HMS Herald's North Pacific Survey, 1845-1851 1

"That Extensive Enterprise": HMS Herald's North Pacific Survey, 1845-1851 1

ABSTRACT: Despite its enormous scope, the survey of HMS Herald, like most British scientific voyages after the time of Captain Cook, is little known. This article's discussion of naturalist Berthold Seemann's accounts of the voy age challenges the impression, still common in some naval history circles, that there is a difference between scientific expeditions and other naval activities (that is, between science and politics). The article considers evidence ofimperial aesthetics in Seemann's responses to landscape and notes connections between the collection of scientific data and the interests of British commercial and po litical expansion. Examination of Seemann's racial views shows that, just as he viewed landscape and natural resources with an imperial eye, so he judged other peoples by his own standards of achievement and "improvability."

THE PACIFIC SURVEY voyages of the Herald, north to assist the search for Sir John like most British voyages after the time of Franklin's missing expedition in the Arctic. Captain Cook, are little known. A recent Pandora returned to Britain in 1849, but the study by Andrew David has examined the Herald was out for 6 years, finally returning hydrographic significance of the Herald's in 1851. South Pacific expedition in the 1850s and Although this article focuses on the sur 1860s (David 1995), but there is no overview vey's natural history, the Herald expedition of the northern survey in print; it is that ex had a wider significance that should be noted pedition that I discuss in this paper. Two first. Even by the 1840s, a half-century after ships were involved-the 26-gun frigate Cook and Vancouver, much of the Pacific HMS Herald under Captain Henry Kellett, region remained uncharted. The North and the six-gun barque HMS Pandora, com Pacific whale fishery and the sea otter fur manded by Lieutenant Commander James trade between the northwest coast and China Wood. The survey had an enormous scope: had drawn attention to the area's economic the Hydrographer of the Navy, Francis importance since the 1790s (Steven 1983, Beaufort, invited Kellett "to complete the Mackay 1985). The North West Company's West Coast of America from Guayaquil up operations had been moving westward from to the Arctic Ocean. Are you in the mind to the Canadas, taking advantage of the Anglo accept of that extensive enterprise?" (Hydro American war to found a base at Ft. Van graphic Office Archives, Taunton, u.K., couver on the Columbia River in 1813. Wars Letter Book Series 12, Beaufort to Kellett, 4 of independence in South and Central Amer November 1844). The expedition left Britain ica had drawn the Royal Navy into closer in 1845 to survey the Falkland Islands and involvement throughout the region, and then proceeded along the west coast of South British support for the revolutionaries had America and north to the coast of what is secured the use of a number of important now British Columbia, making three detours harbors. The focus moved steadily toward the Pacific, as reflected in the shift from the old "Brazils" or "South America" station, based at Rio or Buenos Aires, to the new I Manuscript accepted 15 January 1998. 2 Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Pacific Station, founded in 1837, with its Studies, London, United Kingdom. headquarters at Valparaiso on the Chilean 287 288 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 52, October 1998 coast (Graham and Humphreys 1962, Gough late in 1847, also through Hooker's patron 1971 ). age. Thus, although Seemann wrote both The Royal Navy's Hydrographic Office the Botany and the Narrative of the voyage, knew the importance of the Pacific region he was not actually present at many of the and had dispatched a number of survey events he described. This explains some of vessels there in the early nineteenth century, the oddities of his account, which was pre notably HMS Blossom, under the command pared from various journals and correspon of Captain F. W. Beechey, in 1825-1828. dence loaned to him by some of Herald's of Beechey was commissioned to lead another ficers, as well as his own diaries. This article Pacific survey in 1836 with HMS Sulphur and explores some of those different voices, espe Starling. Illness forced him to return to Brit cially with regard to the ethnography of the ain, and in his absence Lieutenant Henry expedition. Kellett took command of Starling. Overall Only brief comments are needed about the command of the expedition passed to Cap zoology of the voyage. The Zoology of the tain Edward Belcher in 1837. Farther north, Voyage of H.M.S. "Herald" was edited by there had been Russian surveys of the Bering British zoologist Edward Forbes, but was Strait area under the Estonian captain Otto written by Sir John Richardson, the famous von Kotzebue in 1816. But probably the Arctic explorer and scientist, and it is not most famous surveyor in the eastern Pacific, what it claims to be. Rather than a zoology and the one whose writings had the most in of the whole survey, it is exclusively a study fluence on the Herald's officers, was Captain of the "fossils" (as they were known then) Robert Fitzroy. HMS Beagle's work in South taken from the Eschscholtz ice cliffs of Kot America and the Galapagos Islands during zebue Sound near Bering Strait in the Arctic. 