Halley writes from the Downs

As we saw in my last post, Halley had a lot of trouble recruiting his complement of 25 men and by the morning of 14 June his crew numbered just 15 men, and it was only the arrival of a further four that enabled him to sail from Deptford that afternoon.

He arrived in the Downs on 16 June and two days later he sent a short letter to Josiah Burchett, Secretary to the Admiralty, advising him of his arrival and that he expected to receive the four men that their lordships had ordered to be discharged to him during that night.

This brought his crew to 23 men, which included Halley, his surgeon (a man Halley had specifically requested), his clerk*, a cook (one Thomas Cook, natch), and five servants. Let’s hope that the cook – the only time someone was so-designated on any of Halley’s voyages – kept the regular seamen well-fed!

Halley refers to his sailing instructions in his letter, and we’ll take a look at those in my next post.

Downs June 18 1701 [1]

Hon:red Sr

I arrived in the Downs on Monday last, and have to day gotten an order from the Admirall for the four men their Lopps have appointed me here; They will be delivered me this night, and with them I shall be enabled to proceed according to their Lopps Instructions designing to sayle to morrow morning. I shall not fayle to give your Hon:r an account of my proceedings as occasion shall offer being

Your Hon:rs most obed:t Servt

Edm. Halley 

Extract (in Halley’s hand) from the Paramore‘s Muster Book showing the four men (20-23) entering Halley’s service on June 19 in the Downs. (TNA (£), ADM 36/2386)

* It’s debatable whether anyone served as his clerk, as we’ll see in a future post.

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[1] Halley to Burchett, 18 June 1701, TNA, ADM 1/1872

Able seamen wanted!

When Halley’s first voyage ended prematurely with his return to England to court martial his lieutenant, he had to use all his diplomatic skills to persuade the Lords of the Admiralty to allow him a second attempt. That second voyage, however, was deemed so successful that their lordships lost no time in approving his next proposal for an expedition to survey the tides of the Channel.

This proposal was dated 23 April 1701 and it was evidently approved almost immediately, as on the 26th Halley wrote again to “humbly entreat my Commission to be dispatcht, in order to gett the Paramore Pink mann’d with such Compliment [sic] as their Lopps shall think fitting”, and his commission as master and commander of the Paramore was issued that day.[1] At the same time, the Admiralty sent an order to the Navy Board to clean and fit out the Paramore for “Channell Service”, and they agreed to all the requests for “Extraordinarys” that Halley had made in his letter, including his suggestion that the crew “cannot be well less than it was last time viz: 25 Men.”[2]

Halley wanted his commission quickly so he could begin recruiting his crew, as he was concerned that seamen were scarce as “no men [were] now offering themselves as usuall at other times.” Halley’s problem was that Royal Navy wages were then lower than those offered by merchant ships: Peter Earle tells us that wages in both the royal and merchant navies were broadly similar during peacetime (about 25 shillings a month for an able seaman), but that merchant wages rose dramatically during war when the competition for men became intense.[3]

In 1701, Europe was gearing up for what we know as the War of the Spanish Succession, and so merchant wages were presumably rising in anticipation of its outbreak. In a letter dated 4 June 1701, Halley complained that “I find my self disappointed in my Mate, who for great wages has been tempted to break his promise to me”, and expressed his concern that “for 40 sh[illings] p[er] month I fear I cannot have a man capable to take charge of my shipp, Marchants [sic] giving now so much to any able Seaman” – so merchant ships were already paying able seamen at a 15 shilling premium.

Halley had great difficulty obtaining his crew, and from the date his project was approved until he set sail nearly two months later, he wrote a series of increasingly desperate letters on the subject to Josiah Burchett, Secretary to the Admiralty.

