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Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e87

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Journal of Historical Geography

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Science at sea: soundings and instrumental knowledge in British Polarexpedition narratives, c.1818e1848

Sarah Louise Millar

Institute of Geography, School of GeoSciences, University of Edinburgh, Room 1.07, Drummond Street, Edinburgh EH 8 9XP, UK

Abstract

Measuring the depth of the sea in the early nineteenth century was a complicated but vital component in helping ensure safe passage throughtreacherous coastal waters, and increasingly as the century progressed, in providing scientific insights into previously scarcely-touched regions of theglobe. However, no one sounding device was universally agreed upon to provide reliable results. In consequence, the resulting cartographic represen-tation of the deep sea was error strewn and open to continual modification. This paper focuses on depth recording during British Polar expeditionsbetween 1818 and 1845, drawing on the published expedition narratives, as accounts of sounding as science at sea. The paper engages with work on therole of inscriptions to suggest that expedition captains were forced continually to perform new soundings, and to construct new maps of the polar seas asthey experienced them. In showing how soundings were part of a wider network of scientific investigation and navigation, and how the collection andrecording of depth measurements with precision instruments was vital in ensuring epistemological credibility, the paper for the first time scrutinises thesounding instruments and the practices of ship-board science in this period.� 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Sounding; Arctic; Instrumentation; Inscriptions; Nineteenth century

In 1817 William Scoresby Junior, whaling captain and scientist,returned from the Arctic to report that ‘a remarkable diminution ofthe polar ice had taken place, in consequence of which I was able topenetrate in sight of the east coast of Greenland, in the parallel of74�. A situation which for many years had been totally inacces-sible’.1 This news prompted John Barrow, second secretary to theAdmiralty and himself longmotivated by a desire to secure the sea’sshipping routes for British commerce, to initiate a 25-year programof expeditions into the Arctic to search for a North-West passage: aroute through the ice from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean thatwould cut thousands of miles off the journey from Europe to theEast. In the same period, Scoresby conducted his own, private andunfunded scientific investigations into the Arctic, and CaptainJames Clark Ross led an exploring and scientific mission into Ant-arctic waters.2 Official Instructions issued by the Admiralty to thecaptains of the Polar expeditions, and later included as a matter of

E-mail address: s.l.millar-3@sms.ed.ac.uk

1 Quoted in: T. Stamp and C. Stamp, William Scoresby: Arctic Scientist, Whitby, 1975, 62 See J. Cawood, The magnetic crusade: science and politics in early Victorian Britain,

Antarctic, London, 2000.3 J. Ross, A Voyage of Discovery, Made Under the Orders of the Admiralty, in His Majesty’s S

the Probability of a North-West Passage, London, 1819.4 Sounding also began to be regularly undertaken at the end of this period e the mid-n

conducted years of sounding investigation, largely in his own time, in the MediterraDevelopment of Oceanography in the Mediterranean, 1841e1873, Greenwich, 1978.

5 M. Reidy, Introduction, in: K.R. Benson, H.M. Rozwadowski (Eds), Extremes: Oceanog

0305-7488/$ e see front matter � 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jhg.2013.06.003

course in their resultant narratives, expressed the desire not only todiscover new routes, and new land, but to engage scientifically withthe sea and the seabed. Captain John Ross, commander of the firstArctic expedition in 1818, was ordered, for example, to take‘soundings of the sea, and [investigate] the nature of the bottom;for which purpose you are supplied with an instrument bettercalculated to bring up substances that the leads usually employedfor this purpose’.3 The Polar expeditions were to become one of thefirst testing grounds for instrumentation that promised to offernew insights into the depths of the sea.4

Nineteenth-century geopolitical and economic concernspushed more European explorers into the Polar regions: to theArctic in search of a North-West Passage, and to the Antarctic tolocate a viable whale fishery and sealing grounds, as well as toensure territorial advantage.5 Nations whose economic strengthrested largely with their maritime influence relied on their ships’

4.Isis 70, 4 (1979) 492e518; A. Gurney, The Race to the White Continent: Voyages to the

hips Isabella and Alexander, For the Purpose of Exploring Baffin’s Bay and Inquiring into

ineteenth century e on surveying vessels. Thomas Abel Brimage Spratt, in particular,nean aboard surveying ships. See M. Deacon, Vice-Admiral T. A. B. Spratt and the

raphy’s Adventures at the Poles, Sagamore Beach, 2007, 1e14.

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e8778

ability to cross ocean’s in the most extreme weather conditions,and to find safe and strategic harbours around dangerous coast-lines when in proximity to land. The strength of Britain as an is-land and imperial nation demanded that it was increasinglycapable of interacting with, and understanding, the world’soceans. As the politics of imperialism intensified, the Admiralty’sneed for scientific and technical expertise became ever moreimportant, as Reidy acknowledges: ‘Empire thus subtly trans-formed science: in the research questions asked, and the theoriesadopted’.6 Emerging information from these voyages of explora-tion was essential and influential in matters of imperial expansion.The Navy was crucial to this programme of development and JohnBarrow’s dual role in the Admiralty and as a prominent member ofthe Royal Society, gave him considerable influence on the directionof scientific investigation during the first half of the nineteenthcentury.

