Previous Voyager Research Articles

The Antarctic Voyage of the Hopeful and Rose, 1833

The following short account of this little-known voyage is mainly based on some letters from Messrs Enderby to the Admiralty, which are now in the Public Record Office (IN letters to Secretary, 1/4308).Immediately on Biscoe's return from his Antarctic circumnavigation (January 1833) his employers, Messrs Enderby Bros., planned a voyage which should follow up his discoveries. On the previous voyage, however, the cutter Lively, Biscoe's consort, had been wrecked at the Falklands, and while the loss was partly covered by insurance it had been sufficiently heavy for her owners to look round for financial assistance in the new enterprise.

North Polar Oceanography 1

A HANDSOME volume full of useful information has been given to oceanographical science by H.R.H. the Duke of Orleans, the result of a cruise in the Greenland Sea during the year 1905. This is one of a series of Arctic cruises His Highness has been making for a number of years, the last having been during the summer of 1909. On each of these voyages the Duke of Orleans has carried with him an excellent scientific staff on board his yacht, the Belgica, a vessel already known in Antarctic exploration. Among those who have been with him are Dr. Récamier, who has accompanied the Duke on each of his previous voyages, as well as Captain Adrien de Gerlache, formely leader of the Belgian Antarctic expedition, M. E. Mérite, the artist-naturalist, and Mr. E. Koefoed.

The Voyage of the “Vega” 1

The Voyage of the “Vega” 1

On irregularities observed in the direction of the compass needles of H. M. S. Isabella and Alexander, in their late voyage of discovery, and caused by the attraction of the iron contained in the ships

In this paper Captain Sabine shows in what respect the effects of local attraction in the above-mentioned ships were conformable to observations made in previous voyages; and how far the errors found to take place on different courses, and under different dips of the magnetic needle, corresponded with those rules for calculating corrections recommended by Captain Flinders, who found that in every ship a compass would differ very materially from itself on being removed from one place to another, and this was found to be the case in the Isabella and Alexander. As the ships ascended Davis’s Straits, the binnacle compasses, in consequence of their construction, became nearly useless; accordingly, a standard compass was placed in the Isabella exactly amidship between the main and mizen mast, on a stout cross-beam, about nine feet above the deck; and in the Alexander amidship, on a box of sand five or six feet above deck. Captain Sabine next describes the methods by which the points of no error in these compasses were determined, and which were not in either ship coincident with the magnetic meridian.