On 31 May, he asked if “their Lopps shall thinking fitting to spare me but two able Seamen out of four or five of the Ships of Warr”, promising “I will take care to return them where I had them in case the breaking out of a war oblige me to desist from my undertaking.” And in an undated letter (endorsed June), Halley wrote that the Paramore was ready to sail if only he had his complement of men, and so “I beseech you to lay before their Lopps the great difficulty I find to gett them”. On 4 June he requested “leave to have out of the Shipps of Warr, under such restriction as their Lopps please, such men as shall be willing to serve on board me”, and this prompted their lordships to order that “3 Prest Men” on ships in the Downs should be discharged into the Paramore on her arrival, which they amended a few days later to “so many Men as he Shall have occasion of”. Halley sailed from Deptford on June 14 and received four men from ships in the Downs, when he anchored there a few days later.

It’s interesting that Halley writes of men “as shall be willing to serve on board me”, as I’m not sure whether this is simply a piece of naval phraseology or a precaution against the trouble he had on his first voyage with recalcitrant officers – although I am sure that if I were a “prest” seaman, I’d rather be on a scientific cruise in the English Channel with Halley, than part of a crew in the war fleet!

The Liberty of the Subject (1779), a satirical depiction of a press-gang. (Source: National Maritime Museum, ID PAG8527)

Finally, just to let you know that I’m not intending to tweet the log of his third voyage, as even I can see that a report of his continual anchoring around the Channel doesn’t provide a compelling read (to anyone but myself), although I will tweet the occasional entry.

I’m also in the latter stages of my MA and, alas, have little free time for this blog, but I will not neglect Captain Halley entirely and expect to publish a few short posts during his four month voyage (as well as writing my dissertation about him!).

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[1] All quotes from Halley’s letters (written to Josiah Burchett) are from TNA, ADM 1/1872, and his commission is in TNA, ADM 6/6, f91v.

[2] Admiralty order to clean and fit out the Paramore is in TNA, ADM 2/181, p117.

[3] Peter Earle, Sailors: English Merchant Seamen 1650-1775 (London: Methuen, 2007), pp186-8.

Return to sea

Welcome back to Halley’s Log!

We left Captain Halley last September, newly returned to London and working on his Atlantic chart of magnetic variation, which he formally presented to the Royal Society on 4 June 1701.

But while Edmond had quickly resumed his old habits of attending Royal Society meetings and discoursing endlessly in coffeehouses, the sea was never far from his mind, and on 23 April 1701 he sent this proposal to the Lords of the Admiralty (remember “Lopps” is Halley’s abbreviation for “Lordshipps”):

It is humbly proposed

That if their Lopps shall think fitting to have an exact account of the Course of the Tides on and about the Coast of England, so taken as at one View to represent the whole; (which will be a work of generall Use to all Shipping, especially such as have occasion to turn to Windward, and wch is wanting towards the compleating the Art of Navigation) there be provided a small Vessell such as their Lopps shall think proper, with all convenient speed, on board of which such an account of the Tides may be taken, as their Lopps shall direct; for which service their Lopps most obedient servant humbly offers himself.

Edm. Halley [1]

Their Lopps did think it fitting to have the course of the tides around the southern coast of England observed and gave the order for a vessel – yes, the Paramore Pink – to be prepared for Halley’s third expedition.

So Captain Halley expects to put back to sea very very soon – there’s just the one small matter of a crew to recruit…

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[1] Halley to the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, 23 April 1701, TNA, ADM 1/1872

The end of Halley’s second voyage

Halley arrived back in Deptford from his second voyage on 10 September 1700 and he’ll return to sea for his third voyage in June 1701 (June 2015 by the life of this blog), so I thought I’d close this phase of my project by looking at some of the things that Edmond will be doing in the intervening months.