The ways in which science was organised and pursued in thisperiod has been termed ‘Humboldtian science’, and is characterisedby the intellectual programme epitomised by undertakings such asthe magnetic crusade that resulted in Ross’s 1839 voyage to theAntarctic, reflecting a new ‘professionalism’ in the natural sci-ences.7 This programme of science brought to the fore the need fora focus on the instrumentation rather than on the explorer:particularly so for portable, precision instruments. The Humbold-tian example, Susan Faye Cannon argues, inspired the explorers andearly scientists of the early and mid-nineteenth century acrossEurope to follow in his footsteps. Dettelbach argues that Humboldtbroke the mould by focussing on measurement rather thancollection and, in so doing, instruments took pride of place:Humboldt’s personal narratives posited the instruments as themain protagonist rather than himself. For Humboldt, a single in-strument to perform a taskwas insufficient.What was neededwereinstruments by different instrument makers, built on differentprinciples, being used together with their errors constantlycompared. Using precision instruments thus corroborated basicstandards and constants for the first time.8 This type of scientificpursuit required global observations because general theories weredesired, not local principles. Whilst Cannon’s model has beencriticised by some for its generalisations and its better applicabilityto some fields of science over others, it is a framework that fits wellwith scientific practice, and the resulting representations, in thePolar regions in the first half of the nineteenth century.9

Whilst studies of terrestrial exploration and expeditionary cul-ture have long been emphasised over those of maritime endeavour,recent work has attempted to redress the imbalance, focussing onthe role of the ship in the production of scientific knowledge at sea;

6 M. Reidy, Tides of History: Ocean Science and Her Majesty’s Navy, Chicago, 2008, 2927 S. F. Cannon, Science in Culture: The Early Victorian Period, New York, 1978, Ch. 4.8 M. Dettelbach, Humboldtian science, in: N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Eds)

nature: precise measurement, mapping, and sensibility in the work of Alexander von H9 Dettelbach also argues that Cannon’s work prematurely ‘black-boxed’ a complex se

disciplinary concerns from those regarding sensibility and the aesthetic. Miller championand scientific servicemen e in the development of the physical sciences in early nineteeface of nature (note 8); D.P. Miller, The revival of the physical sciences in Britain, 1815e10 For work on the ship see: R. Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument in the eighin geography and the geographies of ships, Geography Compass 6 (2012) 660e676; A. WiVictorian Britain, Victorian Studies 38 (1994) 69e98; for maritime book history and inscrAtlantic Studies 10 (2013) 170e196; for piracy see W. Hasty, Piracy and the productionGeography 37 (2011) 40e54; for Arctic exploration in the early nineteenth century see Mwhaling, 1782e1822, Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 512e538; and for wrecksThetis, 1830e1854, Journal of Historical Geography 32 (2006) 539e562.11 For more on instruments at sea, see: M. Deacon, Scientists and the Sea 1650-1900: AFathoming the Ocean: The Discovery and Exploration of the Deep Sea, Harvard, 2008.12 For more on Maury, see: Rozwadowski, Fathoming the Ocean (note 11); D.G. Burnett, Mthe tropics, in: F. Driver, L. Martins (Eds), Tropical Visions in an Age of Empire, Chicago, 213 For more on the contribution of the Challenger expedition, see M. Deacon, T. Rice a

the place of the maritime expedition narrative; the activities ofmore marginalised figures in maritime knowledge production suchas William Dampier the pirate, and William Scoresby the whaler;the representation of the deep sea, and of wrecks, in the earlynineteenth century.10Whilst there has been recent innovativeworkon the role of instruments used at sea, there is still comparativelylittle emphasis on the role of sounding instrumentation, and on theepistemic importance it confers on the user.11 Studies of deep-seasounding have focused on the period after 1850, when the needto lay trans-Atlantic telegraph cables caused a surge in interest inknowing precisely the nature of deep water in the Atlantic basin,and Lieutenant Matthew Maury began to use data from ship logbooks to produce the first bathymetric maps of the deep-sea floorin 1853.12 Likewise, emphasis has been placed on the importance ofthe voyage of HMS Challenger, which, in 1872, began a 5-year sci-entific expedition of the world’s oceans, signalling in so doing ashift from terrestrial exploration to maritime scientific discovery.13

Before 1850, however, a less-structured approach to soundingexisted in which new machines were constructed and tested; in-dividual knowledge of the deep seawas as great as that held by anysingle institution; maps remained simple and without standards;and soundings, taken when necessary for navigation and to avoiddanger, were rarely made with science in mind. Moreover, thatsounding technology which was used widely at the beginning ofthe nineteenth century was totally obsolete by the century’s end. Asa consequence, the picture that is left to us today of sounding as ascientific, navigational and cartographic practice in the earlynineteenth century is patchy and unclear, and, perhaps, has beenoverlooked as a result.

This paper examines deep-sea soundings from the beginning ofthe period of Admiralty-sponsored Arctic expeditions into thePolar regions, to the end of this phase of intensive sea-going ex-peditions in 1845 with the loss of the Franklin expedition, in orderto reposition focus on the development of deep-sea soundingthrough advances in instrumentation and cartography. This paperconsiders the importance of the role of sounding instrumentationand positions sounding in a fluid network of activity at sea,highlighting the vital and changing role of cartographic repre-sentation in influencing the perception of the deep sea at thistime. The argument advanced is that sounding in the Polar regionsin this period formed part of a wider network of scientific andnavigational activity that included not only the instruments andthe operators but also the resulting representations in the form ofmaps and charts. The paper contends that examining soundingwithin Polar narratives can offer important perspectives on theearly development of sounding instrumentation and, in turn, upon

.

