Land and Sea
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: Introduction The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a burst of interest by European powers in the scientific exploration of the Pacific. Well-equipped expeditions were sent to the far side of the world, although the technology of the time limited navigators’ ability to record their routes accurately. The journals and other publications produced by European expeditions to the Pacific are storehouses of observations of places and people, and the self-consciously scientific expeditions of this period provide particularly rich descriptions of the physical world they had set out to document. In addition, scientific expeditions brought back to Europe a vast array of physical specimens used to define species, as well as descriptions and drawings of people, landscapes, cultural objects, plants, and animals. However, the value of these records is diminished through uncertainty about where specimens were collected, and about the locations in which observations were made. The Coral Discovery project seeks to map scientific voyages to the Pacific completed by 1834 in order to clarify issues of coral taxonomy. Land provides the project with a way to map these voyages and trace the provenance of their specimens. Places named within navigators’ journals provide a more accurate way of mapping the locations visited by vessels than the multitude of calculated coordinates laboriously produced during the voyages. Land and Oceanic Travel Shipboard explorers used land to navigate. In 1697, English Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed wrote to Samuel Pepys, retired from administration of the navy, “’tis in vain to talk of observing the Longitude at Sea, except you know the true Longitude and Latitude of the Port for which you are designed” (qtd. in Kershaw 134). While that expert observation identifies the impossibility of reliably calculating longitude at sea, it omits to mention the difficulty of calculating the correct longitude of places on land. However, Flamsteed’s observation points to a means of mapping voyages undertaken before longitude could be effectively recorded. Land provided stable markers for mariners, and the accounts of voyages to the Pacific are linked to land through their inclusion of profiles of coasts, descriptions of approaches to harbours and surrounding regions, evocative names for landmarks, and records of Indigenous place names. Fig. 1: Westall’s images are remarkable in their detail, and form part of a long tradition of coastal profiles. Coastal profiles formed an important part of records of expeditions—drawing had been part of the curriculum of the Portsmouth Naval Academy since 1733—and in concert with written descriptions, depictions of coasts enabled subsequent visitors to identify previously visited regions (Smith 9). Naming was also a means of making landmarks. James Cook named topographical features of land seen during his voyages. While many of the names he used were fanciful, or influenced by matters of patronage and power, or reflective of Cook’s personal history, or of events during his voyage, some were descriptive (Carter 3-33). Such opportunities to name visibly distinctive topographical features allowed navigators to offer guidance to subsequent visitors. Like Cook, later European visitors might see mountains that “very much resemble glass houses” and confidently identify them as the “Glasshouse Mountains” marked on their maps (17 May 1770). In addition to imposing their own names on the places they observed, European navigators also marked Indigenous names on their maps and charts, as evidenced by the plethora of Indigenous names on the map of the Society Islands that resulted from Cook’s Endeavour voyage. Such records made it possible for later visitors to establish their location by asking the people who lived there where they were (Gapps). European navigators recorded names in unfamiliar languages, writing without an established spelling system, working from a range of European languages, and while the names they recorded often differ from modern versions in their spelling they are still generally recognisable, and can be found on modern maps. Such detailed mapping demonstrates the significance of land to mariners. Records of coastlines, ports, and names allowed navigators to determine their whereabouts with an accuracy and precision impossible while at sea. Fig. 2: Cheevers’s 1773 map of the Society Islands with Indigenous names for islands, regions, and geographical features including harbours. Dava Sobel’s well-known examination of John Harrison’s production of a marine chronometer and claiming of the longitude prize in 1773 suggests that the problem of longitude was solved between Cook’s first and second Pacific voyages (148-150). However, marine chronometers retained a significant margin of error throughout the nineteenth century (Miller 223). In 1855, the United States Coastal Survey sought to establish a baseline longitudinal measurement for the geodesic survey of North America by repeatedly shipping chronometers between Boston and Liverpool. Between 42 and 51 chronometers at a time were sent on five voyages across the Atlantic, and astronomical observations were made to repeatedly recalibrate the instruments while in port. However, even as late as 1855 such a concerted effort to establish the exact longitude of the continent of North America using chronometers failed. While an estimate of longitude was reached, the margin of error of the result was larger than that of the longitude calculated using astronomical methods alone (Stachurski 139-140). Advancements in certainty about the location of North America in relation to Greenwich came later and involved the use of telegraph technology in combination with the trans-Atlantic cable, and then, after 1963, satellites (Stachurski 207-8; NOAA). In the nineteenth century, even in ideal circumstances, the exact location of continents could not be determined. At sea in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, recorded locations were only ever estimates. The uncertainty even of land-based longitude was evident to the scientific voyagers of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Even when on land, scientific expeditions were aware of vagaries in their location and undertook extended astronomical observations with their attendant calculations, while also attempting to establish the accuracy and precision of their chronometers. During his 1793 observations at Cattle Point in Sydney Cove, Alejandro Malaspina, leading a well-equipped Spanish scientific expedition, found that clouds and a lack of suitable astronomical events hampered his efforts to establish longitude. He produced a range of estimates, based on the limited observations his astronomers could make, and on his chronometers. Those estimates varied by nearly 16 minutes of longitude (approximately 24 km; Malaspina 78). Similarly, during his 1802 visit to Sydney Cove, Matthew Flinders’s astronomical efforts were hindered by clouds, though he took what observations he could (Flinders 237). His average result for longitude was close to that obtained by Malaspina’s expedition, and to the result achieved by averaging that expedition’s results from all methods. Chronometers were useful for rough reckoning, but determining longitude accurately remained difficult and continued to use a range of methods throughout the nineteenth century (Higgitt and Dunn 3). While navigators regularly estimated their longitudes, even those skilled in astronomy and armed with chronometers were aware that there was considerable room for error. Such room for error means that named sites on land are the best indications of the waters visited by navigators in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. While navigators diligently recorded their calculated latitudes and longitudes, mapping those reckonings would misrepresent their voyages. Their chronometers were inconsistently unreliable, making the error in their readings impossible to correct. Calculations using astronomical observations are also imperfect due to observer error and reliance on imperfect astronomical predictions. Further confusion creeps in from navigators recording their positions with reference to places already visited, compounding error. Conversion from minutes and seconds of arc to modern digital format, and recalibration of estimates to account for the variety of reference meridians in use before the International Meridian Conference selected Greenwich as the ‘prime meridian’ in 1884, introduces potential for further error (Pimentel 13). This compounded confusion is most easily overcome by accepting Flamsteed’s observation, and mapping ocean voyages using the certainty of named places on dry land. Land Seen from Sea However, land also has its uncertainties, making interpreting navigators’ accounts of their locations challenging. While navigators sought to recognise priority and respect the names given to landforms by other Europeans, news of “discoveries” did not always travel quickly enough to reach expeditions before their departures from Europe. It is to the credit of navigators and their editors that many such issues were resolved before publication, although some remained to cause confusion. Frederick Beechey, in his account of the voyage of the HMS Blossom, demonstrated both the care navigators took to recognise priority of naming, and the difficult in doing so, in one case noting: This island, which on our charts bears the name of Elizabeth, ought properly to be called Henderson’s Island, as it was first named by Captain Henderson of the Hercules of Calcutta. Both these vessels visited it, and each supposing it was a new discovery, claimed the merit of it on her arrival the next day at Pitcairn Island, these two places lying close together. But the Hercules preceded the former several months. To neither of these vessels, however, is the discovery of the land in question to be attr
Source: M/C Journal
DOI: 10.5204/mcj.3100
Author: Claire Brennan
Institution: James Cook University
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4403481691