The captain tried doggedly to force the ship through the seas in the hope of getting far enough from the Jutland coast to turn south and take some advantage of the wind. But the twenty-four-hour struggle was in vain; the ship was forced farther and farther north towards Norway, and on 8th February Fisker decided to try to make a run for a Norwegian port. When they came in sight of the mountains, he signalled for a pilot. Shortly afterwards a sailing-boat put out towards the Greenland; it was the Norwegian pilot boat, readily recognisable by its sail, the middle section of which was red. But the heavy seas made it impossible for the pilot to reach the Greenland, and soon the attempt to reach land had to be abandoned again. Peter Forsskål, sitting in his cabin and looking through the port-hole at the little pilot ship disappearing into the blanket of snow, described the scene in his diary. Clearly much moved by the nobility of this attempt to make contact between the two ships, he wrote: “When circumstances permit, the Norwegian pilots never neglect to go out to a ship, regardless of whether they receive a signal or not. A law which does honour to those who instituted it, and to those who so implicitly obey it.”
After this abortive attempt, Fisker had no option but to run before the gale and return to Helsingör. With a following wind, it took only twenty-four hours to retrace the distance that had taken fourteen days on the outward trip. But by the time the Greenland anchored in Helsingör roads, yet another of her sailors had perished.
For the members of the royal expedition, Fisker’s desperate attempt to force the Skagerrak had been their first encounter with both the majesty of the sea and the misery of sea-sickness. Carsten Niebuhr endeavoured to meet these events philosophically: “I surrendered myself completely into the hands of the Almighty; and as I could also rely perfectly on the skill of the officers and men, I calmly retired to my bed for the duration of the gale, while the others had to labour above in the rain, wind and cold to ensure the safety of the ship.” Peter Forsskål also took refuge in reasoned argument: “Never has the beginning of so important a journey been more beset with difficulties and doubts. We could easily have become disheartened and inclined to give up had we let ourselves yield to advice. But we knew that the ways of the seasons and the weather were not directed against us alone, nor devised only for our benefit. We therefore endured this sea journey, in which scarcely a single one of the sea’s dangers had been spared us.”
On turning to von Haven, after the sober deliberations of Niebuhr and Forsskål we meet a picture of utter wretchedness. After the struggle in the Skagerrak, Professor von Haven was a broken man. The first thing he did on reaching Helsingör was to seek out Fisker and beg to be put ashore. When Fisker refused without express permission from the Government in Copenhagen, von Haven promptly wrote a panic-stricken letter to Count Moltke: “I have had to fight not only against sea-sickness but also against a constitution which could never endure the life or the cold aboard ship. Even during this last month the water has been contaminated. I pass over in silence the many other unpleasantnesses which my respect for Your Excellency forbids me to mention. But my life has been one long sickness since the day we set sail.” Von Haven recounted Fisker’s refusal to put him ashore without instructions from the king, and feared that such an order might not reach Helsingör before the Greenland sailed again. He foresaw the most tragic consequences: “Am I to be sacrificed to the sea and the terrible winter? Then I wish to take leave now of Your Excellency, at the same time humbly thanking you for the great kindness it would be if I might be granted the pleasure of such a favour from His Majesty, the King of Denmark. I regret only that death prevents me from plucking the fruits of glory.”
This moving appeal, which almost breaks into classical alexandrines, did not fall on deaf ears. The day after the letter arrived in Copenhagen, a message was dispatched to Helsingör. Von Haven had the king’s permission to leave the Greenland and travel overland to Marseille, where he would rejoin the expedition. The Danish professor, who shortly before had claimed the position of leader, scrambled quickly down into the rowing-boat. Now that the worst terror was past, he no doubt felt more humiliated than relieved. Up on deck the other members of the expedition stood looking at him in silence. He watched them in fury as the boat carried him towards Helsingör. Solid earth once under his feet again, his old assurance returned. With steady, deliberate steps, he disappears from our sight.
