THE ARCTIC WHALING JOURNALS OF
WILLIAM SCORESBY THE YOUNGER
VOLUME I THE VOYAGES OF 1811,1812 AND 1813
VOLUME II THE VOYAGES OF 1814,1815 AND 1816
VOLUME III THE VOYAGES OF 1817,1818 AND 1820
Edited by
C. IAN JACKSON
THE HAKLUYT SOCIETY
2003, 2008 & 2009
William Scoresby (1789-1857) made his first voyage in the whaler Resolution from Whitby to the Greenland Sea, west of Spitsbergen, in 1800. Three years later he was formally apprenticed to his father and another three years saw him promoted to chief officer. On 5 October 1810, his twenty-first birthday, 'the earliest at which, by reason of age, I could legally hold a command' his father moved to Greenock and another ship, relinquishing the Resolution to his son.
Another ten years would see the publication of what has been described as 'one of the most remarkable books in the English language', his two-volume An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (1820). Even before he took command of the Resolution, two developments had occurred that, when combined with his seamanship and whaling skill, were to make that book 'the foundation stone of Arctic science' and cause the journals of his annual voyages remarkable accounts in their own right. First, Scoresby had studied, during two brief winters, at the University of Edinburgh. Teachers such as John Playfair and Robert Jameson had made him aware of the scientific importance of his arctic experience. Together with Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, they encouraged him to observe, experiment and record, and provided opportunities for his data to be published. Secondly, this encouragement, and the study habits he developed at Edinburgh, led Scoresby to expand the logs of his arctic voyages into lengthy journals that contained scientific records and social and religious comment as well as detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling.
This second volume of William Scoresby's journals contains the unpublished accounts of his three voyages in the Esk in 1814-16. As before, these lengthy journals combine scientific records and social and religious comment as well as detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling. They also continue to demonstrate the competence and confidence of Scoresby which were evident from the moment he assumed command of the Resolution in 1811. However, each of the journals also shows the dangers inherent in what might otherwise seem to be routine annual sailings to the Greenland Sea in latitudes 78° to 80° N. The dangers were not merely those of besetment and damage by the ice where the bowhead whales had to be sought, nor of the persistent fog and frequent gales characteristic of these icy seas; human error and even stupidity could be equally disastrous. In 1814, the Esk was caught in the tidal current of the Sumburgh Rost and nearly wrecked before she even reached Shetland on her outward voyage. The journal for 1815 also contains a graphic description of the destruction by fire of the Hull whaler Clapham, regarded by Scoresby as 'the finest ship that ever engaged in the [whale] fishing trade.'
For high drama, and Scoresby's crisis management and seamanship, however, the 1816 journal is outstanding. When part of the Esk's hull was torn off by ice, various methods of repair were tried without success, including a drastic attempt to invert the empty ship in the sea at the ice-edge. Scoresby's ability to return the Esk safely to Whitby, with only the floorboards of the hold keeping the leakage to a manageable rate, still seems as incredible now as it was to the crews of the other whaling ships who had eagerly anticipated plundering an abandoned ship in the Arctic.
In addition to the journals and the editor's introduction, this volume also contains a unique 'second view' of the 1814 voyage: the journal kept by a young supernumerary, Charles Steward, and an appendix by George Huxtable, FRIN, on Scoresby's navigation methods.
The third and final volume in the set of William Scoresby's journals contains the unpublished accounts of his three voyages 1817, 1818 and 1820.
During the years of the voyages in this volume Scoresby's life changed profoundly. An unsuccessful hunt for whales in 1817 led to a break with the Whitby shipowners, and command of the Fame in 1818 in partnership with his father. The partnership was a brief one, and at the end of 1818 Scoresby broke with his father and moved to Liverpool, finding new partners, completing the writing of An Account of the Arctic Regions and watching the construction of his new ship, the Baffin. Meanwhile he suffered a severe financial loss and made a profound religious commitment. After his first summer ashore for many years in 1819, he brought back to Liverpool in 1820 a 'full ship' of seventeen whales, despite being faced by mutineers in the crew who earlier had been involved in piracy in the Caribbean and, apparently, hoped to seize the Baffin'and convey her and her valuable cargo to a foreign country'.
In each of the journals, Scoresby wrote detailed descriptions of his landings: on Jan Mayen in 1817, western Spitsbergen in 1818, and the Langanes peninsula in northeast Iceland in 1820. The 1817 voyage, when Scoresby and others found the Greenland Sea relatively free of ice, involved him in the renewed British interest in arctic maritime exploration after the Napoleonic Wars. The Introduction to this volume contains a major reappraisal of Scoresby's role, especially in regard to his alleged mistreatment by John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty. The volume also contains an appendix by Fred M. Walker on the building of wooden whaleships such as the Baffin that were capable of routine ice navigation under sail as far north as 80°N, based on Scoresby's account, as Owners' Representative, at the beginning of the 1820 journal.
25 x 18 cm. Vol.1. lxi + 242 pp. Vol. 2. xxxvii + 308 pp. Vol. 3. xlii + 245 pp.
Very good + condition. Some foxing to the top edge of all three page blocks but otherwise very clean and tidy.
