A note on where Scoresby’s ship, the Baffin, was built, by Mottershead and Hayes, shipwrights, in 1819-1820. It seems she was constructed in a yard on the site of what became, in 1846, the Albert Dock. More at my Scoresby blog, Letters to Elizabeth.
Category Archives: Scoresby
Liverpool in 1817
Link
Liverpool in 1813
Over at my Letters to Elizabeth blog, a short extract about how the streets of Liverpool were lit around the time that William Scoresby lived there.
Monday 11th March, 1811
In 1811 William Scoresby Jr. sailed to the Greenland sea in command of his own ship for the first time. He was 21 years old and had by then spent nine summers in the Arctic, first as apprentice to his father, and later as chief mate on the Resolution, his father’s ship. In 1806, the Scoresbys achieved the record for ‘furthest north,’reaching a latitude of 81 degrees 30′ north, a record that stood unbroken until 1827.
By 1811, when Scoresby Jr. took over command of the Resolution from his father, he was an accomplished whaler and expert navigator. He had studied, at the University of Edinburgh, and had served in the rescue of the Danish fleet from occupied Copenhagen. He was emerging as a scientist of some talent, and a keen observer of the world around him. In his introduction to the first volume of Scoresby’s journals, C. Ian Jackson notes that even as early as 1807, Scoresby had met Sir Joseph Banks, impressing him enough for the teenager to be invited to social occasions with the most eminent natural scientists in Edinburgh at the time, in particular Robert Jameson, Professor of Natural History at the university there.
Scoresby begins the first of his extraordinary journals, part scientific journals, part customs inspectors’logs, on March 11th, 1811, with the Resolution about to leave Whitby for the whale fishery. Guns were loaded because, in 1811, Britain was at war, and whaling ships were valuable targets:
The ship not having floated on the morning tide some things were moved forward to trim her being near one foot by the [Stern?] as regards the draught of water[.]
The weather fine and favourable made preparation for the sailing[.] At 3PM several of the other Greenland Ships were in motion it was not until near full tide however that we were enabled to heave the Resolution off the Ground we presently afterwards hauled through the Bridge nearly as far as the pier where we made sail and got safe out of the harbour[.] At 5 1/2 PM the Pilot left us we then made sail loaded a few of the guns[.] In the Morning fine weather moderate or fresh breezes and hazy[.] … steering to the NNE the rate of 6 to 8 knots[.]
Cross posted from Letters To Elizabeth
Sea Pie, Stale Beer, and a Catchup to Keep 20 Years
The question of food on board an Arctic whaler is a matter of some mystery. While there are accounts of the proceedings on board ship in the act of pursuing and catching whales, little is known about the lives of the whalers themselves. William Scoresby Jr. documents the provisions loaded onto a whale ship in preparation for the fishery: vast quantities of salt pork, hams, and beef, as well as bread, and potatoes, but little else. Variety might be had in the form of whale meat, fish, or seabirds. Scoresby notes that the price of Shetland oysters doubled when ships were nearby.
Basil Lubbock, whose The Arctic Whalers (1937) remains an important work in the history of the ‘fishery’devotes little more than a paragraph or two to the subject of food, and then only to say that the ‘half deck’men received better quality rations than the rest of the crew. These men were skilled hands, and included the second mate, harpooners, cooper, carpenters, and the specksioneer. They shared a mess, where they received their own special menu, which included a ration of cheese, and ‘Sea Pie’. Lubbock gives the following description, taken from a sailor’s log, written in 1820:
This savoury dish was made in layers or decks; the first one of bones to keep the paste from burning to the bottom of the pan; then followed a stratum of fresh beef paste and seasonings, deck after deck, until the great kettle was full. Sufficient water was added to enable the mess to be cooked. (Lubbock, p.53)
Captains fared rather better. The closest recipe I can find to this is in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747), in the chapter headed For Captains of Ships:
To make a Cheshire Pork Pie for Sea
Take some salt pork that has been boiled, cut it into thin slices, an equal quantity of potatoes, pared and sliced thin, make a good crust, cover the dish lay a layer of meat seasoned with a little pepper, and a layer of potatoes, then a layer of meat, a layer of potatoes, and so on, till your pie is full. Season it with pepper, when it is full, lay some butter on the top, and fill your dish above half full of soft water. Close your pie up and bake it in a gentle oven.
Elsewhere in the same chapter is a recipe for a ‘Catchup to keep twenty years’:
Take a gallon of strong stale beer, one pound of anchovies washed from the pickle, a pound of shalots peeled, half an ounce of mace, half an ounce of cloves, a quarter of an ounce of whole pepper, three or four large races of ginger, two quarts of the large mushroom flaps rubbed to pieces. Cover all this close and let it simmer till it is half wasted then strain it through a flannel bag, let it stand till it is quite cold, then bottle it. You may carry it to the Indies. A spoonful of this to a pound of fresh butter melted makes a fine fish sauce or in the room of gravy sauce. The stronger and staler the beer is, the better the catchup will be.
Cross-posted from Letters to Elizabeth
Spitzbergen Ale
In late 2009 and early 2010 Scottish brewer Brewdog engaged in a tit for tat battle of super strength beers with German brewer Schorschbrau. First came a 32% abv beer from Brewdog, named Tactical Nuclear Penguin. Schorschbrau followed up with 40% Schorschbock, which Brewdog quickly trumped, in February 2010, with Sink the Bismarck, a beer that came over the horizon at an astonishing 41% abv.
At the time, these freeze distilled beers seemed like something new, but there is a precedent from almost 400 years earlier, recounted by William Scoresby Jr., in his Account of the Arctic Regions (1820). Perhaps one of these two brewers might like to try the following:
Seven Dutch sailors who wintered in Spitzbergen in the year 1633-4, were exposed to such a degree of cold, that as early as the 13th October, casks of beer placed within eight feet of the fire froze three inches thick, and soon afterwards became almost entirely consolidated. In all cases of beer, ale, wine and spirits freezing, it may be observed, that the aqueous parts only freeze so as to become solid; whereby, even in ale or beer, the liquor becomes concentrated in the centre, until almost as strong as spirits.
When you think about it, there is only one way Scoresby could have known that.