2
A month later spring reached Denmark. Peter Forsskål noted in his diary how Galanthus nivalis, also known as the winter snowdrop, peeped out from under the leafless hazel bushes in the small gardens of Helsingör. The Greenland still lay in the roads. At the end of February Fisker attempted a third sortie against the roaring beast of the Skagerrak, but once more he was forced back, and when the ship was once again anchored off Helsingör, Carsten Niebuhr added up his distances and discovered that in the two months since leaving Copenhagen they had covered over 2,800 miles and got only 30 miles nearer to the Mediterranean. These calculations also afforded him an occasion of complaining about the Greenland’s nautical equipment. He had noticed some inaccuracies in the ship’s instruments, and after an inspection of the log, he now confirmed that not only was the log-line fractionally short, but also that the half-minute glass ran out in 28 seconds. The officers of the Greenland had to explain to the dissatisfied astronomer that the log-line was purposely short because it stretched in use, and that the log-glass must run out in 28 seconds to compensate for the error that arose when, at high speeds, it was difficult to stop the line precisely at a given sign. Scandalised, Niebuhr rejected these approximate measurements, and in his diary recommended astronomical readings as the only accurate means of determining one’s position at sea. He was no doubt right. But even to-day the log-glass still continues to run out in 28 seconds.
On 10th March Fisker made a fourth attempt, and this time succeeded. Two days after sailing from Helsingör, they reached the North Sea. Forsskål noticed how the chaffinches and other small birds began to settle on deck and follow the big Great Skuas who chased the gulls around the ship until they disgorged their food, whereupon the Great Skuas could swoop on it. When the Greenland was a short way out in the North Sea, the ship was struck once more by a fearful storm, which drove it northwards. On 13th March, according to Niebuhr’s reckoning, they were level with a land Forsskål called Hetland. At first sight this name does not give much idea of the Greenland’s course, since it can indicate both the Shetland Islands and the district round Stavanger. Indirectly, however, Forsskål gives us another bit of information which leaves no doubt as to which of the two places is meant. He says in his diary that he has already had intimation of the position which Niebuhr read off from his astrolabe in that he has observed some sea-owls, the large white birds with black-tipped wings which the sailors called Jan van Gent. These impressive birds, which are to be seen over the big oceans, breed only in very few places, one of them being the Shetland Islands. As Forsskål noticed several of them at the same time, he concluded that the ship must be somewhere near their breeding colony on the Shetlands, so that he could fix its position almost as accurately as Niebuhr. Even here on the desolate, stormy ocean, nature twice answered the same patient question.
The chaffinches disappeared, the Great Skuas and the sea-owls flew off, but the storm remained. During the night of 25th March it again blew almost a hurricane, and the next morning Niebuhr’s astrolabe showed that the Greenland had been driven right back upon the coast of Iceland.
There the wind eventually dropped. Thirty-first March was a great day for all aboard the Danish man-o’-war, which for a week had been pitched backwards and forwards by a turbulent sea. This is clear from the diaries: “On 31st March the beautiful spring weather set in at last; only it was so completely calm that we did not move the whole day,” wrote Niebuhr. His words are corroborated by Peter Forsskål: “After many months of overcast skies, on 31st March the first clear, pleasant, refreshing day dawned. We were all like new men in mind and spirit. Usually there
is little point in taking meteorological observations at sea. However, just for once, I will note that the Fahrenheit thermometer at 6 o’clock in the evening showed 49°.” We can picture this Atlantic evening. First, a whole day with limp sails and a cloudless sky, and now it is still light at dinner-time; a few sailors chat together on the foredeck, and the night follows with a calm sea and Northern Lights. It is not surprising that all the members of the Danish expedition felt like new men in mind and spirit. They had been forced up near Iceland. The compass direction was completely wrong. But now at least the Fahrenheit thermometer began to go the right way. On this calm, northern evening they perhaps felt for the first time that they were really bound for Arabia Felix.