, Cultures of Natural History, Cambridge, 1996, 287e304; M. Dettelbach, The face ofumboldt, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C, 30, 4 (1999) 473e504.t of concerns and practices, and criticises the need to ‘decouple’ professional ands the role of other key groups e mathematical practioners, the Cambridge networknth century Britain. See: Dettelbach, Humboldtian science (note 8); Dettelbach, The1840, Osiris 2 (1996) 107e134.teenth century, Osiris 2nd series 11 (1996) 221e236; W. Hasty and K. Peters, The shipnter, ‘Compasses all awry’: the iron ship and the ambiguities of cultural authority iniptions see A. Craciun, Oceanic voyages, maritime books, and eccentric inscriptions,of knowledge in the travels of William Dampier, c.1679e1688, Journal of Historical. Bravo, Geographies of exploration and improvement: William Scoresby and Arcticsee F. Driver and L. Martins, Shipwreck and salvage in the tropics: the case of HMS

Study of Marine Science, London; Reidy, Tides of History (note 6); H. Rozwadowski,

atthew Fontaine Maury’s ‘sea of fire’: hydrography, biogeography and providence in005, 113e134.nd C. Summerhayes (Eds), Understanding the Oceans, London, 2001.

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e87 79

the hitherto under-studied role of instrumentation and techno-logical testing as integral to the practice of geographical discoveryand exploration.

Instrumentation: technological innovations andcomplications

Recent work in the history of science attempts to explain thefunctioning of disciplines as constantly in flux: few ideas or tech-nologies in science remain constant and unchallenged for decades,let alone centuries. The focus of scholarship on the history of sci-entific innovation has long been on the idea rather than the ma-chinery which enabled it. Pinch and Bijker were among the first tocriticise the separation of science from technology, arguing that theformation of a new technology should be considered using thesame theoretical tools as that of a scientific idea.14 For Withers,‘modernity has tended to accord primacy to science over technol-ogy because of its emphasis upon means’, but proposes that tech-nology need not be subordinated to science if we consider theepistemic authority which instruments confer on the user and thescience.15 Discussing the role of method in geography in the nine-teenth century, Withers highlights the importance of the role ofinstruments, and their ability to confer authority on the user,drawing links between the credibility of ‘instruments, inscriptionsand the real world’.16

Richard Sorrenson argues that the ship itself should be treatedas an instrument, not just a means of transporting people and ob-jects or a vehicle on which scientific investigation could be per-formed. Ships ‘shaped the kinds of information observers collected’,as the ability of the ship to continue operating was the mostimportant consideration in any scientific endeavour.17 As a conse-quence, the type of ship chosen for a voyage of discovery was of theutmost importance in establishing the credibility of the resultingexpedition. Captain James Cook, Sorrenson writes, chose a ‘dumpyNorth Sea collier’ as the type of ship best suited to probe the un-known.18 James Clark Ross wrote proudly of his ships, the Erebusand Terror, being strengthened for sailing in extreme conditions ofice and cold, in comparison to the American Charles Wilkes’ all-sailteam of inadequately built and equipped vessels.19

Dorinda Outram has addressed the issue of how geographicalknowledge was produced and consumed in the context of voyages

14 T. Pinch and W. Bijker, The social construction of facts and artefacts: or how the soStudies of Science 14 (1984) 399e441.15 C.W.J. Withers, Science, scientific instruments and questions of method in nineteen(2012) 169.16 Withers, Science, scientific instruments and questions of method (note 15), 173.17 Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 10), 227.18 Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 10), 226.19 Ross’s ships were both bombs, specialised wooden sailing ships used by the navyexpedition for the North-West passage led by George Back. Whilst the bombs were noExploring Expedition took 2,157 tons of ship with it, the British Antarctic survey led by20 D. Outram, On being Perseus: new knowledge, dislocation, and enlightenment explorLondon, 1999, 281e294.21 F. Driver, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire, Oxford, 2001, 27.22 D. Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces: Exploring Africa and Australia, Cambridge and Lon23 See also C.W.J. Withers and I.M. Keighen, Travels into print: authoring, editing and naGeographers 36 (2011) 560e573; S. Shapin, A Social History of Truth, Chicago and Londo24 Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces (note 22), 29.25 Driver, Geography Militant (note 21), 54.26 Kennedy, The Last Blank Spaces (note 22), 94.27 Outram, On being Perseus (note 20), 290, 291.28 Reidy, Introduction (note 5), 2. See also B. Hevly, The heroic science of glacial motio29 G. Beer, Travelling the other way, in: N. Jardine, J.A. Secord and E.C. Spary (Eds), Cul30 See also: S. McCook, ‘It may be truth, but it is not evidence’: Paul du Chaillu and the lin the Field, Osiris 2nd series 11, 1996 177e197; S. Schaffer, Visions of empire: afterword, inNature, Cambridge, 340.

