Acland’s Letters: First Letter
The Transatlantic Voyage:
Plymouth to Newfoundland
After five days on the Atlantic, Acland began this letter to Sarah with a description of a Sunday service at sea as hundreds gathered to listen to the liturgical readings from the Old and New Testaments: about Nathan, prophet and advisor to King David, and of Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus about life conferred on the soul by the Spirit.
H.M.S. Hero, North Atlantic
July 15, 1860, Long. 21. 30 W. Lat. 51. 30 N.
Sunday service at sea
Sunday is nearly ended – a Sunday at sea – always strange, always interesting. Service was on the main deck. The Chaplain was in a temporary pulpit covered with a flag having black crosses for its device – by him, as he spoke of peace were the long rows of 32 lb shot, and heavy broadside guns – beyond him, as he read the Tale of Nathan the prophet, the sheep, our live stock, stretched their necks & bleated and the wind whistled as the words with Nicodemus were read – far on could be seen Marines kneading the pudding – round him was the attentive crew, hundreds of willing listeners all orderly – and close, our Prince & the officers.
Nothing from home is like home – yet the ship is more home than this morning it was. There is a greater sense of peace & communion with one another as we feel that all have listened & prayed together.
It is more than a week since I left you – then a day at that dear Osborne – then a day in the Victoria & Albert – then six days here – I had nearly failed I own when I settled that Monday night in the great ship – but I reflected that we were all in one cause: that there was a clear duty upon us all to quit ourselves for our country; and that one Father was with you at home and with us here – So we started. You know our first day. The next the wind headed us – we have had contrary winds, a head sea, and without bad weather get none fair. Today has been a day of sunshine – Saturday & Friday we saw no ships – [Thursday?] several – today 3 – Monday an American bound for England promised to report us. You should take in the Times, and see for all the incidental news. Read also if you have not seen the Times for July 9th a leading Article – and the Saturday Review of the 7th – on the departure of the prince for the Canadian shores.
Members of the royal suite
People talk of the monotony of a voyage – certainly this is not monotonous yet. We have so many persons to see & become acquainted with, tho’ I do not know half yet. There are full 30 Officers – 800 & more men – there are engines & the engineers – the doctors & the sick – the Secretary of State for the Colonies, his Secretary, and all the Colonies besides the United States to first bow to with ceremony and then worked at individually and collectively for further acquaintance – I was quite tired at bed time last night. We get on pleasantly indeed. There is no reserve in our Cabin – And with the Prince I get more wholly at ease. When he was in his cot sea-sick I read him four cantos of Hiawatha the other day11 including the striking one of Hiawatha’s birth – and his Fasting. Nor were wanting occasional half playful & serious explanations how he was to play the Hiawatha among these same Northerns of the New World. Commodore Seymour is very pleasant – an artless seaman and a gentleman.
The weather is cold. Thermometer usually 56 degrees – and strong North West Wind with it. There are no scientific instruments on board. Not a good barometer, no Hygrometer. I might have brought my things and with advantage – I shall want warmer clothes: even for this all mine are too light – For Canada no doubt not so. The winds have been so cold, that I am quite put to to keep warm, and must certainly buy a warm coat to return in – and lay in shirts also at Halifax, if I can hold out till then.
I think today (the 7th) I have walked full 5 hours because yesterday being wet I had read too much and got headache.
In his bedside treatment of the sea-sick prince, Acland read to him from The Song of Hiawatha, Longfellow’s epic poem about an aboriginal leader published to huge success in 1855. He drew instructive parallels for the future king as he read from the opening incantations of the fifth canto about Hiawatha’s emergence into manhood:
You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
…But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.
