A Brief History of Circumnavigators

by Derek Wilson

  But there was no mountainous land. It was clear to the British explorers that Wilkes had erred by several miles in the location of the north eastern extent of the landmass he claimed to have discovered.

  If the coast was illusory, the icebergs were not:

  We found we were fast closing this chain of bergs, so closely packed together that we could distinguish no opening through which the ships could pass, the waves breaking violently against them, dashing huge masses of pack ice against the precipitous faces of the bergs; now lifting them nearly to their summit, then forcing them again far beneath their water-line, and sometimes rending them into a multitude of brilliant fragments against their projecting points.

  Sublime and magnificent as such a scene must have appeared under different circumstances, to us it was awful, if not appalling. For eight hours we had been gradually drifting towards what to human eyes appeared inevitable destruction: the high waves and deep rolling of our ships rendered towing with the boats impossible, and our situation the more painful and embarrassing from our inability to make any effort to avoid the dreadful calamity that seemed to await us.

  In moments like these comfort and peace of mind could only be obtained by casting our cares upon that Almighty Power which had already so often interposed to save us when human skill was wholly unavailing. Convinced that he is under the protection and guidance of a merciful God, the Christian awaits the issue of events firm and undismayed, and with calm resignation prepares for whatever He may order. His serenity of mind surprises and strengthens, but never forsakes him; and thus, possessing his soul in peace, he can with the greater advantage watch every change of circumstance that may present itself as a means of escape.

  We were now within half a mile of the range of bergs. The roar of the surf, which extended each way as far as we could see, and the crashing of the ice, fell upon the ear with fearful distinctness, whilst the frequently averted eye as immediately returned to contemplate the awful destruction that threatened in one short hour to close the world and all its hopes and joys and sorrows upon us for ever. In this our deep distress ‘we called upon the Lord, and He heard our voices out of His temple, and our cry came before Him.’

  A gentle air of wind filled our sails; hope again revived, and the greatest activity prevailed to make the best use of the feeble breeze: as it gradually freshened, our heavy ships began to feel its influence, slowly at first, but more rapidly afterwards; and before dark we found ourselves far removed from every danger. ‘O Lord our God, how great are the wondrous works Thou hast done; like as be also Thy thoughts, which are to us-ward! If I should declare them and speak of them, they should be more than I am able to express.’15

  The expedition regained Hobart safely and spent the cooler months in Australia and New Zealand. While his ships and men were recouping, Ross assessed the work of the previous season. Inevitably, this meant comparing his claims with Wilkes’s. And, inevitably, news of Ross’s complaints against him reached the American. Wilkes was, of course, furious that the British expedition had capped his own achievements and that Ross was questioning the accuracy of his information. He put the Englishman’s reaction down to jealousy and pique and never forgave him. Even before the American returned home news of this disagreement was creating doubts about Wilkes’s achievement within the scientific establishment. But it was not only the English with whom the aggressive patriot was at odds. He disputed with the French the primacy of discovery. D’Urville claimed to have sighted Adélie Coast on 19 January 1840. Wilkes put no dates on his chart but later claimed to have made his first land sighting on 16 January. Clearly a storm was brewing which would rumble on for years.

  Ross, meanwhile, was very impressed with most of what he saw in Australia but the introduction of a degree of democracy in New South Wales he regarded ‘a measure of very doubtful benefit to the colony, and considered by many to be the first great step towards its separation from the mother country’.16 At the end of November 1841 he set off to return to the scene of his former discoveries, hoping to find another edge to the barrier past which he could slip in order to sail farther south. He did not accept the theory, espoused by Wilkes among others, that all the sightings of land within the circle would prove to be parts of one continuous coastline embracing a single continent. To him it seemed more reasonable to suppose that, like the Arctic, this ice cap covered only sea and islands. If that were so, it should prove possible to get closer to the pole. Ironically, it was Ross, the thorough, conscientious explorer, who was wrong on this matter and Wilkes, the less scrupulous chart-maker, whose hunch was correct. Ross reached six miles farther south than he had the previous year but was unable to add significantly to his discoveries. He, therefore, resolved to try his luck in a different quarter.