of exploration in the eighteenth century, arguing they raisedtroubling questions about the authority of the explorer and theresultant travel narrative.20 Driver argues the culture of explorationwas heterogeneous, so what constituted legitimate knowledge wasopen to contention.21 For Dane Kennedy, the traveller’s veracityincreasingly came to bemeasured by his ‘commitment to a rigorousset of scientific protocols and practices’, more than upon socialstatus.22 One way in which credibility was assured, was by thekeeping of a daily written record of events observed and mea-surements taken, in the form of diaries, journals, and log books.23

Another was the use of precision instruments, such as the chro-nometer, compass, sextant, barometer, thermometer, and soundingdevice. These practices laid a conceptual framework for equiva-lency and comparison. Kennedy argues that it was the ‘meticulousattention [Cook] gave to the production of accurate observationsand verifiable reports’, especially using navigational instrumentssuch as Harrison’s chronometer to determine longitude thatresulted in the almost reverential way Cook’s accounts weretreated.24 Driver offers the example of the naval officer and ex-plorer Captain Basil Hall, whose reputation was secured by hisdiligence regarding use of precision instruments. His reliance onastronomical observations to accurately navigate 8,000 milesacross the Pacific Ocean, with no sign of land for three months, washeld by William Herschel as one of the greatest feats of navigation,conferring authority on the commanding officer by the systematicuse of scientific method.25

Credibility, however, was not ensured by diligence to instru-mentation alone. Arguably, explorers were willing to endurephysical hardship because in doing so their own bodies and mindsbecame ‘privileged sites of truth and knowledge’.26 Outram arguesthat contemporary accounts of exploration repeatedly return tothemes of physical discomfort as a way of authenticating the ex-plorer’s travels.27 Accounts of the Arctic often focused on bodilyconcerns of starvation, hypothermia and even cannibalism, doc-umenting the extreme environment, and highlighting the authorityof the account by virtue of the trials endured.28 For Gillian Beer, thisquestion of the personal thus becomes a key issue: Who sees?What is seen? What are the conditions of observation?29 Thecredibility of the explorer was emphasised by certain key factors:the length of time away, the events that happened during theirabsence and their personal associations at home.30 A powerful and

ciology of science and the sociology of technology might benefit each other, Social

th-century British geography, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38

for bombarding objects on land. The Terror had already seen arctic waters on ant fast (a top speed of 8 knots) they were strong and steady. Whilst the AmericanRoss took only 698 tons. See Gurney, The Race to the White Continent (note 2).ation, in: D. Livingstone, C. Withers (Eds), Geography and Enlightenment, Chicago and

don, 2013, 28.rratives of travel and exploration, c.1815ec.1857, Transactions of the Institute of Britishn, 1994.

n, Osiris (1996), 11, 66e86.tures of Natural History, Cambridge, 1996, 323.egitimation of evidence in the field sciences, in: H. Kuklick, R.E. Kohler (Eds), Science: D.P. Miller, P.H. Reill (Eds), Visions of Empire: Voyages, Botany, and Representations of

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e8780

prominent position in the scientific community was most oftenrelated to an equally important place in a scientific institution, suchas the Royal Society, and had a direct impact on observers’ credi-bility. These factors were the social and intellectual claims to au-thority the explorer had in their favour, or otherwise.

The issue of credibility was vital to the development of expedi-tionary science in Europe in the early nineteenth century. As Driverpointsout,whilst gender, classandethnicitywere important factors inestablishing authority, theywere insufficient to authorise fully claimsof foreign lands and people encountered that explorers brought back.The travel narrative served as a powerful vehicle for establishing theintegrity of the explorer; but as the century progressed the use andrecord of ever more sophisticated precision instruments became thede rigueur way of conferring authenticity on the scientific travelled.How this collated data was then recorded and presented, as Dettel-bach has shown in his study of Alexander von Humboldt, was key toauthenticating truth claims. Humboldt transformed measurementsinto graphs and tables, as well as maps and charts, stressing a con-current concern with the spatial relations between the natural sci-ences and the geography of plants and animals. Humboldt insisted ongraphical representationwhen graphs themselveswere a novelmodeof representation as late as the 1820s. He not only mapped variablessuch as temperature and rainfall, but recorded the means and rate ofchange. Isometric lines, his creation, were a product of averaging andinterpolation, showing the spread of mean values over an accuratemap. Aesthetic imageswere still presentedbut theywere defined andsecured by precise measurements.31

These graphical representations, or ‘inscriptions’, to use BrunoLatour’s term, of sounding events, in the form of maps and chartswere an important factor in making sounding data accessible toexpedition captains and to later audiences.32 For Sabine Höhler,Latour’s ideas suggest a framework for analysis of the early pictorialoutputs of deep-sea sounding, by illustrating ocean depth as ‘aproduct of repetition and concentration of measurements’.33

Although the profile of the seabed became the dominant mode ofgraphical depth representation in the early years of sounding, thisproved unstable due to the small number of data points. ‘Repre-senting depth became a question of data compilation’34: the moresoundings, the more accurate a chart was deemed to be and thuswas judged credible.35 John Law also examines the instrumentationtaken on board ship, notably the astrolabe and the quadrant used todetermine latitude whilst at sea. Law states that taken by them-selves e that is, without human involvement e these instrumentswere powerless. The image seen through an alidade pointed at thesky, he claims, has little significance in relation to navigation.Rather it is the transformation of these sightings into latitude, which