As we’ve seen (here and here), he began preparing his chart of magnetic variation as soon as he returned to London and there are periodic entries in the Royal Society minutes of his showing (what are assumed to be) manuscript drafts of his chart at their meetings. He presented a copy formally to the Society on 4 June 1701, when the minutes record:

Mr Halley presented the Society with a Map of his late Voiage to the South. He was thanked for it, & it was order’d to be hung in the Meeting room. [1]

The exact publication date of the chart isn’t known but is assumed to have been during the second quarter of 1701 (given its presentation date to the RS), and it occurs to me that a letter dated 6 May 1701 from the Admiralty to the Navy Board, awarding a bonus of £200 to Halley on the order of the king, may have been prompted by the publication of his chart:

In obedience to his Mats. [Majesty’s] Commands signified to this Board, Wee do hereby desire and direct you to cause to be paid unto Captn. Edward [sic] Halley, out of the Money in the hands of the Trea[sure]r of the Navy upon Acct. of the Tenths of Prizes the sum of two Hundred Pounds, in consideration of his great Paines and care in a late Voyage he made for the discovering the Variation of the Needle. [2]

Halley resumed his attendance at Royal Society meetings when they reconvened after their summer recess, and, having resigned his Fellowship in 1686 to become the Society’s clerk, he was re-elected FRS at the General Meeting of 30 November 1700 and voted one of the auditors of their accounts on December 17. [3]

Halley was often referred to as “Capt Halley” in the Society’s minutes of this period, but it’s somewhat surprising how few references there are to his voyage; I assume Edmond mostly talked about his expedition in the coffeehouses.

Halley, by Kneller (© NMM, BHC2734)

It was perhaps during this period that Halley had his portrait painted by Godfrey Kneller. The date of the portrait isn’t known, but has been estimated at around 20 years after his voyages because of a mezzotint version published after Halley became Astronomer Royal in 1720. However, Alan Cook says that Halley is wearing naval uniform and so suggests it may have been painted in 1702 after his third voyage, and this – or even 1701 – seems more likely to me, when Halley was famed for his voyages, and also because Halley appears younger in this portrait than in the one known to date before 1713. [4]

In between preparing his chart, attending Royal Society meetings, frequenting the coffeehouses, and perhaps having his portrait painted, Halley surely entertained his wife, Mary, and their three children with tales of adventures and of the people and animals he’d seen on his cruise. Perhaps he brought back curiosities as gifts for them?

I know he did bring back some items, and they’re partly what prompted me to speculate whether Halley had kept a private journal or notes during his voyage. Another reason is that one or both of his logs may initially have been written on loose pieces of paper and then written up later (and there is some doubt in my mind whether the fair copies were actually written up by his clerk(s)). I hope to do more research on the history of his logbooks and will perhaps write more about this at the end of his third voyage.

A further reason for my speculation is that there are extant papers besides his logbook surviving from the second voyage – namely, a series of sketches of fish! He presented these drawings (made by himself) to the Royal Society on 6 November 1700, along with some sketches of the Batavian Islands; the sketches of the Islands are seemingly lost but five sketches* of fish are safely stored in the Society’s archives and here’s perhaps the best of the set, with text written by Halley:

“A Fish Taken in the Latitude of 36° NEbN from Bermodas following an old Mast overgrown with Barnacles.” (© Royal Society, RS.9360)

It was a great pleasure to see the originals in the Society’s library; they are more impressive ‘in the flesh’, and I particularly liked that they gave me a palpable sense of Edmond sitting down in his cabin and carefully sketching the fish on the table before him (you can really sense him at work on the fish’s scales towards the tail). The drawings may not display the talent of Hooke or Waller, but their ordinariness somehow serves to evoke the physical presence of Halley the man.

And so, having conjured his presence, we’ll leave him be for a while. His third voyage will start in June next year (2015 for us), and I’ll be back then to conclude this project to bring astronomer Edmond Halley’s seafaring adventures to wider attention.

* I couldn’t link to the page showing all the fish, so here are the individual links to the other four: Doctor fish, Tuna fish, Pilot fish, Flying fish. If only there’d been a sketch of his birds!

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[1] Royal Society, JBO/10 p 219.

[2] National Archives, ADM 2/181 p125.

[3] Royal Society, JBO/10 pp 204 and 206.

