Erebus. Michael Palin
eating, sleeping, manning the decks and endless scrubbing and washing. The obsession with ‘scrubbed hammocks and washed clothes’ was, of course, more than a matter of cleanliness. It was a matter of routine, for without routine there was no discipline.
Occasionally something more interesting would happen. On 7 April 1828 the captain’s log reports a ship bound for New York from Trieste being boarded and searched. On 24 June, ‘1 Russian Line of Battle Ship and a Brig came in sight. 13 gun salutes were exchanged and a covered Jolly Boat took the captain across to what turned out to be a Russian Admiral’s flagship.’ On the same day the log notes: ‘Jolly Boat returned. Opened cask of wine, No 175. 24 and one-eighth gallons.’
Once Erebus was on station around Greece and the Ionian islands, the ‘Remarks at Sea’ read more and more like a holiday brochure. Endless days of ‘Light Breeze and Fine Weather’, and an itinerary to die for: Cephalonia, Corfu, Syracuse, Sicily and Capri. Erebus’s posting could hardly have been more idyllic. Unless you were Caleb Reynolds of the Marine Artillery, given twenty-four lashes for ‘uncleanliness and disobedience of order’; or Morris, Volunteer First Class, given ‘12 lashes over the breach for repeated neglect of duty and disobedience of orders’. Considering where she was, Erebus doesn’t sound to have been a happy ship.
Things began to change as she entered her second year of duty in the Mediterranean, with the appointment of Commander Philip Broke. The son of Rear-Admiral Sir Philip Bowes Vere Broke, who made his name with the audacious capture of the USS Chesapeake in 1813, his approach seems to have been rather different from Haye’s. Certain rituals continued much as they had before – the log continues to record the mundane details of washing and cleaning and holy-stoning of the decks, the state of the provisions, wind directions and reefing of the sails – but the beatings appear to have declined. Broke had a different way of instilling discipline in the ship’s crew, or at least a different set of priorities for his ship. Weekly, and latterly almost daily, the log is now filled with artillery exercises. On 13 April 1829: ‘Exercised a division of seamen at the Great Guns, and Marine Artillery at small arms.’ On 20 April, off the island of Hydra: ‘Exercised a division of seamen with broadswords.’ On 6 May: ‘Exercised a division of seamen firing at a target with pistols.’ Whether it was just another way of dealing with the perennial problem of boredom or in response to some specific instruction from the Admiralty, Broke seemed more keen than his predecessor to see Erebus as a fighting machine. But he never had the chance to show what she could do, for by May 1830 Erebus was on her way home, having never fired a gun in anger.
Two rather heart-warming late entries follow: ‘Lowered a boat for the ship’s company to bathe’ and, on reaching Gibraltar on 27 May, ‘Hove to, to bathe.’ Bathing, rather than flogging, seemed to be more to the liking of the crew’s new captain.
Three weeks later Erebus was within sight of the Lizard Lighthouse. On 18 June her artillery and Great Guns were rolled out by Commander Broke for the last time, and on 26 June 1830 she reached Portsmouth, furling her sails and lowering her flags in respect for King George IV, who had died that morning. (Respect that was not afforded to him by his obituary in The Times: ‘There never was an individual less regretted by his fellow creatures than this deceased king. What eye has wept for him. What heart has heaved one throb of unmercenary sorrow.’) He was succeeded that day by his younger brother, who became William IV. William’s ten years in the Navy had earned him Nelson’s praise and the affectionate title of the ‘Sailor King’.
As the British Crown changed hands, Commander Broke and the crew of Erebus were paid off. Despite her captain’s best efforts at mustering his men to roll out the Great Guns and flash their broadswords, Erebus would never again be a warship.
A triumphant moment in polar exploration: James Clark Ross’s discovery of the North Magnetic Pole in 1831.
CHAPTER 2
MAGNETIC NORTH
If the years in which Erebus patrolled the Mediterranean were ones of comparative idleness for the Royal Navy, there were certain benefits. Press gangs became a thing of the past. Men could choose their ships. The Navy became more specialised, more professional. And with the Napoleonic Wars over, a non-militaristic area of maritime activity started to open up, offering opportunities for the able, the adventurous and the better-qualified to use Britain’s naval superiority to pursue new goals: to extend man’s geographical and scientific knowledge by exploration and discovery.
The impetus for this new direction came largely from two remarkable men. One was the polymath Joseph Banks, the embodiment of the Enlightenment. An author and traveller, botanist and natural historian, Banks had circumnavigated the globe with Captain Cook in 1768, bringing back a huge amount of scientific information as well as mapping previously unknown corners of the planet. The other was one of Banks’s protégés, John Barrow, an energetic and ambitious civil servant, who in 1804, at the age of forty, had been appointed Second Secretary at the Admiralty.
Barrow and Banks formed around them a circle of enterprising scientists and navigators. Much inspired by the work of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, their aim was to assist an international effort to chart, record and label the planet, its geography, natural history, zoology and botany. They were to set the agenda for a golden period of British exploration, motivated more by scientific enquiry than by military glory.
Barrow’s priority was the partly explored Arctic region. Ever since John Cabot, an Italian who settled in Bristol, had discovered Newfoundland in 1497, there had been keen interest in discovering whether there might be a northern route to ‘Cathay’ (China) and the Indies to compete with the southern route via Cape Horn (dominated at that time by the Spanish and Portuguese). From his desk at the Admiralty, John Barrow championed the cause, using every conceivable contact and pursuing every line of influence to make it happen. If the Navy could discover a Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, he argued, the advantages to Britain in terms of safer and shorter journeys to and from the lucrative East would be immense.
Around 1815, the year of Waterloo, whalers – the forgotten men of polar exploration, but the only ones to keep a regular eye on Arctic and Antarctic waters – returned from the north with reports of the ice breaking up around Greenland. One of them, William Scoresby, was of the opinion that if one could get through the ice-pack that lay between latitudes 70 and 80°N, there was clear water all the way to the Pole, offering the tantalising prospect of a sea passage to the Pacific. He backed this up with evidence of whales harpooned off Greenland appearing, with the harpoons still in their sides, south of the Bering Strait.
Barrow, attracted by the idea of an ice-free polar sea, persuaded the Royal Society to set a sliding scale of rewards for penetration into Arctic waters. These ranged from £5,000 for the first vessel to reach 110°W, to a £20,000 jackpot for discovering the Northwest Passage itself. With the backing of Sir Joseph Banks, he then approached the First Lord of the Admiralty, Robert Dundas, 2nd Viscount Melville, along with the Royal Society, with a view to commissioning two publicly funded Arctic expeditions: one to search for a sea passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and the other to make for the North Pole to investigate the reports of clear water beyond the ice.
For Robert Dundas, this suggestion must have seemed a heaven-sent opportunity. A Scot whose father had enjoyed the dubious distinction of being the first minister ever to be impeached for misusing public funds, he had been at the Admiralty for six years, where he had spent much of his time resisting cuts to the Navy. Barrow’s proposals offered a means of keeping some existing ships busy, and thus fending off any criticism that the Navy had considerably more than it knew what to do with. He therefore took kindly to Barrow’s new proposals.
To lead one of the expeditions the Admiralty turned to a Scottish mariner, John Ross. The third son of the Reverend Andrew Ross, he came from a family who lived near the town of Stranraer in Wigtownshire, whose fine natural harbour would have