31 M. Dettelbach, Global physics and aesthetic empire: Humboldt’s physical portrait oA. Godlewska, Humboldt’s visual thinking from Enlightenment vision to modern scienLondon (1999), 236e279.32 B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers Through Society, M33 S. Höhler, Depth records and ocean volumes: ocean profiling by sounding technolog34 Höhler, Depth records and ocean volumes (note 33), 126.35 B. Latour, Drawing things together, in: M. Lynch, S. Woolgar (Eds), Representation in36 B. Latour, Pandora’s Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies, Harvard, 2009, C37 J. Law, On the social explanation of technical change: the case of Portuguese mariti38 Many mariners held to the erroneous belief that water would become increasinglyeighteenth century had shown the density of water did not change to an extent that wobelief that water at depth was a homogeneous 4�C and devoid of any movement that wouof an Unfamiliar World: A History of Oceanography, Toronto and Vancouver, 1973.39 As mathematical or listed figures or symbols of depth, soundings began to appear onat depths of less than 100 fathoms. Robert Hooke complained of the difficulty of obtaininfactors such as the lack of understanding of the properties of wood at depth (it becomsounder horizontally through the water, contributed to a difficulty in creating and replisounders, and there were ideas for sounding devices published in the early volumesundertook deep sea soundings on a voyage to the Arctic in search of a route throughinteresting point in geography’: The 1773 Phipps Expedition towards the North Pole, Ar

is important. Like Latour’s ‘circulating reference’, which emphas-ised the importance of the two-dimensional inscription, thetransformed object is more important than the original.36 IndeedLaw explicitly mentions ‘a scale of reference’ allowing the coursesailed bymariners to be compared with a course plotted on a chart.

In his work on the Portuguese maritime expansion in the four-teenth and fifteenth centuries, Law argues that the social andnatural world are subject to ‘continuous reworking’ and that thetechnologist should be seen as building a network of components,where ‘bits and pieces, coastal, natural, physical, or economic areinterrelated and keep each other in place in a hostile and dissoci-ating world’. Law highlights the temporal and fragile nature of theentity constructed from these dissociated components, and thedanger that the whole may break into its constituent parts if facedwith a ‘stronger and hostile system’.37 As an example he uses theVivaldo brothers’ unsuccessful sailing around Cape Bojador in theirill-designed boat. Their demise, he argues, was the result of thedissolution of their technological object in the face of a strongeropponent (the conditions of nature). Some components of thenetwork therefore were suitable for being tampering with e thenavigational charts for instance, or the design of a square-riggedship, whilst the dissociating forces of the ocean were not. Lawsums this up by stating that the advance in shipbuilding techniquewas the key in deciding on the course the boats were able to sail eand in this way the construction triumphed over the other actors inthe network attempting to dissociate the component parts of thevolta. For Law, the crux of the problem is how the entity constructedby the system-builders will stay as a whole when faced with ad-versary. Drawing upon this work by Law, Latour and Höhler, thispaper argues that in the case of representations of the deep sea,measurements of depth resulted in constantly changing and un-trustworthy maps, whose worth was dependent on the credibilityof the ship captain and crew, the instruments on board, and evenupon the ship itself as a well-run operational device.

Sounding: making science at sea

The impression of the sea in the early nineteenth century was oneof a known layer at the surface, with an unfamiliar abyss below.38

Sounding was thus important both as a means to navigation anda form of instrumental practice designed to explore the sea atdepth.39 Whilst the instruments carried on board ship in the earlynineteenth century constantly changed in make and type, one in-strument remained constant through decades of seafaring: the leadline used to measure the depth of the sea, essential for establishingposition and ensuring safety in shallow water. The most common

f the tropics, in: D.P. Miller, P.H. Reill (Eds), Visions of Empire, 267e270. See also,ce, in: D. Livingstone, C. Withers (Eds), Geography and Enlightenment, Chicago and

ilton Keynes, 1987, ch. 6.y, 1850e1930, History and Technology 18 (2002) 122.

Scientific Practice, Cambridge, MA, 1990, 31.h. 2.me expansion, Technology and Culture 28 (1987) 231e234.dense at great depth and pressure, even though scientific experiments in the lateuld affect its viscosity. More significant and lasting misunderstandings involved theld allow the circulation of nutrition and the existence of life. See: S. Schlee, The Edge

charts from the late sixteenth century, mostly with reference to the continental shelfg unequivocal results when experimenting with sounding instruments in 1666, andes waterlogged at high pressure), or knowledge of undercurrents that pulled thecating accurate results. In 1727, Stephen Hale introduced the detachable weight forof the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. In 1773, Constantine Phippsto the Pacific Ocean; for an overview of the Phipps voyage see A. Savours, ‘A veryctic 37, 4 (1984) 402e428.