[4] Cook, Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (Oxford, 1998) p xv.

Halley’s Atlantic Chart, part 2: his results

Halley undertook his Atlantic voyages to measure the magnetic variation at sea. Magnetic variation (or declination) is the angle between magnetic and geographic north in a horizontal plane. Halley thought that if a pattern could be observed in the variation, it might offer a way to determine a ship’s longitude at sea. He measured the variation regularly throughout his two voyages and began preparing the presentation of his data as soon as he arrived back in Deptford in September 1700.

Halley is noted for his ability to draw general conclusions from complex data and for his appreciation of visual representation of those conclusions, and he demonstrated both these traits in presenting his data in the form of a sea chart.

The chart – known as his Atlantic Chart – holds an important place in the history of cartography, as it is regarded as the first published chart to represent magnetic declination using what became known as isogonic lines. It was not the first time such lines had been thought of, but the earlier examples were never published and Halley is thought unlikely to have known about them. [1]

We’ll look at the chart and its data in a moment, but first I’d like to highlight some of its decorative features.

To the east of the mysterious birds, we find The Icey Sea with the black-streaked “Mountains of Ice” that Halley and his crew had encountered in February (notice their track passing through it). Neither Halley nor his crew had seen icebergs before and Halley was unsure whether they were floating or grounded.

The track of Halley’s second voyage is shown on the chart and indicated by representations of the Paramore pursuing her figure-of-eight course.

There are three cartouches on the chart: the one on South America is formed by a native family reclining beneath two fruit-laden palm trees. The adults wear feathered headdresses and skirts, the woman clutches a small child and the man holds a spear, has a bow at his feet and a quiver of arrows on his back. Behind them, hanging between the trees, is a sheet bearing the chart’s title:

A New and Correct CHART Shewing the Variations of the COMPASs in the WESTERN & SOUTHERN OCEANS as Observed in ye Year 1700 by his Ma:ties Command by Edm. Halley.

A second cartouche appears on the landmass of Africa and carries the chart’s dedication to William III and is topped by personifications of astronomy (holding a telescope and armillary sphere), navigation (a backstaff and ship) and mathematics (dividers and triangle).

The third cartouche is found on North America and explains the information depicted in the chart:

The Curve Lines which are drawn over the Seas in this Chart, do shew at one View all the places where the Variation of the Compass is the same; The Numbers to them, shew how many degrees the Needle declines either Eastwards or Westwards from the true North; and the Double Line passing near Bermudas and the Cape de Virde Isles is that where the Needle stands true, without Variation.

And here’s the full chart, shown with the permission of the Royal Geographical Society:

Halley’s Atlantic Chart (© Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (£), Image S0015919)

You can see that it has two compass roses, the one in the mid-Atlantic radiating lines that somewhat obscure Halley’s “Curve Lines” of equal magnetic declination. (Halley himself realised this was a problem and omitted this feature on the World Chart he published around a year later.) It is on a Mercator projection, with lines of latitude and longitude, and the meridian of London, the equator and tropics identified, but no indication of scale.

This version of the chart includes text that was written subsequently by Halley and printed in two strips that could be stuck to the sides of the original chart. It describes how to consult the chart by way of examples, and explains that it has two uses:

• to enable the mariner to know by how much he needs to adjust his course to take account of the magnetic variation, and
• to estimate a ship’s longitude at sea, the curve lines running nearly north-south (as off the west cost of Africa) giving “a very good Indication of the Distance of the Land” from the ship

This useful knowledge is obtained by reference to the isogonic lines. They are a little difficult to pick out but you can easily see the double curved line to the right of the central compass, which Halley has named The Line of No Variation (the agonic line) and the curved lines above and right show the degree to which the compass varies west of geographic north, and to the left, east of geographic north (the number of degrees of variation is shown on the horizontal line above The Icey Sea).

As mentioned above, the chart was (and is) regarded as the first (extant) published use of isolines (contour lines), and until the nineteenth century these lines were known as Halleyan lines.