1835 was then legendary, and naturalist These were mostly the remains of prehistoric Charles Darwin's role had not yet eclipsed mammoth, ox, and deer. The volume was that of his captain. written solely as a contribution to the em Herald's naturalist, at least its final one, erging science of paleontology; the Kotzebue was the Hanoverian botanist Berthold See Sound ice cliffs were a phenomenon un mann, and he was assured prominence when related to the usual stratigraphy that allowed the task of writing up the voyage narrative scientists to gauge the age of fossils on fell to him after the Herald's return to Britain Charles Lyell's scale. Richardson suggested in 1851. Seemann, who was still relatively that the absence of human bones or artifacts unknown at that time, had not been the first meant "that the drift era must have been an choice for the naturalist's post; that had fallen tecedent to the appearance of man upon to the young botanist Thomas Edmondston earth" or at least to human colonization of from the Shetland Islands, a protege of Sir the Arctic (Forbes 1854:2). He also argued William Hooker, director of the Royal Bota for an indigenous origin of the remains nic Gardens at Kew. Just before sailing in the (rather than drift), which meant that these Herald, Edmondston had been appointed were American versions of the prehistoric professor of botany at Anderson College, animals already found frozen in northern Glasgow. "Hurrah! for Natural History," he Europe. He chose to gloss over the issue of wrote to a friend. "Who says it is a bad pro extinction, which was a controversial issue fession!" (Edmondston 1868: 235). Edmond at the time-difficult to reconcile with the ston was obviously a young man of great Bible. promise, but he was killed in a tragic accident In addition to describing the natural his in 1846 during the Herald's survey of the tory of Herald's survey in this paper, I chal Ecuador coast; a loaded rifle left by accident lenge the impression, still common in some in the bottom of one of the ship's boats naval history circles, that there is a clear dif went off, killing him instantly. He was only ference between scientific expeditions and nineteen. other naval activities (that is, between science Berthold Seemann joined the expedition and politics). Barry Gough, who dominates HMS Herald's North Pacific Survey-SAMsoN 289 the study of the ninteenth-century Royal ment, elegance, luxuriance, and retirement: Navy in the North Pacific, sees a distinction there are so many feelings connected with between eighteenth-century voyages of dis trees, that it cannot but influence one in be covery, which he regards as mainly scientific, holding for so many leagues the vast forests and the politically motivated Victorian naval with which the Pacific Ocean is skirted" operations (Gough 1971: xiv). Gough is in (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, xi, 78-79). Seemann terested in the story of maritime empire; thus was well aware that he was imposing Euro any voyage that seems to be merely scientific pean associations on a foreign landscape and holds little interest for him. My work, on clear about wishing that he could remake the other hand, emphasizes the difference be what he saw to imitate Europe. He made tween modern concepts of scientific objec particularly ominous observations about the tivity and neutrality, and nineteenth-century rain forests of the Isthmus and northern perceptions of "truthfulness" and "fact" in South America. He hoped that the Cali voyage narratives. Men like Seemann felt fornian and Australian gold rushes would duty-bound to present their observations in bring colonization and intensive agriculture a way that would serve Britain's imperial in their wake, and that land clearance would interests. In this was their truthfulness and "improve" the climate of these areas. He honor as chroniclers, allowing Seemann to noted that the seasons at Rio de Janeiro used declare that "Fact is the object I have aimed to be similar to those of Panama "but since at throughout the following pages, on the the axe was laid on the dense forests sur strict adherence