On just such evenings Peter Forsskål on the deck of the Greenland was probably engaged in solving the mystery of the remarkable phosphorescence in the water along the sides of the ship. Ever since the days of waiting at Helsingör he had been seeking an explanation of the phosphorescence in seawater. He naturally rejected the theory that it came from the Nereids, the ocean’s beneficent nymphs. Forsskål preferred to stick to his test-tubes. He filled one of them with the phosphorescent sea-water and found that fourteen days later it was still luminous when he shook it. He filtered the water through fine linen and discovered that it was still luminous, although less so. He tried filtering it through four thicknesses of coarse paper. Then the phosphorescence disappeared. But on neither the linen nor the paper could he detect any living matter through his microscope. He continued his experiments throughout the rest of the journey on the Greenland, and concluded that it could not be the salt in the sea-water that shone, since the filtered and no longer luminous water had lost none of its salt. He found no living matter in the residual slime on the paper; therefore the luminosity must come from the slime itself. Forsskål now postulated that the slime came from certain luminous jellyfish. The movement of the water caused them to lose some of their luminous slime, which was thus distributed throughout all sea-water, causing it to shine even though it contained no living organisms. Forsskål’s explanation was defective, but he himself was aware of the source of the error in his experiments, for he says he believes that the microscope through which he studied the filtered slime was not powerful enough. Later investigations have shown that the phosphorescence is in fact due to living organisms. The Nereids are simply single-celled Flagellum and Rhizopods.
The miraculous has acquired another name but it retains its gleam; and while it continued to shine round the ship’s prow, the Greenland continued on its long journey south. After a day of rest on 31st March, a fresh northerly wind sprang up and sent the man-o’-war scurrying southwards to the west of Ireland. A week later they were delayed once more by severe gales and Niebuhr again reported a sailor falling from the rigging. Eventually, on 13th April, Niebuhr’s measurements of the sun’s altitude showed that they must be off Cape Finisterre in northern Spain. There was now hope of sighting land. At the same time the temperature had risen steeply and Forsskål blamed the rapid change of climate when some of the ship’s sailors succumbed to scurvy. Forsskål then observed storm swallows in large numbers round the ship; and on 21st April, they saw land for the first time since the Norwegian coast had disappeared into the dusk six weeks earlier. It was Cape St. Vincent in southern Portugal. Niebuhr could not refrain from sounding triumphant in his diary. His calculations were out by only forty-four minutes, or a mere three-quarters of a degree. More remarkable still, there were now laudatory remarks about the “Herr Lieutenant” in Forsskål’s diary. The relationship between the two men had evidently improved noticeably during the long period of shared trial and tribulation. Niebuhr noticed with admiration the Swede’s tireless energy, and Forsskål had to admit that the little surveyor time after time produced navigational calculations which were more accurate even than those of the captain’s own instruments. The presence of Kramer, about which he had made such a fuss in Copenhagen, had also turned out to be much less of a burden than he had feared. The young physician took no interest in either the salt percentages or the phosphorescence, so Forsskål could conduct his experiments in peace. He also derived much pleasure from Baurenfeind, who never complained even though he often had to draw the professor’s wretched molluscs over and over again. Now that the Greenland was at last in sight of land Baurenfeind had more exciting subjects and did two beautiful drawings of the European and African coasts respectively as seen from the Straits of Gibraltar.
Although the expedition had had to spend the stormy winter in the Kattegat and the North Sea, it found recompense in the Mediterranean spring, with sunshine all day long and gentle southerly winds. Niebuhr was delighted at the sudden change; his only worry was that he had not succeeded in persuading Fisker to call at a Spanish port to change the ship’s fresh water supply, which he personally now found undrinkable. Forsskål, on the other hand, saw no reason to complain. He had got permission to open one of the gun ports in the lowest battery, and there he could stand just above the surface of the water and fish for molluscs with a net. “As the ship sailed slowly on, my fishing station was constantly changing. I chose to station myself on the sunny side of the vessel as it was easier to catch sight of the small creatures. But even so, they were recognisable only as dark, scarcely visible dots, which is why so few have been able to catch sight of them. I noticed that these creatures were most numerous around sunrise and sunset; and as I gradually became more practised at this fishing, I did not let a single floating leaf or tree-stump go by, but hauled it in, remarking how there were attached to them all sorts of molluscs, which thus got themselves ferried about on these small vessels.”
