February, the first British ship to visit the region of the Paraiba River, a few degrees south of the equator, in thirty years. Halley took advantage of the stop to make a chart of the region, and correct errors in the existing maps, something he did at almost every stop on his voyages. With the southern hemisphere winter approaching, Halley decided not to venture further south, and after replenishing the ship headed northward for Barbados, hoping among other things to exchange the more troublesome crew members (the hope was not fulfilled). It was on this leg of the voyage that matters came to a head.
With Barbados in sight, Lieutenant Harrison, who had the watch, became not only disobedient but insolent:
pretending that we ought to go to Windward of the Island, and about the North end of it, whereas the Road is at the most Southerly part almost. he persisted in this Course, which was Contrary to my orders given overnight, and to all sense and reason, till I came upon Deck; when he was so farr from excusing it, that he pretended to justifie it; not without reflecting Language; about 6 I commanded to bear away NW and NWbN and before 11 we came to an Anchor in Carlisle bay.
Although the unpleasantness did not stop Halley making his observations of longitude, magnetic variation, and tides, at various islands, he eventually relieved Harrison of his duties and took over the navigation of the ship himself. If Harrison expected Halley to make a mess of the job, he was sadly mistaken. Hardly surprisingly, the expert astronomer proved well equal to the task, and after leaving the West Indies on 9 May 1699 had no difficulty in making landfall at the Scilly Isles on 20 June and reaching Plymouth on the 23rd.
The same day Halley wrote to the Admiralty to explain his early return, describe his successes, and request an opportunity to carry out another voyage, leaving earlier in the season in order to venture further south. This letter gives us more information about Harrison’s behaviour:
I this day arrived here with his Maties Pink. the Paramore in 6 weeks from the West Indies, having buried no man during the whole Voiage, and the Shipp being in very good condition. I doubt not but that their Lopps will be surprised at my so speedy return, but I hope my reasons for it will be to their satisfaction. For as, this time, it was too late in the year for me to go far to the Southwards . . in case their Lopps, as I humbly hope, do please that I proceed again for I find it will be absolutely necessary for me to be clear of the Channell by the end of August or at farthest by the middle of September. But a further motive to hasten my return was the unreasonable carriage of my Mate and Lieutenant, who, because perhaps I have not the whole Sea Directory so perfect as he, has for a long time made it his business to represent me, to the whole Shipps company, as a person wholly unqualified for the command their Lopps have given me, and declaring that he was sent on board here because their Lopps knew my insufficiency … he was pleased so grossly to affront me, as to tell me before my Officers and Seamen on Deck, and afterwards owned it under his hand, that I was not only incapable to take charge of the Pink, but even of a Longboat; upon which I desired him to keep his Cabbin for that night, and for the future I would take cha
rge of the Shipp myself, to shew him his mistake: and accordingjy I have watcht in his steed ever since, and brought the Shipp well home . . Notwithstanding that I have been defeated in my main design of discovery, yet I have found out such circumstances in relation to true Variation of the Compass, and the method of observing the Longitude at Sea (which I have severall times practised on board with good success) that I hope to present their Lopps with something on those articles worthy of their patronage.
Inevitably, Harrison was tried by a Court Martial, on 3 July, with Sir Cloudsley Shovell as President of the Court. Perhaps equally inevitably, given that he was a professional seaman being tried by professional seamen who could not regard Halley as one of their own, he got off with a ‘Severe reprimand’. This seems like a light punishment, but Ronan suggests that it was all that the Court could impose, because the only charge actually brought against Harrison was insolence.