to which will rest their sole rounding the city, the climate has become recommendation" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, xi). dry" and he speculated that "the same effect For him there was no conflict between scien will probably be produced in the Isthmus. tific observation and an imperial gaze. When the immense forests ... shall have been In recent studies of the history of science, reduced, and a free circulation of air from sea distinctions between science and politics are to sea has been established, the rainy season usually regarded with suspicion. Instead, we will be considerably shorter, and the climate are invited to consider the tangled motives become cooler and more healthy" (Seemann and multilayered perceptions of Western sci 1852-1857: 73). Only the absent industry of ence. A veritable publishing industry now Europeans was required to mold the political surrounds the pioneering British explorations and economic landscape, and the ecosystem of Captain Cook and his circle. I only add itself. that the neglected nineteenth-century record Seemann made similar observations on deserves the same attention. Let me begin by the northwest coast of North America, at considering imperial aesthetics in Berthold Neah Bay in Juan de Fuca Strait, observing Seemann's responses to landscape during the that "The country around our anchorage was Herald survey. rather pretty. But an uninhabited, unculti While observing the New Granadian jun vated country is always wanting in one grand gle along the river Iscuande in February attribute of the picturesque-the industry of 1846, Seemann welcomed the sight of small man.... Houses, cleared land, and symptoms shoreline villages because "An uninhabited ofattention and labour, wonderfully improve place, however beautiful, has always a for a landscape" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 97). He lorn and desolate aspect" (Seemann 1853: was comforted by the sight of the Hudson vol. 1, xi, 76). He was never comfortable with Bay Company settlement at Victoria with the vast, apparently uninhabited coasts that its enclosed pastures and fields of wheat Herald frequented, taking little apparent in and vegetables. "Civilization had encroached terest in marine biology or botany and dis upon the beautiful domain," he noted with turbed-even threatened-by jungles and approval, "and the savage could no longer forests. North of the Iscuande he mused that exist in the filth and indolence ofmere animal "In England the confines of a wood remind life.... The prospect is cheering, the change one of a park; trees excite ideas of refine- gladdening ..." (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 102). 290 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 52, October 1998

Seemann's reaction against unimproved change walrus-tusks, eider-down, furs, and landscapes was most striking in the Arctic train oil, for the spices of India, the manu where he found "a death-like silence" as factures of Europe, and the medicinal drugs winter approached. "His own breath, the of tropical America" (Seemann 1852-1857: solitary beating ofhis own heart, is all the ear 21). The Arctic was ofvalue, not in itself, but perceives," he wrote, and it was "in the as part of a global system of trade. In South dreary steppes of the Polar region" that See America, on the other hand, there were cin mann recognized longings for "those circles chona plants and their quinine derivatives. where his exertion may be beneficial to his Admiring the "high mountains, extensive neighbours, and his wants be supplied by the meadows, and valuable Quina-forests" of aid of his fellow-creatures" (Seemann 1852 Ecuador, along with its temperate climate, 1857: 16). Once again, we see the Herald's mineral resources, and fertile soil, Seeman naturalist turning away from direct observa also noted its position "in the centre of the tion to describe the landscapes of his own inhabited globe, between one of the largest memory and aspirations. . rivers in the world, the Amazon, and the Seemann also linked the collection of sci great Pacific Ocean." A discussion of Ecua entific data with the interests ofcommerce. It dor's botany was quickly turned into some is clear that both he and Edmondston had thing else, as Seemann went on to say that been instructed to observe some parts of "Ecuador presents a vast field for enter the world more closely than others. At the prise.... It is now ... inhabited by so limited Falkland Islands, where the British Governor a number of whites, that about twelve thou was struggling to improve agricultural and sand immigrants would effect surprising grazing yields, the Colonial Office asked Ed changes" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1,202). mondston to collect samples of