  Sailing close to the sixtieth parallel, he set course for Cape Horn, wintered in the Falklands, then made for Graham Land. But he was able to add little to what predecessors had observed and, eventually, steered for home via the Cape. He reached England on 4 September 1843, having completed the most southerly circumnavigation yet achieved (almost all close to or above the fiftieth parallel).

  Thus ended a remarkable burst of ‘Antarctic mania’. It was rendered all the more extraordinary by the fact that scientific interest in the southern polar region now lapsed once more until the very end of the century.

  The subsequent careers of these three Antarctic pioneers were as diverse as their respective characters, Dumont D’Urville’s was brief and tragic. On his return, his achievements were recognised by the Geographical Society, who awarded him their Grand Gold Medal. He did not long enjoy the honour. On 8 May 1842, he was returning to Paris from Versailles with his wife and son on the recently-constructed railway when his train was involved in an appalling crash. All three of them were killed along with scores of other travellers. D’Urville’s body was among the many incapable of recognition. The news reached James Ross during the course of his expedition and he took the first opportunity to honour the Frenchman. On Louis-Philippe land he sighted a great tower of rock and named it D’Urville’s Monument ‘in memory of that enterprising navigator, whose loss not only France, but every civilised nation must deplore’.17

  No hero’s return awaited Charles Wilkes. The scientific establishment was dubious about the utility of his expedition. The general public was totally indifferent. Enemies in high places were not slow to exploit the conflict generated by his claimed discoveries. And several of the men who had been forced to endure his tantrums for nearly four years were thirsting for revenge. The chagrin Wilkes experienced at receiving no popular acclaim, no immediate scholarly recognition (not until 1847 was he awarded the Royal Geographical Society’s Founder’s Medal) and no naval promotion was balm to the bodies and egos which the commander had so often bruised. But Wilkes’s disappointment alone could not assuage their wrath. Some of his officers lodged official complaints and these resulted in Wilkes being court-martialled on an array of charges grouped under seven heads: oppression, cruelty, illegal punishment, disobedience of orders, scandalous conduct, conduct tending to the destruction of good morals, and conduct unbecoming an officer. Several of the charges failed on technicalities. Perhaps they would not have done had the naval authorities not found themselves caught between the demands of justice and expediency. On the one hand they could not permit Wilkes’s blatantly bad leadership to go unpunished. On the other, they could not allow a major US enterprise involving the national honour to be sullied in the eyes of the world. There was an inevitable compromise: Wilkes was found guilty on seventeen counts of illegal punishment and was sentenced to the mild punishment of a public reprimand.

  He was little chastened by his experience. Wilkes and controversy remained frequent bedfellows. In 1861 he almost started single-handed a war between Britain and the USA. The incident occurred during the American Civil War and is known to history as the Trent affair. Wilkes stopped and boarded the British mail packet Trent in order to arrest two Confederate envoys travelling
from New Orleans to Paris. The British government were furious at this flagrant violation of their neutrality and President Lincoln was obliged to apologise and release the two Southern representatives. Wilkes was no respecter of diplomatic niceties nor did he find it easy to submit to authority. Another incident in 1864 led to his being court-martialled again – for disobedience, disrespect, insubordination and conduct unbecoming an officer. He was publicly reprimanded and suspended from active duty.

  James Ross ended his days, by contrast, full of honours and high in public esteem. His 1839–43 expedition won him a knighthood and the Gold Medals of the Geographical Societies of London and Paris. The University of Oxford conferred an honorary doctorate on him and he was widely acknowledged as the leading expert on polar geography. This venerated sailor finally came home from the sea in 1849 and enjoyed several years of quiet, distinguished retirement before being gathered to his fathers in 1862.

  D’Urville, Wilkes, Ross – three great circumnavigators; three very different men; three explorers whose names, deservedly, are permanently recorded on the map of Antarctica.

  * i.e. Mount Erebus

  9

  PROFIT AND PLEASURE

  Those splendid ships, each with her grace, her glory,

  Her memory of old song or comrade’s story,

  Still in my mind the image of life’s need,

  Beauty in hardest action, beauty indeed.