At this restful pace the man-o’-war slowly approached Marseille. The Fahrenheit thermometer regularly showed 62° in the evenings, and Forsskål saw great swarms of butterflies fly over the ship. On 9th May they sighted the coast of Provence, and four days later the Greenland anchored in the roads off Estague, a few miles from Marseille.
Baurenfeind made some drawings of the town, and Forsskål went ashore on a trip that was partly a botanical excursion and partly a visit to the University of Montpellier, where the famous botanists Professor François de Sauvage and Professor Antoine Gouen “received me with all the cordiality which both personally and by virtue of my appointment I might expect.” It was in Montpellier that Forsskål got the idea that the expedition should send seed to all the big European universities, thus enabling Linnaeus to profit from his collections. He immediately wrote to Bernstorff, renewing his former request about visiting South Africa, and also suggesting that the expedition might send seed via Copenhagen to the Universities of Montpellier, Paris, Uppsala, Chelsey [sic] and Amsterdam. He also informed Linnaeus in a letter that he had now found a way of providing him with information about his discoveries without its coming to the knowledge of the Danes. “When I mention an animal or a plant in my letters to you, Professor Linnaeus, I shall do it by writing only the number of the species and family; but in order that no incompetents in Denmark shall publish the discoveries as their own, I will always write the second figure in the number first, so that, for example, I will write 82 for 28 and 435 for 345, etc.”
Forsskål was delighted with his plan: here at last was some prospect of Linnaeus being able to take advantage of his work. The expedition was going much better than expected; the journey to Marseille had already been very productive, and his relations with the others were not at all bad. In these optimistic reflections, Forsskål forgot for a moment the worst of all the Danish “incompetents”; but he was not to be allowed to do so for long. When the members of the Danish expedition went ashore on 14th May after their two-months voyage, Professor von Haven had already arrived in Marseille.
The arrival in Marseille of the Greenland with three smaller Danish vessels—merchant ships which she was to escort to Smyrna—drawn by Baurenfeind. The artist has apparently drawn himself in the foreground, while the other well-dressed gentleman bending over a plant can hardly be other than Forssk�
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3
While the rest of the expedition had been cut off from the outside world on board the Greenland, Friedrich Christian von Haven had not been idle. The esteem he had forfeited by his conduct during the gale in the Kattegat, his defection in the roads outside Helsingör, had somehow to be recovered; and since he could scarcely hope to place his own actions in a favourable light, he endeavoured to redress the balance by doing down his colleagues. To this end he addressed a letter to the Danish Government which still further exacerbated the already strained relations.
The expedient was not new. He had made use of it when writing to Moltke for permission to leave the Greenland. After describing his own end in moving phrases, he had continued: “I am also saddened by having to predict that most of my colleagues will come to share the same fate in a hot climate, some through illnesses they have already contracted, and the others through weakness of character. The discoveries which the expedition has so far had the opportunity of making are in no sense significant: a few observations of the altitude of the sun at places already known, a few seaweeds—nothing new in either.”
On his return to Copenhagen, while the Greenland still lay waiting in Helsingör roads, he submitted a memorandum to the Government in which he presented demands as exaggerated as those put forward at the time of his journey to Rome. First, he requested that the artist Baurenfeind, whom he regarded as vulgar and uneducated, be replaced by someone else; he recommended Peter Cramer, who later became well known in the theatre as a stage designer. He again resorted to his familiar delaying tactics; and having spent a futile eighteen months in Rome, he now sought permission to stay several months in Constantinople to learn Arabic, Turkish and Greek. In addition he asked that he alone should decide all routes, the seasons during which the expedition should visit the various towns and how long they should stay in each, and furthermore that he should have the last word concerning the employment of foreign labour—in short, a repetition of his demand to be leader, which had already been so humiliatingly refused. In order to stress his qualifications, he promised to “use his superior position, which is in fact the only way of preventing thousands of disagreements, with the greatest possible leniency.” Finally, the memorandum requested a grant of 400 Rigsdaler to cover the cost of his travelling expenses to Marseille.
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