grasses for Seemann's racial views emerge regularly Kew Gardens. The connection between Kew in both the Narrative and the Botany of the and the Falklands was already so strong that Herald's voyage and, just as he viewed land Governor Moody had recently named a scape and natural resources with an imperial peninsula near Stanley Harbour "Hooker eye, so he judged other peoples by his own Point." Edmondston also reported directly to standards of achievement and "improvabil the Colonial Office on the resources of the ity." At first Seemann praised what was, to Gahipagos Islands and their prospects for him, the surprising practicality and expertise more intensive colonization. As the use of of indigenous peoples in the Americas. But steam power by the navy and British mer he paid double-edged compliments. For ex chant shipping grew, the need for coaling ample, along the river Iscuande, he noted the stations was imperative. Although rumors ingenious use of mangrove posts, bamboo, of Galapagos coal proved false, deposits and palm-leaf roofs in the construction of on Vancouver Island were very real and houses. These buildings had open sides "so prompted Captain Courtenay of HMS Con that every breath of air could enter, which in stance to declare a makeshift British jurisdic such a climate, to an idle, lounging, lolling tion over part of the island in the wake of race, is a comfort. We were surprised to Herald's survey. see so much neatness in the construction" Commercially marketable plants were of (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 75). Seemann added even greater interest to the expedition than that bamboo was "in architecture what the the discovery of new species. Seemann found Banana is in food, the most bountiful and little to praise in the Arctic flora. "In a com beautiful production in nature, and, by the mercial point of view," he found "no pro very facility with which it is procured and ductions which would playa prominent part applied, an incentive to indolent ease, an en in the traffic ofcivilized nations," adding that courager of the too prevalent idleness of the "should the country ever be inhabited by a tropics" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 76). Behind civilized people, they will have to ... ex- such statements lay the current debate about HMS Herald's North Pacific Survey-SAMsoN 291

environmental influences on human societies ing racial purity (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 200, and the assumption that warmer climates 302). discouraged exertion and innovation. Like his attitude toward Central and Seemann's most extensive ethnographic South American Indians, Seemann's attitude comments were made about creole and about northwest coast peoples was ambiva mixed-race communities. He made partic lent. In Juan de Fuca Strait, he was im ularly detailed observations of Panama's pressed at first by the Indians, who managed population after crossing the isthmus from their canoes with "great skill, seeming good the Atlantic side to meet the Herald on the humoured and friendly, holding up fish, Pacific coast. Although Seemann recognized skins, etc., to trade with." After his paeon to the diversity of the Isthmus' population, he agriculture at Victoria, however, he declared felt able to trace the effect of different Euro that "after making every allowance for the pean genetic and cultural influences. "Span crimes of civilization, still man in a savage ish priestcraft and tyranny," for example, state exists in all his grossness.... While had destroyed the intellectual and entre nature has imparted to most animals a desire preneurial capabilities of the creoles, "But of cleanliness, uncivilized man, with all the when the Anglo-saxon appeared the country intelligence, ingenuity, cunning, and skill of began to revive and prosper" (Seemann 1853: his class, seems in general to be uncleanly, to vol. 1, 76). When it came to the black popu revel in filth" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 102). lation, however, Seemann saw no hope. En Seemann recognized that the Indians had to vironment was not everything; he also be build solid, enclosed dwellings to keep out lieved in essential racial differences and we the cold, but added that "Several families can glimpse the man who would speak to occupy the same house-one large shed, little "anti-negro" demonstrations in the wake of better than an open cow-house or stable in an the Jamaica rebellion of 1860: "The negroes indifferent inn, [with] the compartments or are treacherous, thievish, and extremely in walls hardly excluding the sight of one family dolent ... for this reason they will always fill from another. There are chests and boxes subordinate situations, although the law pla rudely made, in which blankets, furs, and ces them on a level with the rest of their smaller fishing gear are kept ..." (Seemann countrymen" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 301). 