Out of the Shadow of a Giant

by John Gribbin

  In a letter to Josiah Burchett, Pepys’ successor as Secretary to the Admiralty, Halley grumbled that:

  I fully proved all that I had complained of against my Lieutenant and Officers, but the Court insisting upon my proof of actuall disobedience to command, which I had not charged them with, but only with abusive language and disrespect, they were pleased only to reprimand them, and in their report have very tenderly styled the abuses I suffered from them, to have been only some grumblings such as usually happen on board small Shipps.

  In any case, Harrison soon resigned his commission and joined the merchant service, while Halley retained his naval rank.

  In the summer of 1699, Halley attended meetings of the Royal (where his successor as Clerk, Israel Jones, had been appointed on 8 March 1699), and among other things presented the Society with a chart plotting his magnetic observations, and some corrections to the map of Brazil. But his wish for a second voyage was soon granted, and although the Paramore was paid off on 20 July, on 24 August the first names of a new crew were entered in the wages book. This time, the crew would number twenty-four, including a few of the more reliable hands from the first voyage, with Halley as the only officer and in complete command – as, indeed, he was on the first voyage, but now with nobody to dispute his authority. The ship sailed on 16 September, and proved to handle much better, having been refitted during the summer. Halley’s orders, essentially the same as for the first voyage, now included the command to ‘proceed to make a Discovery of ye unknowne southlands between ye Magellan Streights and ye Cape of good hope between ye Lattd of 50 & 55 South’, without, of course, neglecting the scientific observations.

  This time, Paramore was escorted as far as Madeira by an armed merchantman of the Royal African Company, the Falconbird, and as well as his other observations Halley was now keeping records of temperature and atmospheric pressure. In rough seas off Madeira (too rough for the ship to put in for wine), a boy named Manly White, entered on the books as one of the Captain’s servants, was lost overboard. But there were no further tragedies as the ship pressed on southward, leaving the track of the first voyage, crossing the equator at Longitude 23º West (of London) on 16 November, and reaching Rio de Janeiro, at 22° 55’ South, on 14 December.

  After replenishing his stores, in accordance with his orders Halley left Rio for the deep south on 29 December 1699, right at the start of the southern summer. The voyage south might be described as uneventful, as far as a naval captain was concerned, although mixed in with mentions of ‘very fair weather’ the journal contains entries such as this one for 14 January 1700:

  Yesterday in the afternoon it blew a hard Gale at N N E and towards Evening it Came to North and blew so hard that we were obliged to Scudd before it: about Nine it began to lighten [lightning] and from ten till half an hour past eleven we had Terrible Thunder lightning and rain with vehement Squalls of wind … By twelve the Storme was over and it began to clear up and a fine Gale sprung up at W S W. so I ordered the Sailes to be sett and to goe away S S E with the Wind on the beame.

  And this was still at a latitude of 37º South. Fans of the Hornblower or Aubrey novels will be able to read between the lines and appreciate the hazardous nature of this voyage to high southern latitudes in a small ship, and the seamanship required to carry out Halley’s orders.

  By 27 January the ship had passed 50º South, and Halley records seeing two kinds of penguins, making him think that they were near land. The next day, he saw ‘a Couple of Annimalls which some supposed to be Seals but are not soe; they bent their Tayles into a sort of a Bow’. The description, and a little drawing he inserted of the shape of the creatures’ tails, clearly indicates that they were whales. By now they were beginning to experience extreme cold, with the air temperature below the freezing point of water even though it was high summer. On 1 February, at 52º 24’, their furthest south and some 35º West of London, the ship encountered what looked at first to be three large islands, ‘all flatt on the Top, and covered with Snow. milk white, with perpendicular Cliffs all round them.’fn8 Cautiously closing in to investigate, Halley was hampered both by strong winds and by fog. The ship was now in real danger, as Halley records with a certain amount of sang-froid on 2 February:

  between 11 and 12 this day we were in imminent danger of loosing our Shipp among the Ice, for the fogg was all the morning so thick, that we could not See a furlong about us, when on a Sudden a Mountain of Ice began to appear out of the Fogg, about 3 points on our Lee bow: this we made a Shift to weather when another appeared more on head with several pieces of loose Ice round about it; this obliged us to Tack, and had we mist Stayes, we had most Certainly been a Shore on it.

