The 1830 Baffin Fair
Like modern oilmen, Arctic whalers took oil first from where it was easy. They began with Greenland and eastward towards Spitzbergen. In the first two decades of the nineteenth century whalers in that region caught 50 percent more whales than in the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay to the West. By the late 1820s, though, the whales had almost been wiped out in the Greenland fishery, and like the deep sea drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, whalers were prepared to take more risks. In the Davis Strait and Baffin Bay the weather was less predictable, the ice more likely to trap you, and crush your ship.
In June and July 1830, after several years of poor catches in the Greenland Sea, the Davis Strait was packed with vessels. Whaling, especially Arctic whaling, was always a risky business, and some ships were lost every year, but in 1830 the weather in the Davis Strait was appalling. Violent storms pushed ice into the Strait, crushing ships and lifting them out of the water.
That year the British whaling fleet lost 19 ships out of 90 in the Davis Strait. These included William Scoresby Jr.'s former ship Baffin, and the John, once captained by his brother in law, William Jackson. In 1830 the John was based at Greenock and her crew had a reputation for trouble. In 1829 some of them had refused to sail on a voyage of exploration in support of Captain John Ross and his ship Victory. The story of what happened on board the John in 1830 is not at all clear, but what is known is that when she was wrecked on September 24th, she was commanded by one of the officers, that her captain was dead, and that the mate and several of the crew had been set adrift in a boat. The John was the last whaler to sail out of Greenock.
Each of the 19 wrecked whalers had on board over fifty men, and for a while around 1000 were camped on the ice, drinking ale, wine, and rum plundered from the wrecked ships. This drunken way-below-zero jamboree was known as the Baffin Fair and went on for several days until the wrecked ships had been emptied and burnt. Free from the discipline of their ships the men were out of control, but when the food and drink was exhausted most were picked up by other ships and surprisingly few died. Basil Lubbock, whose book The Arctic Whalers is one of the best on the subject, estimates 'eight or ten,' did not survive, some of whom were deserters from French ships, and had been wandering on the ice even before the storms broke.
Besides the 19 ships lost, many more were damaged and 21 came home empty. After the 1830 catastrophe, whaling in the Davis Strait declined by about two thirds, and to make matters worse the American deep sea whaling industry had started to dominate oil production, making the Arctic fishery less attractive. Many British whalers turned to killing seals instead.
The image above can be downloaded from the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull.
Prevailing Winds, History, and Forgetting
One of the things I find most fascinating about the process of trying to understand the past is the extent to which we forget collectively about things that no longer seem to matter. How things that were once an acceptable or at least tolerable part of life become almost inconceivable. What we call progress is not simply a matter of overcoming problems and sidestepping obstacles, but of denying they exist. The Icelandic volcano that has disrupted air travel across Europe in the past month has been a reminder of just how dependent we are on a stable and predictable environment. We want our transport to be reliable and nothing less than a volcanic eruption can stand in our way. But even so the idea of being delayed in our travels round the globe because of a volcano seems faintly ridiculous. Volcanos are so prehistoric and passenger jets are so, well, shiny and modern. But what if transport, industry, and commerce could be disrupted by something as mundane as the wind blowing in the wrong direction? In March 1822 William Scoresby and his crew of fifty men were preparing to sail from Liverpool to the whale fishery off Greenland in the ship, Baffin. Unfortunately the voyage was delayed for about a week because a westerly wind prevented them from leaving the dock. This would no doubt have caused problems for Captain Scoresby, since not only would the men have to be retained on the ship (as it happens two of the crew deserted during the delay) but the loss of a week from the short Arctic hunting season was expensive. Scoresby finally managed to begin his voyage north on March 27th when the wind shifted a little southward, but his ship was almost alone when it left the Mersey. Here’s how he describes it: [We] were prevented from sailing by strong westerly winds, which prevailed for several days … At this time, nearly 500 ships were lying in the different docks wind-bound; but scarcely any of them attempted to put to sea on this occasion as the wind was not suitable for the South Channel, the outlet most suitable for the voyages to which the principal part of the fleet was destined. Scoresby’s troubles should be seen in a wider context: around forty percent of world trade was conducted through Liverpool in the early nineteenth century. Delays had a significant effect not only on individual ships but on the economy of Britain as a whole. Far more significant, no doubt, than the restrictions on European flights are today. It is also worth noting that the prevailing wind in Liverpool is from the West.