1853: vol. 1, 105-106). It is interesting to Even worse, as usual, were the "half note how much aesthetics have changed: castes," which in this case meant the off these "rudely made" cedar chests, carved spring of black-Spanish or Indian-Spanish with the distinctive abstract designs of the parents. These people had inherited "all the northwest coast, are now reproduced for sale vices and none of the virtues of their par as part of a multimillion dollar industry in ents," were physically weak, and their chil Indian art. So are the "grotesquely carved" dren died young. Although forced to admit figures and masks Seemann described: mod that people from different races could repro em versions of these objects now grace the duce-this had been much debated in earlier homes and offices of upwardly mobile British years-Seemann concluded that the child Columbians at a cost of several thousand hood death rates in mixed-race families dollars apiece. showed that "there must really be a specific As usual, Seemann was particularly criti distinction between the races, and their in cal of the mixed-race population. Victoria, termixture be considered as an infringement like most fur trade posts, included British of the law of nature." He made a similar Indian or French-Indian (Metis) men and point later with reference to the populations women on its staff. These, Seemann decided, of Ecuador and Peru, where he believed that "appear to inherit the vices of both races; the Indians were the only part of the popula they are active and shrewd, but violent and tion that was growing: a reflection of the coarse." What disgusted him even more was strength Seemann believed lay in maintain- evidence of the usurpation of racial privi- 292 PACIFIC SCIENCE, Volume 52, October 1998

leges, as when mixed-race men identified nomic and social organization. To observe themselves with Europeans. "We felt quite anything of real value in an indigenous cul disgusted," he wrote, "in seeing one of these ture interfered with this worldview and in half-castes, bearing as good a name as any troduced unwelcome moral uncertainties to a in Scotland, beating and kicking a score of process that, for Seemann, was simply the Indians out of the fort, with as little com triumph of civilization over savagery. punction as if they had been dogs, scorning Nothing illustrates this better than a com them as natives, though his mother had been parison of Midshipman Pim's response to the taken from one oftheir tribe and had been no warmth of Maliemut hospitality and See more educated than they were" (Seemann mann's impression of their village. The natu 1853: vol. 1, 104-105). In light of Seemann's ralist visited the area at the end of the sum own remarks about the animal nature of mer, when the inhabitants were still hunting Indians, this outburst seems bizarre. The inland, and his account of their settlement point, however, was that only Europeans was designed to emphasize their lack of civi were entitled to look down on "natives"; the lization: "Villages exist, yet all that our despised "half-castes" could not be permitted minds associate with them is wanting. On to view indigenous people from a European approaching we expect to meet with roads perspective. and bridges and smiling fields, to behold We can sometimes recover other voices peaceful dwellings peeping through green than Seemann's from the Herald's records. boughs, and the steeple of the church tower Seemann's discussions of the expedition's ing heavenwards: in an Eskimo village these Arctic cruises were based mainly on the pleasing features are looked for in vain.... journals of Midshipman Bedford Pim, who The underground dwellings look cheerless wintered in Bering Strait in 1849-1850 and and are filled with water ... the paths are spent a great deal oftime living with the local overgrown with herbage-the whole pre Maliemut people. Pim found the interiors of senting a picture of misery and desolation. their underground wood-roofed houses sur The Eskimos have not yet learned that mi .prisingly comfortable. Oil lamps diffused gratory habits and progress in civilization light and heat throughout the tidy interiors, are opposed to each other ..." (Seemann "and when the traveller has put off his wet 1853: vol. 1, 19). But Pim had more insight clothes, and reclines on the soft deerskins re into that migratory life. As the freeze-up of gardless of the boisterous and snowy weather winter approached, he wrote, "They ap without, the pity he felt for the condition of peared almost different beings. Their light the poor Eskimos rapidly evaporates, and he and filthy summer