  ‘They built great ships and sailed them’ sounds most brave,

  Whatever arts we have or fail to have;

  I touch my country’s mind, I come to grips

  With half her purpose thinking of these ships.

  That art untouched by softness, all that line

  Drawn ringing hard to stand the test of brine;

  That nobleness and grandeur, all that beauty

  Born of a manly life and bitter duty;

  That splendour of fine bows which yet could stand

  The shock of rollers never checked by land.

  That art of masts, sail-crowded, fit to break,

  Yet stayed to strength, and back-stayed into rake,

  The life demanded by that art, the keen

  Eye-puckered, hard-case seamen, silent, lean,

  They are grander things than all the art of towns,

  Their tests are tempests, and the sea that drowns.

  They are my country’s line, her great art done

  By strong brains labouring on the thought unwon,

  They mark our passage as a race of men

  Earth will not see such ships as those again.

  JOHN MASEFIELD

  Who built the first clipper ship is still a matter of dispute. What is beyond doubt is that in the 1840s and 1850s the merchant sailing ship reached the apogee of its development. Sleek of build and carrying thousands of square yards of canvas, these vessels were capable of amazing speed. The 436 miles run in one day by Lightning in 1854 is just one of the records set up by the clippers which will never be broken. They were, of course, made for speed, in obedience to the age-old commercial dictum that ‘time is money’. They were made for profit-hungry owners, who exerted pressure on flamboyant and often brutal captains, who drove their ships and men with a ruthless disregard for anything except making port in the shortest possible time.

  Why all this frantic activity? The rapidly expanding international markets of the mid-Victorian era provided countless opportunities for clever shipowners to make fortunes: taking emigrants to the colonies, bringing tea back from China, gold and wool from Australia, conveying meat, and exotic fruit to the markets of London, Paris and New York. Speed was of the essence for a variety of reasons. Perishable cargoes had to be brought home in the shortest possible time. Tea and wool merchants wanted to be first of the season in the auction houses, to obtain the best prices. Owners tendering for the Royal Mail concession had to guarantee delivery in Melbourne in 68 days and pay a penalty of £100 for every day over that limit. So keen was competition for this contract that in 1854 the owner of the James Baines offered to deliver the mails within 65 days – and did so. But, as the years passed, the fact that the clippers had steamships breathing down their necks became the main incentive to maintain their reputation for speed and reliability. The titanic struggle between the old and the new continued until the end of the century and, despite the rapid improvements in steamship construction and efficiency, the square riggers saw off the challenge for fifty years.

  The rivalry between shipping lines and individual captains in the heyday of the clippers was intense. Record runs were proudly announced in the newspapers and on company handbills in the hope of attracting more business. Merchants were not slow to exploit this competition, which could, at times, be literally suicidal. Many a captain with a reputation at stake or a bonus to earn took one risk too many, sending ship, cargo, passengers and crew to the bottom.

  The extraordinary career of James Forbes indicates the pressures merchant captains were under or placed themselves under. Forbes was a tough Scot who arrived on the Liverpool waterfront at the age of eighteen with little sailing experience, and in thirteen years worked his way up to command of the Marco Polo, the pride of the Black Ball Line’s fleet. He achieved this meteoric rise by being a ‘harder’ man than most of his contemporaries. He drove his ships and men to the limit and took incredible risks. He soon earned the nickname ‘Bully’ and, though this sobriquet was carried by other shipmasters, no man better deserved it. His fiery temper was legendary and many were the stories told about him in ports round the world. It was said that he stomped about the quarterdeck in the fashion of a seventeenth century buccaneer with a brace of pistols in his belt, and that when his ship was carrying full canvas he had the lines padlocked to prevent any fainthearted subordinate shortening sail. Once a group of terrified passengers appealed to him to reduce sail. Gruffly he dismissed them, adding that it was his intention ‘to get to hell or Melbourne’.

