Widows’ Men: The Admiralty Board,Precedent, and Pensions for the Widows of the Lost Franklin Expedition

When the British Admiralty announced in January, 1854 that it intended to strike the names of the officers of Sir John Franklin's missing polar expedition off the active Navy List, it had years of legal precedent to support its right to do so. The Board used such precedent to its advantage in ending a search its members had considered fruitless since 1849, the year the expedition's food would have run out. However, in their treatment of the widows made from that decision, Board members consistently pushed against established practice in order to do what they felt was right: to give the widows as generous a pension as the Treasury would approve, and to do so in defiance of the strict rules of eligibility. In 1844, only months before Franklin and 128 men set forth to discover the Northwest Passage, new eligibility guidelines were set that both limited women's access to pensions, and hampered the Board's ability to grant them. Archival evidence that forms the core of this article shows, however, that compassionate treatment of the expedition's widows was central to all discussions of how the Admiralty might move forward on the Franklin disaster, between promoting officers in absentia in order to augment pensions, to waiving the need for proving the date of death in order for families to collect the explorers’ back pay. As this article argues, the 1854 Admiralty Board had powerfully split loyalties: on the one hand, as the press acknowledged, the Board had a duty to perform on behalf of the public, to avoid wasting the nation's money on frivolous or useless searches for men assumed to be long dead; on the other hand, it felt equally strongly the obligation to support those widows who were the product of such imperial adventuring, even in defiance of its own rules. Through an analysis of legal precedent, Naval Instructions, and private Admiralty Board documents, in the case of the Franklin expedition's widows one can perceive a few naval administrators who tried to keep some of the nation's most vulnerable citizens in view even as they managed the bottom line.     

Manuscript XXXIIThe Final Fate of the La Pérouse Expedition?The 1818 Account of Shaik Jumaul,A Lascar Castaway in Torres Strait

The final fate of the La Pérouse expedition is a mystery. In 1788 the frigates L’Astrolabe and La Boussole were wrecked on Vanikoro in the Solomon Islands. According to Vanikoro oral history, the survivors then left, approximately six months later, in a boat which they had built. They were never seen again. This paper reports the rediscovery of an 1818 Indian newspaper article, detailing the rescue in Torres Strait of a lascar named Shaik Jumaul, a castaway for four years on Murray Island (Mer). While on Mer he saw weapons and instruments that seemed not of English manufacture. The Murray Islanders informed him that these came from the crew of a vessel wrecked nearby some three decades earlier. No European ship is known to have been lost in Torres Strait in that period. Shaik Jumaul’s account points to the possibility that the La Pérouse expedition ended finally in northern Australia.     

A Late Pleistocene coral fauna from Evans Head,N.S.W.

An assemblage of hermatypic scleractinian corals occurring landwards of the Pleistocene sandy Inner Barrier system has been referred to the last interglacial period. It comprises at least 20 species, many of which are in growth position, and is accompanied by a substantial association of molluscans. The richness of the assemblage is indicative of good access of oceanic waters at the time of its formation, so the deposit predates barrier emplacement. The coral occurrences are compared with present-day southern ranges of the scleractinian species (all extant), and the implications for climatic and sea-level conditions in the last interglacial are discussed. A sea-level stand of 4–6 m above that at present obtaining (in accord with Marshall & Thom, 1976) and a climatic shift towards a cooler regime equivalent to a minimum of 2° of latitude are concluded.     

Editorial

Stephen McLoughlin, Honorary Editor, Department of Paleobotany, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Box 50007, 104 05 Stockholm, Sweden.     