The Duke of Newcastle has quite won my heart: he is so honest; so just; so full of various knowledge, not profound but extensive & sensible
Preparatory & professional reading
The Duke of Newcastle has quite won my heart: he is so honest; so just; so full of various knowledge, not profound but extensive & sensible – so without any desire for form beyond what is his own nature – that I am getting quite a regard for him – Bruce I wonder at more & more – I do not know hardly what he has not thought upon: pinch him where you will and he gives out thought or its fruits. Of course I do not mean details of science – but history, politics, philosophy – most subjects which bear on social questions seem to find him stored. He reads a great deal and reflects on what he reads. He is hard at Bancroft’s America. Of course, I am not altogether idle – Tho’ absolutely not working I am beginning to understand a good deal more about Colonies than I ever expected – or dreamed of – Adam Smith’s chapter on Colonies I first read22 – the first day in order to begin with subsoiling myself in this new field. Then I got thro’ Weld’s visit to Canada & the States – skimmed an American handbook – and am pretty well up now in the generalities of St. John’s 1, 2, & 3, of Halifax, Pictou, Anticosti, the French Fisheries, and Canadian Quebec, Montreal, Toronto, Hotels, Cars, Southerners & I know not what all of bandboxes to pack away what tittle tattle I may daily amass. This done I propose to myself to have my own quiet regular field of enquiry & thought in the region of Vital Statistics, Sanitary Matters, Nosology & Science as chance or opportunity may serve. I shall now stop in Longitude 30 W. Latit. 51.30 N., head wind, smooth sea, clear and bed time – the Prince having just returned from a tour in the Cockpit & the Engine Room.
Acland, scientist in residence
July 20. “Now for a chat in Longitude 40 W. In this most busy idleness what shall we discourse together.” Well, first of all from Sunday till now we have been in a thick fog, 5 days – seeing nothing, sometimes not our attendant ship’s mast for hours together. In these five days there have been the usual alternations of more sea and less sea – of more wind & less wind – making & shortening sail & the speculations thereon. Ariadne our dear comes stella [companion star], nearly ran into us one night and a 32 pounder was fired just by my bed – it startled me, but her much more, for she went a mile off, and but for a happy lift in the fog next day we should have seen her no more till Newfoundland. Then came the Eclipse. As I am becoming Philosopher at large to the Institution I am responsible for everything of this kind that goes wrong. Eclipses, beasts, nets, thermometers, books, maps or such things, seem to belong to nobody else – We are not well found – My instruments, Johnston’s Physical Atlas, my good Barometer & Hygrometer, & the jars for collecting would have been very valuable – for here there are none. However we all make ourselves happy enough without.
Eclipse of the sun
The Eclipse was on a very foggy day. But fortunately it broke sufficiently for us to see it when it was about one 6th on & we watched it thro’ – It was not for us total – we were 300 miles South – By the Nautical Almanac I had marked its path on the chart & calculated the approximate line of our seeing it. The weather permitted us to make no observation however of any worth, of course as to temperature none, nor as to light – for the fog was so dense that it was difficult to say what was due to it, what to the absence of solar light. About 7/8 of the sun was obscured with us. The Fog was strangely intense – but still in the morning before the Eclipse the drawing was done which I send, and which very fairly shows you what it was like. This was done when “Ariadne” made us out again after parting in the night.
I have learnt a good deal by conversation – by reading something – I have looked over Dr. Alison’s Papers – read on Storms – some Meteorology – got up a good deal of small geography of North America & read the Elements of Canadian History. General Bruce & the Duke stand any amount of Questions, and the former has the fruit of 6 years active life in Canada & America. There are strange considerations always arising to excite enquiry – for instance the value of coal – We have expended in the last 24 hours about 100 tons of coal to add to our speed two miles an hour. How fine for Mrs. Wayle. Ariadne has towed us – for she had more coal than we – We wish to keep about 250 tons of coal on hand for emergencies and she can spare us by towing. The sea being calm this was done. We are looking out for Icebergs. After this longitude we may expect them, and there will be some disappointment if we do not. But we cannot now see 200 yards from the Ship.
In companionable common quarters and in their own cabins built for their accommodation on the main deck, Acland and the members of the entourage read from the library provided by the Duke of Newcastle to prepare them for the tour of the British North American Colonies and the United States. General Bruce read the History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent by George Bancroft, scholar, politician, and founder in 1845 of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Bancroft described the emergence of nationalism in colonial America and the idea of American progress, destiny, and its influence in bringing liberty and freedom to other parts of the world. Acland read the chapter on colonies in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This still influential, early work on political economy, first published during the American Revolutionary War, argued that the colonies were not worth their great expense and the trouble to Britain of governing them, a sentiment also shared by strident critics of imperial policy in 1860. Informative, lighter reading in Charles Weld’s A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada, published in 1855, provided Acland with a traveller’s impressions of most of the places and sites on the royal tour’s itinerary.