  There were further alarms of this kind before the ship got free from the ice and Halley, his orders carried out, headed back north.

  This danger made my men reflect on the hazards wee run, in being alone without a Consort, and of the inevitable loss of us all, in case we Staved our Shipp.

  It wasn’t just the major icebergs that were the problem, but lesser chunks of floating ice which surrounded the ship and which could indeed have staved in the sides of the fifty-two-foot-long wooden ship.

  Heading north again, Halley had time to reflect on what he had seen. The icy masses he had encountered were not themselves land, but he knew, as Hooke had explained to the Royal during the severe winter of 1683–84, that ice floats with only a tiny part of itself above water, and could not imagine that what he had seen represented no more than an eighth of a great mass of floating ice. He concluded that they must be masses of ice grounded on land beneath the waves, and when he was able to report the discovery in a letter to the Admiralty at the end of March he wrote:

  we fell in with great Islands of Ice, of soe Incredible a hight and Magnitude, that I scarce dare write my thoughts of it, at first we took it for land with chalky cliffs, and the topp all covered with snow, but we soon found our mistake by standing in with it, and that it was nothing but Ice, though it could not be less than 200 foot high, and one Island at least 5 mile in front, we could not get ground in 140 fathom. Yet I conceive it was aground, Ice being very little lighter than water and not above an Eight part above the Surface when it swims; It was then the hight of Summer, but we had noe other signe of it but long Days; it froze both night and day, whence it may be understood how these bodies of Ice are generated being always increased and never thawing.

  Halley’s conclusion was incorrect, and it is clear to us that what he saw must have been huge masses of floating ice that had broken free from the ice shelf around Antarctica (some of which is, indeed, grounded on land below the waves). But, as ever, he drew an entirely reasonable conclusion based on a scientific assessment of the facts available to him.

  The ship did not get free of the ice, having been further south in the open Atlantic than anyone before them, until 5 February.fn9 They then headed northward in gale-force winds ‘to recover the warm Sunn’. Halley intended to make for the Cape of Good Hope, passing by Tristan da Cunha without stopping, but as the ship was driven northwards by the wind this proved impossible, and he changed course for St Helena to reprovision. The dangerous part of the voyage was far from over. On 26 February Halley recorded ‘daylight with a Terrible high Sea about Six this Morning a greate Sea broke in upon our Starboard quarter, and withall threw us to that we had likt to have oversett; the Deck being full of Water, which had a clear passage over the Gunnell, but it pleased God She wrighted again’. They arrived at St Helena, battered and very low on both food and water, on 12 March, two-and-a-half months after setting sail from Rio, and just over twenty-three years since Halley first set foot on the island. They left again on 30 March, heading for the island of Trinidada, which Halley had been unable to visit on his first voyage. Trinidada, which they reached on 15 April, lies about 750 miles east of the Brazilian coast at 20°31'30''S 29°19'30'' W. It turned out to be an uninhabited lump of rock (actually the largest lump of rock in a small archipelago), but with one asset: a g
ood supply of drinkable water, which made it a desirable port of call for mariners. Halley formally claimed the island for the Crown, and left a breeding stock of hogs and goats to provide food for any future visitors. The descendants of these animals survived into the twentieth century, unlike the British claim to the island, which now belongs to Brazil. But Trinidada offered no facilities for overhauling the ship, and on 20 April Halley set sail for Pernambuco (now Recife) on the Brazilian coast, going ashore there on the 29th.

  It was here that one of the most bizarre events of the voyage occurred. A Mr Hardwick, who styled himself British Consul but actually held no such post and was merely a representative of the Royal African Company, initially refused to believe the evidence of Halley’s two commissions and suspected the Paramore of being a pirate ship. On what he thought would be a social visit to Hardwick’s house, Halley was detained under guard while his ship was searched and some of his sailors were interrogated. ‘But Finding no Signes of Piracie on Board he came and discharged me of my Guard begging my pardon.’ Hardwick claimed to have been acting on the instructions of the Portuguese Governor, although Halley had found that man to be ‘very obligeing’. Hardly surprisingly, the ship left Pernambuco as soon as possible, on 4 May, bound for the northern hemisphere.