An exploration of Hul’qumi’num Coast Salish peoples’ attitudes towards the establishment of no‐take zones within marine protected areas in the Salish Sea,Canada

The Canadian Government has committed to establishing a national network of Marine Protected Areas. Progress in the Salish Sea (Strait of Georgia) of British Columbia has been slow. Opposition by First Nations is a factor as these protected areas have the potential to impact on Aboriginal rights. This case study with the Hul’qumi’num First Nations examines their approaches to marine conservation and their perspectives on “no‐take zones” as a component of marine conservation. The study used a variety of community engagement procedures including relationship building, hiring of a Hul’qumi’num research assistant, conducting individual interviews, focus groups, and field surveys. Interviews were conducted with 41 participants contacted because of their knowledge and interest in marine resource use. The views reported provide a rich understanding of Hul’qumi’num attitudes, but cannot be generalised to the whole population. There was widespread support for efforts to involve local First Nations communities in the development of management plans for marine resources, and also for recognition of First Nation reliance on marine resources for food, social, and ceremonial needs and for economic development opportunities. The establishment of permanent no‐take zones was met with both opposition and support. The most highly endorsed statement about no‐take zones is one of principle—that they are a violation of Aboriginal rights. However, there was also strong agreement that permanent no‐take zones would help reduce over‐fishing. The National Marine Conservation Area program is in its infancy and it remains to be seen how the “strictly protected” zone of the legislation will be interpreted in relationship to Aboriginal harvesting practices. However it is clear that successful conservation will only occur with Aboriginal consent in many areas and there needs to be greater investment in understanding Aboriginal perspectives on marine conservation.     

A. E. Nordenskiöld in Swedish memory: the origin and uses of Arctic heroism

ABSTRACT

For Nordic nations scientific activities in the Polar Regions proved significant in defining national identities and shaping scientific profiles. Starting in the nineteenth century and continuing throughout the next century, polar research proved instrumental in inculcating national honour and expressing small-state colonial aspirations. It provided a source of heroes for forging collective memory and the fostering of youth by presenting the polar explorer as a model character. This study explores the ideological lineage of the nineteenth century polar hero by first relating this idol to historical archetypes of Western culture. It identifies the special traits of the Nordic polar hero and discusses how it was used for patriotic purposes. As a case in point the article looks at the career of the Finnish-Swedish mineralogist and Arctic expedition leader Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld and the ways he, with the help of others, successfully navigated not only the drift ice of polar seas but also the international republic of science, and the three national scenes of Sweden, Finland and Russia. In the process he was turned into a national hero both in Finland and Sweden, and presented as a patriotic role model for adolescents in the arts of postponing gratification and enduring hardship.     

Arctic Explorer Robert E. Peary’s Other Quest: Money,Science, and the Year 1897

American Robert E. Peary is famous for his claim of being the first person to reach the North Pole. However, too little historical attention has been paid to independent parts of his long exploratory career. A closer examination of one year, 1897, in his two‐decade quest, reveals the substantial difficulties of being an explorer at the turn of the twentieth century. Peary used specially crafted arguments to endear himself to the recently organized but poorly connected professional scientists who proved to be his most earnest, if inconsistent, backers before 1898. Peary worked on the scientists’ behalf to locate, and sometimes create, publishing venues and stateside audiences for them, in exchange for their patronage. The money chase was difficult and time‐consuming, but did more than help the scientists and ensure Peary’s future backing. It introduced him to the young American scientific community, with whom he learned to “sell” the Arctic. Peary also used his scientific credentials to maintain a public image of the Arctic that allowed Americans to celebrate both the rugged hero and cultural superiority in this remote region.     

The Seaweed FlyThoracochaeta zosterae(Hal.) (Diptera: Sphaerocidae) in Inland Archaeological Contexts: δC and δN Solves the Puzzle

The presence of the flyThoracochaeta zosteraein cesspits had led to the unlikely interpretation that seaweed had been present in Mediaeval cesspitis. Archaeological and modern pupae fromT. zosteraewere sampled along with their probable larval diets (extracted plant material from cesspit and seaweed, respectively). The spacing between pupae and food for δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N was similar for both modern and archaeological samples. Modern pupae had isotopic ratios typical for marine invertebrates for δ¹³C. Archaeological puparia had isotopic values typical for terrestrial grazers (i.e., non-marine), indicating that there was no marine inclusion in the cesspits.