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e87 81

and simple design for sounding in the early nineteenth century, thelead line was an instrument used primarily in the shallower wateraround the coast, rather than in deep waters offshore. Its basicdesign incorporated a piece of lead or other weighty objectattached to a line that was cast over the side and allowed to run outthrough the hands of a trained crewman.40 Deep-sea sounding,however, required new and inventive technology. There were twomain devices regularly taken on board ship from the early 1800s:Massey’s sounder, and Burt’s buoy and nipper (Fig. 1): there wasmuch competition and controversy over the use of the two in-struments during this period.41 In 1800, Edward Massey ofCoventry invented a sounding machine designed for use by ships inshallow water based on the idea of recording the number of turnson a central vane. This was a waywiser sounder. It was adopted bythe Navy Board in 1807 (500 were ordered), and when it wasstrengthened for use at greater depth, 1000 more were taken up.42

Massey claimed his sounder would accurately measure verticaldistancewhen in thewater, andwould not be pulled by underwatercurrents or the boat’s horizontal movement through the water. Itwas, however, difficult for the average crewman to use, as a skilledoperator was required to be able to read the dials and thus judgewhen the sounder had reached bottom. Crewmembers complainedespecially of the difficulty of using it at night, when it was nearlyimpossible to judge how fast the wire was being paid out. Ulti-mately difficulties in its use meant the Massey sounder fell out offavour, to be replaced by the simpler Burt’s buoy and nipper. Thiswas adopted by the Admiralty for the start of the Arctic exploringexpeditions in 1818, being both easy to launch and use whilst thevessel continued its operation.

According to Pinch and Bijker, the stabilisation of an instrumentneeds to be analysed in order to understand why the final designbecomes accepted, they term this ‘interpretative flexibility’. Theexpedition crewmembers provided the at-sea testing which theseinstruments so desperately needed, forming the user communitythat, Pinch and Bijker argue, ultimately decides the instrument bestsuited to their needs. The superior functionality of the buoy andnipper is reflected in its listing as the main sounding device takenon board the first Polar expedition by John Ross in 1818; there is nomention of Massey’s sounder. Ross was not, however, as enam-oured with the instrument as his superiors. In the appendix to his1819 published narrative, Ross conceals critique within praise,commenting: ‘The invention appears to be very perfect, but owingto the water being generally above 150 fathoms, we had little op-portunity of using it’.43 Ross set about constructing his ownsounding device on board ship: ‘I employed some ofmy unoccupiedtime in constructing an instrument for bringing up substances fromthe bottom of the sea, to supply the place of our machine, which,from its defective workmanship, had been found ineffective,particularly in deep water’.44 Ross setup a Smith’s forge in situ tomake a model on what he believed was an entirely new principle,and named the device the deep-sea clamm, after its integrated

40 The lead not only allowed one to determine the depth of the sea, it provided an insighbrought samples of the seabed up for examination. The line had knots, or marks, at eachrather than record the results of a sounding event himself, the leadsman would call the dThe Practice of Navigation and Nautical Astronomy, London, 1840, 91.41 See: Anon, Quarterly Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts, London, 1819, 135; P. Buof Burt’s Sounding Buoy and Knipper over Massey’s Sounding Machine. London, 1819; E. Mnotice of every member of Parliament, Prescot, 1820.42 Deacon, Scientists and the Sea (note 11).43 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (note 3), cxxxi.44 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (note 3), 60.45 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (note 3), cxxxiv.46 J.C. Ross, A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic regions, Du47 Pinch and Bijker, The social construction of facts and artefacts (note 14), 405.

ability to pick up samples of the sea floor (see Fig. 1). He claimed intypically immodest fashion that the device succeeded on its firstsea trial. Ross tested his new invention whenever possible, andunlike Humboldt, appeared content to use just one functioningprecision device. In Baffin Bay, Ross described a sounding event inwhich the accuracy of the clammwas tested at a depth believed tobe over 1000 fathoms. Each time the clammwent down it came upempty, corroborating their belief in the great depth of the bay. In hisappendix to A Voyage of Discovery, Ross reviewed the operation ofthe clamm, stating that the temperature of substances brought upusing the clamm were well preserved, due to the ‘closeness withwhich the instrument confines the mud, which is such as to allownot even the water to escape’.45 Ross also reported upon theversatility of the instrument, claiming that, with some modifica-tions to the structure, it would be suitable for water of greater orlesser depth than the Arctic. Ross’s narrative was viewed unfav-ourably on publication, in part due to the focus on his own ac-complishments rather than those of the crew as a whole. However,it can be assumed his instrument managed to avoid a loss ofcredibility by the detrimental association with Ross, and wasdeemed successful, as the Arctic explorer Captain William EdwardParry was issued with the instrument as his main sounding deviceon the very next voyage in search of a North-West Passage, andParry describes the use of the clamm, not the buoy and nipper,throughout his first narrative.