May Day Ceremonies of Greenland Whalers
The first day of May is traditionally the first day of summer. It is an ancient date of celebration and ceremony of pagan origins, which is marked traditionally in England with such rites as Maypole dancing, garlanding and the crowning of the "Queen of the May". Sailors in the Greenland whale fishery had their own traditions, marking May Day with ceremonies that began just after midnight and continued for several hours. At close to 80° Latitude, as far north as Spitzbergen, the Barents Sea, and Ellesmere Island, there is perpetual daylight from late May, so the ringing in of May Day at these latitudes would have taken place in dusk or twilight. William Scoresby Jr. recounts the events on board the Baffin on May 1st 1820 in his A Voyage to the Whale Fishery, 1822, and describes an excitable, rowdy scene in which the hierarchy of the crew was established and scores settled in an elaborate theatrical display. No doubt drink was taken. Scoresby himself did not join in the festivities:
The proceedings commenced on the striking of eight bells at midnight, by the suspension in the rigging of a garland (very gaily decorated with ribbons, and surmounted with a representation of Neptune, and emblems of the fishery), by the hand of that individual among the crew who had most recently entered into the state of wedlock. Another sailor, strangely metamorphosed in a garb studiously extravagant, was then heard to hail the ship, ordering the main-yard to be braced aback, and a rope to be given for his boat; and immediately afterwards the odd figure, representing Neptune, with his wife, a barber, and his mate, ascended the deck over the bows of the ship. All hands were now summoned by this assumed marine potentate; when each individual, as he passed before him, received from the barber distinguishing patches of black and white upon his face. His marine majesty then went below, and entered into a division screened off from the 'tween-decks for the occasion, and ordered all the hands, who were not free of the Greenland Sea, to come before him. One at a time they were brought into his presence, and each submitted to his humorous interrogatories, and to the coarse operation of shaving.
...
Neptune was a striking figure; his back carried a huge hunch, and his swollen bandied legs rivalled the diameter of his body. He was clothed in a naval dress, augmented by a cloak and an immense wig, of which a swab formed the tail. His assistant, whose office it was to perform the shaving operation, was dressed in a neat suit (with the exception of some embellishments) of white nankeen, and formed a singular contrast to his acknowledged sovereign. His lather was a mixture of soot, grease, tar, and other filth, scraped up for the occasion; a tar-brush was the utensil with which it was applied, and a coarse piece of iron-hooping, the substitute for a razor. When the lathering commenced, various questions were proposed by Neptune, respecting the man's occupation, station and country; and if the unlucky fellow happened to give an answer, the brush invariably penetrated to his throat, and filled his mouth with its superabundant juices. The shaving of such as were decent, well-behaved and orderly characters, though at the best not very delicate, was, nevertheless, accomplished without any severity; but some who had shipped themselves as seamen, and proved to be not only unacquainted with the profession, but, at the same time, mean and worthless characters, were shaven with vast deliberation and coarseness. Two of these being introduced to Neptune in the character of hypocrites, were ordered by him to pass through two or three courses of the operation, on the principle, that, all hypocrites having two faces, it was necessary to scrape frequently and deeply, that the false face might be removed, and the true one appear! The shaving being concluded, and all hands made free, a sort of rude masquerade commenced. The characters were not numerous, but they were, in general, well supported. The introduction of a female character, the wife of Neptune, though any thing but lovely, gave occasion for battle, plot, and dramatic incident. This scene being passed, the ship's company were marshalled on deck and reviewed. Feats of agility by individuals succeeded; and some tumbling, which was commenced by an expert master of the ceremonies, was attempted by all hands, though at the expence of many coarse thumps on the deck, which it required all their thick and varied clothing to defend them against.
...
After these feats of agility, a rude, but active and energetic dance succeeded, sustained or directed by the noisy vibrations of every kettle and pan to be found in the ship, but without any instrument more harmonious. The whole terminated with a loyal song, which was chorussed by the whole crew; and then they dispersed with three huzzas, on a summons from the boatswain to "splice the main-brace."
Scoresby's Map of Greenland, 1822
In 1822 William Scoresby Jr., commander of the ship Baffin of Liverpool, spent the summer months in the Arctic, catching whales and mapping the coast of Greenland. It is sometimes difficult, looking back from the twenty-first century, to remember where to leave gaps when making sense of history, to remember what wasn’t known. This map, which you can click to see in more detail, is a good example. Scoresby’s voyage of 1822 came in the wake of two significant voyages of discovery funded by the Admiralty under John Barrow. As a mere whaler Scoresby had been passed over in the search for the North West Passage in favour of Captain John Ross, whose failed expedition of 1818 met with widespread public ridicule, and William Parry, who was more successful in his expedition of 1820.
Scoresby was not a man to harbour grudges, but he must have felt wounded by the rejection, given that he was widely acknowledged at the time to be the foremost expert on the Arctic region. His voyage in 1822, commanding the ship he had designed and had built for the purpose in Liverpool three seasons earlier, was primarily to catch whales. Without government assistance, Scoresby had to make his voyage pay. And pay it did: despite sailing outside the usual fishing grounds around Spitzbergen, and despite narrowly avoiding shipwreck, Scoresby brought back a full ship.