So the chart is impressive and historically important, but how accurate was it? Alan Cook observed that it was “an improvement on anything that had gone before”, [2] but as I wrote in a previous post, the problem with longitude is knowing both where you are and where the place is that you’re heading. Halley’s recorded longitude was often inaccurate and sometimes considerably so: when he was sailing towards St Helena from the east, the longitude value he reported is actually west of the island – and so the degree of variation he thought applied to the east of the island in fact applied to the west.

Similarly the coordinates of islands and land weren’t then accurately known: Cape Horn, for example, is roughly 10° further west on Halley’s chart than we now know it to be, so his lines of variation near that coast must be likewise misplaced. [3] It seems to me that the moral of this exercise is that to devise a chart that helps estimate a ship’s longitude at sea, the deviser needs to have a fairly accurate knowledge of longitude in the first place.

But Halley was alert to the likelihood of error in his chart and in his final paragraph he wrote that:

…all knowing Mariners are desired to lend their Assistance and Informations, towards the perfecting of this useful Work. And if by undoubted Observations it be found in any Part defective, the Notes of it will be received with all grateful Acknowledgment, and the Chart corrected accordingly.

And I think that’s how Halley’s chart was most useful: it was a cartographic innovation from which better and more accurate maps might evolve.

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[1] For details of prior manuscript isoline charts see Thrower, The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore 1698-1701 (Hakluyt Society: London, 1981) pp 57-58, and Thrower, Maps & Civilization (3rd ed, Chicago and London, 2008) pp 97-101.

[2] Cook, Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (Oxford, 1998) p 281.

[3] In 1714 Halley defended his World Chart (an extended version of his Atlantic Chart, incorporating data supplied by others) in the Philosophical Transactions from charges of inaccuracy by the French Royal Academy of Sciences, including that he had placed Cape Horn too far west.

All images © Royal Geographic Society (with IBG) (£), Ref S0015919.

Halley’s Atlantic Chart, part 1: fish or fowl revisited

Over the next two posts we’ll look at the results of Halley’s voyage, which he published in the form of a sea chart. But before we consider his chart in full, I want to pick out one detail which may help to settle the identity of those mysterious creatures that Halley saw in the South Atlantic.

In a previous post we looked at Halley’s descriptions of three animals – two birds and something akin to a whale – that he’d seen in the seas to the north-west of South Georgia, and I summarised his descriptions as follows:

1. a bird he takes to be a penguin with a black head and back, white breast, and a bill like that of a crow; it swims deep, dives on the ship’s approach, doesn’t appear to fly, and has a neck like a swan
2. a second bird he also takes to be a penguin, larger than the first, and the colour and size of a “young Cygnett”, it has a bill that hooks downwards, cries like a bittern, and also swims deep, dives on the ship’s approach, doesn’t seem to fly, and has a neck like a swan
3. an animal thought by the crew to be a seal but which Halley asserts is not. It bends its tail into a bow, has large fins like a shark and a head like a turtle

Giant petrel with chicks. (Brocken Inaglory/Wikimedia)

While researching that post, I wondered if the second bird might have been a petrel (because of the beak) and some readers suggested that too, but the main objection is that almost every image of petrels shows them flying, which Halley says they don’t do (“either not having wings, or else not commonly useing them”).

Another reader suggested they might have been shags and I think these seem more likely as they resemble penguins and have long necks (I’m looking at the Imperial and South Georgia varieties). They do fly, but the proportion of images of them flying is far lower than it is for petrels.

Imperial Shag, South Georgia. (Liam Quinn/Wikimedia)

In that earlier post I mentioned there was another piece of information about these birds that appears at the end of the voyage, and it appears in Halley’s chart. There, Halley gives a description of the birds and provides a little more detail:

The Sea in these parts abounds with two sorts of Animalls of a Middle Species between a Bird and a Fish, having necks like Swans and Swimming with their whole Bodyes always under water only putting up their long Necks for Air.