John Ross was not the only captain to re-design sounding de-vices on board ship. His nephew, James Clark Ross, attempted tomeasure the depth of the deep ocean down to 600 fathoms whilstpassing through the tropics en route to the Southern Ocean, butlabelled his efforts ‘fruitless’. He attributed this to the type of lineused, but additionally noted: ‘they served to point out to us thatwhich was most suitable. I accordingly directed one to be made onboard, three thousand six hundred fathoms, or rather more thanfour miles in length, fitted with swivels to prevent it unlaying in itsdescent, and strong enough to support a weight of 76 pounds’, andcontinued, ‘we succeeded in obtaining soundings with two thou-sand four hundred and twenty-five fathoms of line’.46 Despite thissuccess, the new line was still subject to interference. When anattempt at a deep-sea sounding was made soon after, the line wasaccidently checked and broke at 1260 fathoms. Advances could bemade in technology to investigate the deep ocean on these longexpeditionary voyages, but it was also the case that untested in-struments could fail without warning, losing expensive pieces ofequipment and affecting the ability to collect scientific data, a keypart of the instructions supplied from the Admiralty. One signifi-cant problem in historical accounts of technological innovation isthe ‘asymmetrical focus of the analysis’, one that relays the eventsof successful experimentation but hardly ever tackles the non-successful aspects of technology innovation.47 With orders tofollow, and reputations to be made, however, it is perhaps notunsurprising that the Polar expedition captains were reluctant to

t into what the sea floor was composed of: a coating of grease or tallow on the leadquarter or half fathom to alert the sounder to how much line had gone down and

epth measured to an officer on deck once the lead came back on board. See H. Raper,

rt, Copies of Reports of Experiments made for the Purpose of Ascertaining the Superiorityassey, A Statement of the case of Mr Edward Massey.most respectfully offered to the

ring the Years 1839e43, London, 1847, 26e27.

Fig. 1. Three sounding instruments devised and tested in the early nineteenth century: (a) Massey’s waywiser sounder (From ‘How the sea-depths are explored’, Popular ScienceMonthly, July 1873); (b) The nipper part of Burt’s buoy and nipper (From Oceanographic Museum of Monaco collection, http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/htmls/ship4263.htm);(c) John Ross’ Deep-sea clamm (From J. Ross, Voyage of Discovery, 1819, 178). (d) Burt’s buoy and nipper (far left-hand side), a Massey sounder (middle), and a Sandy deep sounder(far right) (From U.S. Coast Survey, Deep Sea Sounding Apparatus, as used by Comr. B. F. Sands, 1857, http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/bigs/cgs06049.jpg).

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e8782

record the construction of new technology at sea, let alone reportupon its failure, in their narratives.

As Parry observed in his third narrative, it was not only the in-struments and the weather that affected the likelihood of a suc-cessful sounding: human fallibility played its part. Parry detailedhow sounding had failed to be used as a good navigational tool, indescribing the Hecla running aground on rocks which the soundingboats had missed. Perhaps unwilling to be seen as a workmanblaming his tools (or a captain blaming his crew), he placed thefault with himself, describing his own journey out on the soundingboat directly before the incident. Although undoubtedly a job thatwas left to an experienced crewman, when the result of soundingincorrectly was damage to the vessel, Parry was prepared to acceptculpability and so damage his own credibility. Yet this may havehad less to do with a concern for reputation and more to do withmaintaining that straightforward, self-effacing style of writingfavoured in the nineteenth-century travel narrative. Parry wasgreatly admired for his humble prose, in contrast to John Ross who

was denigrated for focussing on his own skill and his ownachievements at sea. Although Ross’s deep-sea clamm might havepassed the test, his personal credibility suffered greatly when, in hispublished narrative, he described his own sighting of mountainsblocking passage through Lancaster Sound. This mountainousmirage (for so it turned out to be) prevented continuation of theexpedition, and, even at the time, was disbelieved bymany (notablyJohn Barrow who was convinced a passage to the Pacific existed,and by Edward Sabine who had accompanied the expedition as ascientific officer), and was later disproved by Parry.

Given these difficulties of use, questions of accuracy werecertainly paramount in interpreting the validity of ocean depthscience. Obtaining accurate results on board ship with poorly-tested instruments proved a difficult task. In A Journey of Discov-ery, John Ross complained of the difficulty in obtaining accuratedepth measurements due to drift affecting the ability to sound indeep water (where soundings took longer), and of drift so severethat attempts at sounding were curtailed or failed to take place

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e87 83

altogether. Indeed, it was common, when weather conditions werechangeable and safe passage rather than scientific endeavour wasparamount, that finding ‘no bottom’ at a reasonable depth was asuseful e and more credible e than recording an absolute value thatcould be dismissed on a subsequent voyage or later challenged. Torecord on a chart that there was a clear line for shipping was ofgreat benefit to fellowmariners. Ross points to the imperfect natureof even this level of precision; after taking soundings and finding nobottom at 650 fathoms, he admitted the real depth may have beenmuch less as the ‘swell was so great, that it was uncertain, after twohundred fathoms, when the machine reached the bottom’.48

Perhaps as a consequence of his knowledge of the limitations ofhis ship-borne hand-made instrumentation, Ross did not considerdeep water a reliable indication of safe passage, merely expressinghis surprise at the unpredictable terrain of the sea floor in Polarwaters. Parry was more critical, perhaps because he had no need todemonstrate the efficacy of an instrument that was not his inven-tion. He complained that the considerable drift of the ship in tur-bulent water affected the accuracy of soundings, and noted that ineven in very calm weather, if the depth exceeded 500 or 600fathoms, the actual depth was hard to ascertain as, ‘the weight ofthe line causes it to run out with a velocity not perceptiblydiminished, long after the lead or clamms have struck theground’.49 On one occasion, the line was brought up from 2,010fathoms covered in mud from 800 fathoms onwards. Parry, withsome understatement wrote, ‘it is not easy to ascertain the actualdepth of the sea in the usual manner, when it exceeds five or sixhundred fathoms’.50 Even when a sounding event progressedsmoothly, the equipment still proved to be an encumbrance for theship: ‘the clamms being now down, we were about to try the setupof the current, by mooring a boat to the line, when the breeze againsprung up from the westward and prevented it’.51 Whilst illus-trating the cumbersome nature of sounding, Parry’s comments alsopoint to the important opportunity afforded to pursue other sci-entific investigation at depth when sounding was beingundertaken.