More importantly, Scoresby’s map of the Eastern coast of Greenland, as well as his examinations of the ‘mineralogy’ and botany of the region, were a significant advance on what had existed before. In the section of the map shown here the gaps are obvous. Huge areas of the land back from the coast are uncharted; the assumption was that rather than being a single large landmass, Greenland was in fact a series of small islands joined together by ice. At the end of his 1822 journal, published in 1823 as A Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery in 1822, Scoresby quotes a letter from Sir Charles Giseiké on ‘the Structure of Greenland’:
It is past doubt, that the whole coast of Greenland formerly consisted of Large islands, which are now, as it were, glued together by immense masses of ice.
Such inlets, or rather firths (fiords), which once formed sounds or passages, terminate always, according to my observations, with glaciers filling up the valleys at each end. Such is (to confine myself to the more northern latitudes), the ice-firth, or ice-bay, of Disco Bay, in 68° 40′. Such, also, is Cornelius Bay (North-east Bay, or Omenak’s Fiord), 71½°, the north-eastern arm of which is blocked up at both ends with ice running through a valley, and bending rather towards the ENE.
Scoresby named many of the headlands and islands he discovered after his friends and acquaintances back in Liverpool. If you look closely at the map you will see ‘Scoresbys Sound’ (named after his father) and ‘Jameson Land’ after his mentor Professor Jameson of Edinburgh University, but this section of coastline he names the ‘Liverpool Coast’: names such as Holloway Bay (after a Liverpool minister) and Rathbone Island (after the famous Liverpool shipping family who were close friends) betray Scoresby’s affection for the city. Many of these names did not make it onto the official Admiralty maps or were replaced by later navigators.
Liverpool's Floating Churches and a Famous Chaplain
Yesterday I came across (via Twitter) a post about New York’s floating chapels and this started me thinking about Liverpool’s own floating churches. It seems there were two, one of which was a nonconformist chapel based on board a former whaling ship the William, which in its heyday as a whaler would have looked something like the one in the picture, the James. The Williamhad been built in Liverpool for the Greenland fishery in 1785 and became a chapel in 1822. TheWilliam remained in the King’s Dock until 1850, when she was broken up. The journal of Robert Day, (1848-1850), Agent to the Liverpool Seamen’s Friend Society, held in the Liverpool Records office, records that “she sold for £105. The amount of dock dues incurred for 28 years and 7 months amounted to £1277 13s 7d”. The other floating church in Liverpool belonged to the Church of England. Based in the donated former frigate HMS Tees, the Mariner’s Floating Church opened its companionways to worshippers in 1827 and remained in place in George’s Dock until 1872, when it sank at its moorings. The first chaplain of the Floating Church was William Scoresby Jr., the former whaler and arctic scientist turned minister. Scoresby had always had a strong religious sense and was well known as a whaling captain for refusing to catch whales on a Sunday. This was partly because he believed in observing the sabbath, but also because he believed that a day of rest would be beneficial to the crew. He was deeply concerned for the moral and spiritual health of sailors and was also a Temperance campaigner, arguing that drunkenness at sea was at least partly responsible for the large numbers of ships lost. Scoresby first moved to Liverpool from Whitby in 1819 and built his ship the Baffin there. He returned to the city as chaplain in 1827 and stayed for five years before moving on.
Baffin of Liverpool: The Last Liverpool Whaler?
I seem to be developing a minor obsession with whales and whaling. I’ve been reading recently about William Scoresby Jr, a Whitby whaler who built and sailed the Liverpool whaleship Baffin on a famous voyage to Greenland. Scoresby, besides being a whaler, arctic explorer and naturalist, designed the Baffin himself, overseeing her construction at Liverpool. In his Journal of a Voyage to the Northern Whale Fishery Scoresby describes the ship:
The voyage was accomplished in the ship Baffin, burden 321 tons, built at Liverpool, under my personal inspection, expressly for the whale-fishery, in the year 1820. No expense having been spared in the construction of this ship, every known principle calculated for producing strength, accommodation, sea-worthiness, and fast sailing, in so far as these properties were compatible, was adopted, and with such good effect, as to answer, upon trial, our highest expectations.
As far as I have been able to work out, Baffin was one of only two whale ships based in Liverpool in 1822. The other was the Lady Forbes, which was wrecked that year. After this voyage the Baffin transferred to Whitby. Scoresby made one last trip to the Arctic before he gave up the sea and became a clergyman. TheBaffin–almost certainly the last Liverpool whaler–also sailed out of Leith, before being wrecked in the Davis Strait off Greenland in 1830. The ship with its bow towards us in the picture above is thought to be the Baffin. The painting is held at the Hull Maritime Museum.
The image above is The Liverpool Whaleship, Baffin, by Francis Hustwick, c. 1834