  On 21 May Halley reached Barbados, and went ashore to visit the Governor, but was advised to leave at once because disease was rife on the island. Although they hurried away, Halley himself and several crew members became ill. ‘The Barbadoes disease,’ Halley wrote, ‘in a little time made me So weake I was forced to take [to] my Cabbin’ while the Mate steered a course for St Kitts, referred to by Halley as St Christophers. So it was there that Halley, recovering from his sickness, was able at last to have his battered little ship partly overhauled, with new rigging and other repairs. A further stop at Anguilla gave an opportunity for replenishing the ship’s stores for the forthcoming Atlantic crossing and for the crew to have some shore leave. Then on to Bermuda, reached on 20 June, to have the overhaul completed with the ship careened, cleaned, caulked and painted. With everything as well set up as possible, on 11 July the Paramore stood out to sea for the journey home, initially heading north-north-east for Cape Cod to take advantage of the prevailing currents and wind.

  The weather prevented any chance of a landing on the coast of New England, but at the end of the month the ship had reached Newfoundland, where in thick fog they might have run aground ‘had we not fell in with some French Fishermen’ who put them on the right course. An English fishing fleet, however, fled at their approach, taking them for a pirate ship, and one of the boats took some pot shots at the Paramore, but with no harm done. This was the last alarm of the voyage. After taking on fresh water, on 7 August the ship weighed anchor and set course for England, passing Scilly lighthouse on the 26th, and on 10 September Halley ‘Deliver’d the Pink this evening into the hands of Captn William Wright Mastr of Attendance at Deptford’. The boy Manly White was the only crew member lost on either voyage. In six days short of a full year, Halley had achieved all his objectives and fully earned Pepys’ accolade as ‘the most, if not to be the first Englishman (and possibly any other) that had so much, or (it might be said) any competent degree (meeting in them) of the science and practice (both) of navigation.’

  On 30 October Halley showed the Fellows of the Royal Society a map of his magnetic observations, and entertained them with an account of the islands of ice that he had seen. Halley’s charts were the first to show isogones – lines joining points of equal magnetic deviationfn10 – and his mapping of the coasts around the Atlantic was better than anything produced previously. The magnetic data used for the charts included not only Halley’s observations, but also information he had been gathering for years from other sources. He was not only a first-rate navigator and explorer, but a geographical innovator. On 30 November, no longer Clerk, Halley was re-elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society. But his career as a naval captain was not yet over.

  Halley had a long-standing interest in tides, and as long ago as 1684 had published a paper discussing the strange tides in the Bay of Tonkin. A resident of the region, Francis Davenport, had reported a peculiar pattern in the tidal flow at Batsha, on the south coast of China, in which, among other oddities, there was one high tide a day, except that every fortnight there was no tide at all. Halley realised that there was a connection with the Moon’s position in its orbit, which is not a simple circle around the Earth, but in the Philosophical Transactions, where Davenport’s observations were reported, said that ‘to attempt to assign a reason, why the Moon should in so particular a manner influence the waters in this one place, is a task too hard for my undertaking’. Tides were also important to mariners, and Halley had been hampered on both his voyages by the inconvenience of dealing with the poorly understood tidal flows up and down the English Channel. So it is no great surprise that on 23 April 1701 he wrote to the Admiralty proposing

  That if their Lopps shall think fitting to have an exact account of the Course of the Tides on and about the Coast of England … there be provided a small Vessell such as their Lopps shall think proper … for which service their Lopps most obedient servant humbly offers himself.