Acland also used his ship-board time to keep up with developments in medicine. He read on sanitation which had entered the forefront in the prevention of disease; on vital statistics, the data on births and deaths important for medical research into the possible causes of disease; and on nosology, or the current views on the special character of particular diseases like pneumonia.
Iceberg alert
[July] 22 – Sunday come round. The heavy fogs continue. Ariadne within 200 yards is scarcely visible, nor our own jib boom nor mast head. Every thing is dripping – that is there are drops every where and on every thing and our clothes stick like wet brown paper. The sea is getting up & the breeze freshening. People begin to be querulous and half attack me for being content. I tell them that when they are baked to mummies and have to stand 3 hours a day in cocked hats in the sun at parades, they will sigh for the “Hero” & the faithful “Ariadne.” We had an alarm yesterday of icebergs – The water is tested for temperature every half hour. It suddenly fell from 58 to 51 – and the outer air from 60 to 52 Fahrenheit. We slackened speed for 3 hours. It blew keen & frosty – but we saw nothing. We blew the steam whistle every 5 minutes, a noise most dismal & rough.33 We cannot see 300 yards at any time – once yesterday afternoon in a freshening breeze the fog parted & we saw perhaps 1/2 a mile. Probably we passed North of a Field of Ice that had just gone South. You understand of course that these Icebergs pass South with the Arctic Currents that descend from Davis’s Straits and run down between 40 to 50 W. Longitude till they melt. They are often off Newfoundland 250 or even 300 feet high. They then usually ground on the great Newfoundland bank. We had today no service on the Main Deck – it was thought to be too cold and wet. The wet drives into and through every thing and place. My table is wet and the paper I write on almost runs the ink. I have entertained my leisure by lashing up & putting by all my things in my cabin lest the sea should rise – I am becoming very independent – The servant calls me & brushes my clothes. This is all I ever see or hear of him. I take down my own cot, lash it up & put it by as tidy as possible. A sailor slings it in the Evening. “I ax your pardon,” he said when I found him the first night engaged in making the bed in it, “for interfering with these here bed things – but the servants says they don’t understand such things – nor I don’t think they does – so I made bold to step in on their behalf.” So we wag on.
Acland’s deep love of the sea and esteem for the royal navy prompted his observations on navigational practices. He notes regularly the ship’s latitude (distance from the Arctic Pole) and longitude (westerly position in relation to the prime meridian in Greenwich, England). He refers to the cannon fired by the window of his cabin alerting the Hero’s companion ship of its position to avoid collision in dense fog. He describes the use of the steam whistle for the echo location of icebergs and the monitoring of air and water temperatures to determine their proximity. He descends into the bowels of the Hero, below the orlop deck where its cables were stored, to visit the stoke-hole. Here, in fierce heat the crew fired coal furnaces to power the ship’s propeller, or screw, on those occasions when steam was required rather than sail. The Hero, a steam/sail ship launched in 1858, was part of a naval arms race with France that began after France’s launching in 1850 of the Napoléon, the first steam-powered ship-of-the-line (a warship that formed a line opposite a similar line of enemy ships). Manned with crews needed for both sail and steam, the Hero usually used sail because the cost of coal to power ships was hugely expensive before 1870 when engines became several times more efficient.
Select library for midshipmen
I went last night to the Gun room, the middies place – I sat for half an hour for companionship’s sake to them – and myself – and I give them a drawing lesson tomorrow morning. “I do not think that Government take care to fit up the ships as they should for the education of the youths. There should be a selected marine library of the best books on all subjects of reference which bear on a seaman’s opportunities – such as Johnston’s Physical Atlas – Maury’s Charts. The Geology of the Globe in general – of the Stations in particular – one or two Natural History books – Commercial Encyclopedia and a General Cyclopedia.44 I shall certainly make a stir about this when I return. There should be a chest of such books – Some Mudie or some such person would supply them and take them back at a valuation according to their condition – To supply the whole Navy would cost less than one of the useless blue books that are published. It is due to the youths who enter the service: and to their parents.