  The maiden voyage of the Marco Polo in 1852 was Forbes’s greatest triumph. He made Melbourne in 68 days and beat the steamer Australia by a clear week. Before leaving Liverpool he had made the boast that he would bring his ship back to the Mersey inside six months. One potential obstacle to the achievement of this target was the likelihood of losing men ashore. Once they had escaped his clutches some of his crew were likely to disappear in the town or sign on with other captains desperate for experienced sailors. Forbes obviated this threat by the simple expedient of arresting his entire crew for ‘insubordination’ and handing them over to the police. Marco Polo was loaded and ready to sail in good time. Forbes then dropped the charges against his men, brought them back aboard and weighed anchor. He had an excellent return passage via the Horn of 76 days and regained Liverpool on Boxing Day. When the news of her return went round the town, amazed crowds gathered on the quayside. There, sure enough, was the Marco Polo with a painted slogan hung from her rigging: ‘THE FASTEST SHIP IN THE WORLD’. Forbes had comfortably made good his boast: he had circumnavigated the globe in 175 days, of which 144 had been spent at sea.

  It was an amazing record but Forbes intended to beat it. At the start of his next trip he announced to the passengers, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, last trip I astonished the world with the sailing of this ship. This trip I intend to astonish God Almighty.’ Marco Polo had a good outward voyage of 75 days. At Melbourne she turned round in less than a fortnight. Forbes now wore as far to the south as possible in the hope of finding the westerlies at their most ferocious. He crossed the sixtieth parallel, and took his ship well within the drift-ice limit, in the middle of the southern winter. And he paid the price. Marco Polo found herself among the ice and had part of her copper sheathing ripped away. The captain’s gamble had not paid off this time but he still completed the round trip in exactly six calendar months.

  In 1854 the Black Ball Line took delivery of their latest ship, the American-built Lightning. On her journey across the Atlantic she established the remarkable record of 436 miles in 24 hours. Gr
eat things were, therefore, expected of her on the Australia run. There was only one man who could be relied upon to get the best out of her. ‘Bully’ Forbes, now commodore of the fleet, took Lightning out of Liverpool on 14 May. Much to his anger and frustration this excellent ship was delayed in the Doldrums and arrived at her destination in 77 days; not nearly good enough for the hero of the Marco Polo. Forbes was determined to make up for lost time on the return run. He kept maximum canvas up on the crossing to the Horn. As the ship bounded along at eighteen and nineteen knots with her lee rail dipping below the water, Forbes prowled the deck, swearing at his men and threatening to shoot the first one who let go the royal or topgallant halliards. Once again, he pushed his ship too hard. A violent gust of wind snapped the foretopmast clean off and the fore royal, topgallant and topsail followed it overboard. Forbes was forced to reduce sail for four days while the repairs were carried out but, amazingly, he still established a new record for the Melbourne to Cape Horn leg. But the best was yet to come: Lightning accomplished the whole homeward voyage in 64 days, 3 hours, 10 minutes, a feat which has never been surpassed by a vessel under sail. Forbes had knocked spots off his own circumnavigation record. He was back on the quayside at Liverpool 162 days after going aboard.

  To shipowners and merchants alike this wiry, ferocious little Scot seemed to have the Midas touch. He was a mercantile genius who could do no wrong. When the Black Ball Line’s latest ship, the Schomberg, came into commission the following year Forbes was given command of her. He set sail on 6 October, making even more flamboyant promises than usual. A flag signal, hoisted as he left port, declared ‘60 days to Melbourne’. He soon discovered that the Schomberg was a much poorer sailer than his previous commands, and the discovery made him angry and sullen. After 82 days the ship was near Cape Otway, still about 150 miles short of Melbourne and battling with head winds. Forbes was so disgusted with his ‘sluggish’ craft that he spent hours below playing cards with some of the first-class passengers and left his officers in command. At 10.30 p.m. the mate went down and reported that the ship was drifting onto a lee shore. Forbes was in no hurry to come on deck and when he did appear it was too late to avert the danger. Schomberg grounded on a sandbank. At this point the captain washed his hands of her. ‘Let her go to hell!’ he bellowed and returned below. It was left to the mate to give the order to abandon ship. Passengers and crew were all saved but the Schomberg was pounded to pieces.