  Their Lordships did indeed think it fitting to have such a survey (of the Channel, which is all Halley intended in spite of the grand reference to the Coast of England), and naturally chose the Paramore for the task. Halley received his Commission on 26 April, so soon after he made his formal proposal that it seems there had already been discussions about the project. Bureaucracy and some difficulty in assembling a new crew delayed the task, but while this was going on, on 6 May Halley’s previous achievements were acknowledged when the Admiralty made an order to the Navy Board that:

  Wee do hereby desire and direct you to cause to be paid unto Captn Edward [sic] Halley, out of the Money in the hands of the treas of the Navy, upon Acct of the Tenths of Prizes the Sum of two Hundred Pounds in consideration of his great Paines and care in the late Voyage he made for the discovering of the Variation of the Needle.

  The instructions for the new task (written, of course, by Halley himself) told him to:

  use your Utmost care and Diligence in observing the Course of the Tydes accordingly as well in the Midsea as on both Shores As also the Precise times of High and Low Water of the Sett and Strength of the Flood and Ebb, and how many feet it flows, in as many, and at such certain, places as may suffice to describe the whole. And whereas in many places in the Channell there are Irregular and half Tydes you are in a particular Manner to be very careful in observing them.

  And you are also to take the true bearings of the Principal head Lands of the English Coast one from another and to continue the Meridian as often as conveniently may from Side to Side of the Channell, in order to lay down both Coasts truly against one another.

  Work on the tidal survey began on 14 June, and kept Halley busy until 2 October. It was a tedious and painstaking task, carried out in small boats, often in poor weather, which there is no need to go into in detail here. But the success of the survey demonstrates Halley’s skills as an organiser and a leader, a man who got things done. He produced the first detailed survey of the complex tides in the Channel, a full century before anything comparable was done by others, having already produced the first detailed study of the Earth’s magnetic field. At the end of it all, in spite of the high esteem in which he was held at the Admiralty, Halley did not immediately receive his full wages, and there may have been some behind-the-scenes wrangling about his official status, because an Admiralty letter to the Navy Board, dated 20 February 1702, reads:

  Captain Edmd Halley late Comander of the Paramour Pink, having acquainted me that hee has not yet received his pay for his two last voyages; and for as much as he is not esteem’dfn11 as a Captain in the Navy, but only Employd by Particular Order from His Majesty for the Improvement of Navigation; I do therefore hereby desire and direct you to cause him to be forthwith pay’d the Wages due to him f
or the time he Comanded the said Vessell.

  And on 20 April 1702:

  It being herfn12 Mats Royl Will and pleasure that the Summ of two hundred pounds shall be payd to Capt Edmd Halley (over and above his Pay as Captain of the Pink the Paramour) as a reward to him for his Extraordinary pains and care he lately took, in observing and setting down the Ebbing, and Flowing, and setting of the Tydes in the Channell as also and bearing of the head-Lands on the Coasts of England and France. I do therefore in obedience to her Maty Commands hereby desire and direct you, to cause the sayd summ of two hundred pounds to be payd unto Him the sayd Capt Halley accordingly.

  The reference to the headlands of France is significant. Halley’s log does not record details of a survey of the French coast, but it is clear from other references that he made one, which must have been presented to the Admiralty and which would be invaluable in the anticipated war with France.

  This was the end of Halley’s official connection with the Navy; although he talked of voyaging to the Pacific to complete the magnetic survey, nothing ever came of the plan. It was also the end of the Paramore’s naval service – she was sold by the Admiralty in 1706, for £122, having only ever had two Captains, Peter the Great and Edmond Halley. But it wasn’t the end of Halley’s activities for ‘King (or Queen) and Country’.

  Halley had probably been discreetly studying not just ‘bearing of the head-Lands on the Coasts of England and France’, but the approaches to French harbours, useful information in time of war. War with France was always expected in those days, and the political pot had been stirred by the death of Charles II of Spain in 1700 and the succession of Philip V, the seventeen-year-old grandson of Louis XIV of France, to the Spanish throne. This concentration of Bourbon power was too much for many other nations to tolerate, and triggered the War of the Spanish Succession, in which England, the Dutch and the so-called Holy Roman Empire (essentially an Austrian Empire) were allies. This was the war in which the Duke of Marlborough, arguably England’s greatest-ever general, made his name, notably at the battle of Blenheim. But it also involved war at sea.