Now it seems to me that “a Middle Species between a Bird and a Fish” is a good way to describe penguins – but happily Halley doesn’t just describe his birds, he depicts them too! Here they are:

Extract from Halley’s Atlantic Chart – notice the feet. (© Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (£), Image S0015919)

Er… oh, well, perhaps they’re not quite my idea of penguins after all. But before I scoff too much at Halley’s illustration, it’s worth remembering that he was trying to describe something he’d never seen before and to people who likewise had never seen such animals before, and so he has to use vocabulary and comparative imagery that were familiar to him and his readers. Additionally, he wasn’t near land when he saw the birds and he hadn’t mentioned seeing any floating ice, so he may only have seen them swimming in the sea, which would have made it very difficult for him to see them properly (have a look at this 36 second film of penguins at sea and you’ll appreciate his difficulty).

If you look closely at the birds, you can see that their beaks are slightly different, and the one on the right has a few tufts on the back of its head, so I wondered if that might have been a type of crested penguin, such as a southern rockhopper?

Rockhopper Penguin. (© Samuel Blanc/Wikimedia)

As to the animal the crew thought was a seal and Halley says is not, what’s curious about that is that he doesn’t call it a whale or whale-like, an animal he would have known – perhaps he was even among the crowd that went to gawp at this poor cetacean stranded in the Thames around 1690. [1]

Broadside, c1690. (© British Museum, Image Z,1.163)

I don’t have any more information about this animal, which Halley’s biographers have suggested might have been a bottlenose whale, a killer whale or a dolphin, although there are problems with each of these identifications – but I have been wondering whether it might have been a Risso’s dolphin? They have a more turtle-like head, a large dorsal fin, and unlike the bottlenose and killer whale are not remarkable in size, something which Halley fails to comment on. An unfamiliar type of dolphin might also explain why Halley doesn’t use the word whale and why the crew think it’s a seal.

But there are three objections to this suggestion: there don’t seem to be many images of them “twisting [their] tayl into a bow” as Halley describes them doing, he may have been outside their range when he saw them, and the sea temperature may have been too cold.

So we haven’t resolved for certain what these creatures were but we have added some new ideas to the list of possibilities. One thing is certain, though, and that’s that no further clues are likely to come from Halley: five months after his return to England, his recollection of these animals was even more confused as we find it minuted that at the Royal Society meeting of 5 February 1701:

Mr Halley said that he saw a kind of Tortoises in the S. of Brazile, having Necks like Swans, and all their bodies under Water. [2]

And for that creature, I think we may need to search among the monsters of medieval cartography, not the seas of the South Atlantic!

UPDATE MARCH 2017: HALLEY VINDICATED!

I rather scoffed at Halley’s depiction of penguins when I wrote this post in 2014, so you’ll imagine my astonishment when I came across a photograph on Twitter that entirely vindicated Halley’s drawing. The photograph was taken by Neil Spencer (@HalleyVIDoc), a doctor based at the Halley Research Station in Antarctica, who was himself surprised to see how penguins swam, tweeting “Didn’t realise penguins swim like ducks when on the surface!” and appending the photographed that demonstrated the point. Neil kindly gave me permission to use his photo – but let’s first remind ourselves of Halley’s own depiction:

Extract from Halley’s Atlantic Chart. (© Royal Geographical Society (with IBG) (£), Image S0015919)

And now here’s Neil’s photograph:

Penguins swimming in Antarctic seas, by Neil Spencer. (Used with permission)

Separated at birth, no? And a lesson learned by me not to dismiss historical descriptions that seem rather naive and amusing (sorry, Edmond!).