The Prince had lunch today with the Middies – a sea suddenly broke in the stern light and swept them pretty well from the table – It looked in the afternoon very bad: and all things considered the knowing ones begun to wish for better weather – We had run nearly a thousand miles seeing no star, and scarcely the sun – and never the sun clear for one minute. We were nearing the land – Coming on deck this evening, I said to the Master – “Master, the fog is breaking in the West – I see a faint cloud among it – we may see the sun.” They ridiculed me – Shortly I said “there is blue in the fog, over-head – it is opening there” – they laughed again – we could still barely see the “Ariadne” not a ship’s length away from us; it was blowing hard. Slowly but gradually we felt ourselves emerging as into day – it was a wonderful sight – we saw ourselves go out of the dense bank – the “Ariadne” behind us stood out against the lurid mass in polished black – her bows ploughing into the seething foam – her storm sails saturated with the wetness of a week – we almost rubbed our eyes as waking from a dream – swiftly ahead scudded past flakes of fog as mountains along the horizon – the sun had set – the clouds lit up with crimson & gold – the first clouds we had seen since this day week – they were ‘chased’ on a back ground of ink black masses – and above were fringed round with clear azure. The sea abates – the wind comes from the North and as I write before bed, from my port I can see flashing a long line of the Northern lights over the jet & purple waves, as they heave & fall in flashing crests of lurid foam. So is the breeze ended – and with enough coal we hope to run over the 150 miles that remain; we all I suspect with more easy minds get into our cots this Sunday night.
Visit to coal furnaces
“Where is Froude?” I said this morning at 4 A.M. when I had got up to see the sunrise, and met one of the Mids on the Quarter Deck. “Down below, Sir.” “Is it not his watch on deck?” “Yes, Sir.” “What is he about then?” “He is in the stoke hole, Sir, boiling cocoa, Sir.” “That is just what I wanted to know about, can you take me?” “Oh! Certainly, Sir, and you can have some too, Sir, if you will.” Down we went, past the main-deck, and through the lower deck and beyond the orlop deck and below the Engines into the Stoke Hole of the Screw.
In this Stoke Hole are 20 fires, consuming at full speed four tons per hour – I watched the coaling – 30 men were engaged in bringing these 4 tons hourly – they work for 4 hours – and the temperature is from 100 to 130 in this place – They drink cold gruel out of a bucket in which they keep it – and delicious I found it – At one of these fires the favoured Mid boils water to make the chocolate. The chocolate itself belongs to the Officer of the Watch – The saucepan & the iron bowls they drink from to the Sentry – for boiling it – and for the loan of the utensils the mids & sentry receive as payment each a basin full – I had mine for love.
Now we are in sight of Newfoundland. There I post this. Probably the sketches will follow later. There we stay till the 26th – and then to St. John’s New Brunswick. The remaining Programme you have.
As a passionate supporter for the advancement of science, understood not only as progress in the sciences but in its second sense particularly important in mid-century of promoting education in the sciences, Acland made suggestions for a naval reference library. After a visit to the gun room, the dining room of the junior officers or midshipmen, he recommended the policy of acquiring shipboard libraries for midshipmen. Among his suggestions were scientific books like Maury’s Charts, texts on global geology and geology specific to the naval bases they might visit, and Johnston’s Physical Atlas, a pioneering thematic atlas published in 1848. Along with tables and explanatory text, maps in the atlas indicated the geology, hydrography, meteorology, and natural history of the world. With cost-cutting acumen, Acland suggested borrowing such books during voyages from one of Britain’s lending library firms like Mudie’s that flourished in mid-nineteenth century. It would cost less, he said, than the publication of just one of the blue books, the expensive and little-read reports of Parliament and the Privy Council published regularly by the British government.
Acland’s calculation of the mean temperature of the Gulf Stream was part of the newer science of oceanography. Mariners had long noted this warm, powerful ocean current, typically 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide and 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep, that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and is cooled by winds as it follows the eastern coastline of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic.
Contextualized notes provided by Jane Rupert
Contextualized Notes
In his bedside treatment of the sea-sick prince, Acland read to him from The Song of Hiawatha, Longfellow’s epic poem about an aboriginal leader published to huge success in 1855. He drew instructive parallels for the future king as he read from the opening incantations of the fifth canto about Hiawatha’s emergence into manhood:
You shall hear how Hiawatha
Prayed and fasted in the forest
Not for greater skill in hunting,
Not for greater craft in fishing,
…But for profit of the people,
For advantage of the nations.