dresses had been ex finds that, remote as they are from civiliza changed for others which fitted more closely tion, their condition is by no means so de and were better made. They were no longer plorable as is generally considered" (Seemann the apparently overawed people who, in their 1853: vol. 2, 58). Then the familiar voice of small skin baidars, paddled near the sides of Seemann intrudes-perhaps in intentional our huge ships, but seemed conscious that counterpoint-to warn readers against seeing they were moving in an element for which "the savage as a model of excellence" or "his nature had admirably adapted them. Their actions as honourable." step was firm, their movements graceful, their Seemann made the same point with regard dread of the white man had vanished, and to Peruvian Indians, dismissing criticisms they appeared to communicate with us on the about the introduction of alcoholism and footing of perfect equality" (Seemann 1853: venereal disease as "mere cant" perpetrated vol. 1, 133-134). Where some naturalists by naive humanitarians (Seemann 1853: might have been excited by viewing a pristine vol. 1, 198-199). Such statements were an northern ecosystem, Seemann lamented that important part of Seemann's view of natural "The mineral wealth rests undisturbed in the history: the natural world was incomplete bowels of the earth; the vegetable kingdom without the introduction of European eco- still exercises an absolute sovereignty; and HMS Herald's North Pacific Survey-SAMsoN 293 the animal creation swarms over the bound mann 1852-1857:68). There is much to pon less steppes, rarely disturbed by the sight of der in this elegant metaphor. There is irony, the hunter, and uncontrolled by the voice of too: this living driftwood moved with a de the herdsman" (Seemann 1853: vol. 1, 20). liberate yet ambivalent purpose, both desir Amid the terrible beauties of the Arctic, this ing and despising the alien shores it touched. anxious imperialist found "death-like si lence" broken only by "his own breath, the solitary beating of his own heart" (Seemann LITERATURE CITED 1852-1857: 16). Perhaps it is no wonder that he could hear only his own voice, never giv DAVID, ANDREW. 1995. The Voyage of ing the landscape or its inhabitants a chance H.M.S. "Herald" to Australia and the to challenge or beguile him. South-west Pacific, 1852-1861 under the For Seemann, and for so many other ex command of Captain Henry Mangles plorers and naturalists in the nineteenth cen Denham. Miegunyah Press, Melbourne. tury, the essence of civilization was its con EDMONDSTON, ELIZA. 1868. The Young trol and exploitation of nature. Naval survey Shetlander, or, Shadow over the Sunshine: expeditions did far more than chart coast Being the life and letters of Thomas lines; they also mapped Europe's conquest Edmondston, naturalist on board H.M.S. of the non-European world, cataloging the "Herald." William P. Nimmo, Edinburgh. future of empire. Accounts of the Herald ex FORBES, EDWARD, ED. 1854. The zoology of pedition's natural history reveal how deeply the voyage of H.M.S. "Herald." Lovell entwined were the issues of scientific investi Reeve, London. gation and imperial expansion. Natural re GOUGH, BARRY M. 1971. The Royal Navy sources of commercial value to Britain were and the northwest coast of North Amer given top priority, and the indigenous popu ica, 1810-1914: A study of British mari lations living near them were described as time ascendancy. University of British unfit custodians of their value in a global Columbia Press, Vancouver. market. Hydrography, natural history, and GRAHAM, GERALD S., and R. A. HUMPHREYS, ethnography must be considered together EDS. 1962. The Navy and South America, when studying these survey voyages, or we 1807-1823. Navy Records Society, will miss the themes that connect them. Even London. then, after marshaling all available sources of MACKAY, DAVID. 1985. In the wake of Cook: information, one thing usually eludes us: in Exploration, science and empire, 1780 digenous views of these scientific incursions. 1801. Croom Helm, London. At best we can get only brief glimpses of SEEMANN, BERTHOLD. 1852-1857. The botany what other peoples thought of exploring ex of the voyage of H.M.S. "Herald." Lovell peditions. Telling stories to while away the Reeve, London. long Arctic winter, one of Midshipman Pim's ---. 1853. Narrative of the voyage of Maliemut hosts explained that the origins of H.M.S. "Herald," 2 vols. Reeve and the British were obscure to him, but he sup Company, London. posed that they were "trees grown in the STEVEN, MARGARET. 1983. Trade, tactics and same soil as the drift-wood, only living, while territory: Britain in the Pacific, 1783-1823. the wood left on our shores is dead" (See- Melbourne University Press, Melbourne.