If you’re not familiar with the Halley Research Station, it was set up by the Royal Society in 1956 as the British contribution to the International Geophysical Year of 1957/58, and named after Halley in recognition of his voyage to the South Atlantic, and to mark the tercentenary of his birth. Halley came within about 200 nautical miles of South Georgia on his second voyage, and South Georgia is roughly 1,300 nautical miles north of the Halley station (you can find them both on the map below). There have actually been six Halley stations on the Brunt Ice Shelf, and you can read about the history of these bases at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) website here. The website has lots of information about the scientific work carried out at the station, along with photos of the six Halley bases, and details of the recent relocation of the current base, Halley VI. You might also enjoy (as I did) this look at the evolution of Antarctic bases from wooden huts to sci-fi chic, by the BBC (spot the tube roundel on the Halley III photo!).

Lastly, I wonder what Halley would think if he saw this map of the research stations now scattered all over Antarctica, having voyaged in search of the southern Terra Incognita just 300 years ago.

Map of Antarctic stations – Halley VI is near the coast of the Weddell Sea. (Source: Teetaweepo/Wikipedia)

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[1] The text is well worth a read. You can probably make out the title, A Trew Draught of the Whale as he was seen at Blackwell Dock, and underneath it says:

This Monsterous Fish is 57 foot in Lenght & near 40 foot About, he is more in hight, then in breath, and is taken to be a matter of 50 Tunn in Wight, He was first discover’d near the Bouy of the Nore, Where he was fier’d at by a Kings Yoath so received sum Wound, & made toward the Shoure so came along by ye Hoop & beat himselfe upon ye Sand after that he was Harpoon’d & Taken, then Bought by a Quacor, etc.

[2] Royal Society, JBO/10 p 210.

Halley writes from Long Reach

On Saturday afternoon, 7 September 1700, the Paramore anchored in the Thames at Long Reach and Halley sent his gunner (William Brewer, the one-armed boatswain) up to the Tower* to give notice of their arrival, while Halley himself despatched his last letter of the voyage to Josiah Burchett, Secretary to the Admiralty:

(Halley to Burchett, dated 7 Sept 1700 from “Long reach”, National Archives ADM 1/1871)

Honoured Sr

The winds having been extreamly contrary, it has cost me five days to gett from the Downs hither, and in the passage I have had the dissatisfaction to see the paramour fall to Leeward of all the Marchant men that turned it with us. I now humbly hope from yr Honours favour, to find at Deptford (where I shall be in a day or two) their Lopps leave to come up to waite on them.

…Edm. Halley

So Halley complains about the Paramore and her leeward tendencies to the last! Burchett’s reply is interesting because he picks up on that complaint and remarks that it may have hindered Halley’s performance, though Halley himself has made no suggestion that he hasn’t achieved all that he’d hoped to.

Burchett writes that Halley may leave his ship to come to town to speak to the Lords of the Admiralty, but warns him to have his paperwork in order and to attend the paying off of his ship. I take this to be in part a reminder of Halley’s duties as a Royal Navy master and commander, but perhaps also an intimation of some lingering dissatisfaction among their Lordships after the early termination of his first voyage, owing to the friction between Halley and Lt Edward Harrison.

(Burchett to Halley, dated 9 Sept 1700 from the Admiralty, National Archives ADM 2/399 p25)

Sr

I have recd: your Lre [Letter], and am sorry to finde the Paramore Pinke has such a tendincy to Leeward, because I am apt to believe that quality in her, has put it out of your power to doe altogether soe much as otherwise you might have p[er]form’d.

There are Orders given for paying her off; and thô my Lords doe not meet ’till tomorrow morning, yet I dare assure you that you will not offend in comeing to Towne; only lett mee give you this Caution, To have ye Books in readinesse; and to attend at the payment of the Vessell.

…JB

Over the next three posts – the last for this voyage – we’ll look at Halley’s results and see whether their Lordships were ultimately satisfied with Halley’s performance.

Ships in the Thames Estuary near Sheerness, Isaac Sailmaker, 1707-08 (Yale Center for British Art/Wikimedia Commons)

* That is, to the Office of Ordnance at the Tower, which will take out the guns and gunners’ stores from the Paramore.