In companionable common quarters and in their own cabins built for their accommodation on the main deck, Acland and the members of the entourage read from the library provided by the Duke of Newcastle to prepare them for the tour of the British North American Colonies and the United States. General Bruce read the History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent by George Bancroft, scholar, politician, and founder in 1845 of the Naval Academy at Annapolis. Bancroft described the emergence of nationalism in colonial America and the idea of American progress, destiny, and its influence in bringing liberty and freedom to other parts of the world. Acland read the chapter on colonies in Adam Smith’s An Inquiry into the Causes of the Wealth of Nations. This still influential, early work on political economy, first published during the American Revolutionary War, argued that the colonies were not worth their great expense and the trouble to Britain of governing them, a sentiment also shared by strident critics of imperial policy in 1860. Informative, lighter reading in Charles Weld’s A Vacation Tour in the United States and Canada, published in 1855, provided Acland with a traveller’s impressions of most of the places and sites on the royal tour’s itinerary.
Acland also used his ship-board time to keep up with developments in medicine. He read on sanitation which had entered the forefront in the prevention of disease; on vital statistics, the data on births and deaths important for medical research into the possible causes of disease; and on nosology, or the current views on the special character of particular diseases like pneumonia.
Acland’s deep love of the sea and esteem for the royal navy prompted his observations on navigational practices. He notes regularly the ship’s latitude (distance from the Arctic Pole) and longitude (westerly position in relation to the prime meridian in Greenwich, England). He refers to the cannon fired by the window of his cabin alerting the Hero’s companion ship of its position to avoid collision in dense fog. He describes the use of the steam whistle for the echo location of icebergs and the monitoring of air and water temperatures to determine their proximity. He descends into the bowels of the Hero, below the orlop deck where its cables were stored, to visit the stoke-hole. Here, in fierce heat the crew fired coal furnaces to power the ship’s propeller, or screw, on those occasions when steam was required rather than sail. The Hero, a steam/sail ship launched in 1858, was part of a naval arms race with France that began after France’s launching in 1850 of the Napoléon, the first steam-powered ship-of-the-line (a warship that formed a line opposite a similar line of enemy ships). Manned with crews needed for both sail and steam, the Hero usually used sail because the cost of coal to power ships was hugely expensive before 1870 when engines became several times more efficient.
As a passionate supporter for the advancement of science, understood not only as progress in the sciences but in its second sense particularly important in mid-century of promoting education in the sciences, Acland made suggestions for a naval reference library. After a visit to the gun room, the dining room of the junior officers or midshipmen, he recommended the policy of acquiring shipboard libraries for midshipmen. Among his suggestions were scientific books like Maury’s Charts, texts on global geology and geology specific to the naval bases they might visit, and Johnston’s Physical Atlas, a pioneering thematic atlas published in 1848. Along with tables and explanatory text, maps in the atlas indicated the geology, hydrography, meteorology, and natural history of the world. With cost-cutting acumen, Acland suggested borrowing such books during voyages from one of Britain’s lending library firms like Mudie’s that flourished in mid-nineteenth century. It would cost less, he said, than the publication of just one of the blue books, the expensive and little-read reports of Parliament and the Privy Council published regularly by the British government.
Acland’s calculation of the mean temperature of the Gulf Stream was part of the newer science of oceanography. Mariners had long noted this warm, powerful ocean current, typically 100 kilometers (62 miles) wide and 800 meters (2,600 feet) deep, that begins in the Gulf of Mexico and is cooled by winds as it follows the eastern coastline of the United States and Newfoundland before crossing the Atlantic. In the eighteenth century, merchant ships reduced the length of their ocean crossing by taking advantage of this still unnamed current identified by water temperature, whale behaviour, changes in water colour, and bubbles on the surface. However, in the second quarter of the nineteenth century Matthew Fontaine Maury, Superintendent of the Naval Observatory in the United States and Head of the Department of Charts and Instruments, used thousands of ships’ charts and logs to make a scientific study of ocean currents and winds. By using winds and currents, sailing from New York to Rio de Janeiro was reduced by thirty-two days without any technical improvements to ships. Merchant marines and navies around the world used his system to develop charts for all major travel routes, ocean lanes for passing ships at sea were established, and his work guided the location of the first transatlantic cables in the 1850s and 1860s. During the American segment of the tour Acland met Maury at the Smithsonian.