Sounding as part of a network

Depth soundings were frequently taken in conjunction with otherscientific interrogations of the sea, most commonly temperature atdepth, but also the speed and direction of underwater currents,specific gravity of seawater and dredging of the sea floor. Depth andtemperaturewere in particular closely allied: without knowing truedepth, it was impossible to tell what compensation for pressurewas neededwhen using thermometers. Detention in ice overwinterafforded Parry the opportunity for taking repeated measurementsof the sea temperature and the specific gravity of seawater atdifferent depths. Captain John Franklin described trying forsoundings due to calm weather, whilst also attaching a Register

48 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery (note 3), 176.49 W.E. Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from the AtlGriper, 1821, 30.50 Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (note 49), 293.51 Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (note 49), 30.52 J. Franklin, Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Year53 Law, On the social explanation of technical change (note 37).54 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery and Research (note 46), xlvexlvi.55 Ross, A Voyage of Discovery and Research (note 46), 199.56 E. Forbes, Report on the mollusca and radiata of the Aegean Sea, and on their distAdvancement of Science for 1843 (1844) 129e193.57 T. Anderson and T. Rice, Deserts on the sea floor: Edward Forbes and his azoic hypo58 Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (note 49), 63.59 W.E. Parry, Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage from tand Hecla, London, 1824, 113.

thermometer to the line and a corked bottle to collect samples ofseawater from depth.52 Soundings were pursued and obtained aspart of a larger system of scientific and operational activity at sea,and their success was dependent on surmounting, in Law’s words,‘the dissociating forces’ of harsh Arctic conditions, poor weather,reduced visibility, untested instrumentation and dubious carto-graphic representations of the deep.53

James Clark Ross’s narrative opens with his instructions that‘temperature of the sea at the surface and at stated moderatedepths should be observed as frequently as possible, and wheneveropportunity may occur, also at the greatest depths attainable’. Hewas also instructed that ‘soundings should be attempted in deepseas, and specimens of the water brought up be preserved forfuture examination’.54 James Clark Ross certainly described morebottom dredging in conjunction with sounding than his pre-decessors. From the sounding of 230 fathoms he described smallstones, coral and crustaceous animals commonly found in theArctic seas coming up with the lead, but remarked on the ‘veryremarkable irregularity in the ocean bed’55 when HMS Terror, only amile away, found the sea bottom to be sandy not rocky. He notedhow Joseph Hooker, the ship’s naturalist, took accurate drawings ofthe specimens for future publication, thus showing sounding to beboth a means of visualising the sea floor and of accessing the ma-rine fauna that survived there. The animals brought up with thedredge were notable by virtue of the fact they lived at 300 fathoms,and so were rarely, if ever seen. Ross consistently justified his beliefin the likelihood of animal life surviving at very great depths,arguing that he had already found life at 1000 fathoms capable ofwithstanding the great pressures that exist there: so why not at2000 fathoms and beyond? These findings came at a timewhen thenaturalist Edward Forbes had proposed his theory, then widelyaccepted, of an azoic layer existing at approximately 300 fathoms,belowwhich, it was postulated, no animal life could survive.56 Rossappears to have provided good evidence to contradict this theory,but as Anderson and Rice argue, naturalists then were anywayalready persuaded by the idea that no life could endure in the ex-tremes of the deep-sea, and evidence to the contrary wasdisregarded.57

Whilst the instructions to the expedition captains expressed aclear wish to take depth measurements for scientific investigation,soundings on the Polar voyages were more commonly employed asnavigational requirements. Parry referred to repeated soundingsbeing taken in bad fog, as ‘as we had no othermeans of knowing thedirection in which we were sailing’58 and took sounding in 90fathoms of water at two thirds of a cable’s length from the shore asindicative of safe passage. Parry wrote of sending boats to sound forsafe passage in the Duke of York’s Bay, and confidently declared it asafe harbour after regular soundings were taken: ‘a boat being keptahead to sound, discovered and enabled us to avoid another rockyshoal’.59 Fig. 2 shows the resultant map of the entrance to the

antic to the Pacific: Performed in the Years 1819e20, in his Majesty’s Ships Hecla and

s 1825, 1826, and 1827, London, 1828.

ribution, considered as bearing on geology, Report of the British Association for the

thesis for a lifeless deep ocean, Endeavour 4 (2006) 131e137.

he Atlantic to the Pacific Performed in the Years 1821-22-23, in his Majesty’s Ships Fury

Fig. 2. MapofDuke of York Bay,made in 1821, originally published inW. E. Parry, Journal of a Second Voyage for theDiscovery of a North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, London,1824 (Original from John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, http://shimmer.shu.ac.uk/luna/servlet/detail/JCBw1w1w4071w6390001:Entrance-to-Duke-of-York-Bay-1821).

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e8784

harbour, with soundings along the line the boat entered, high-lighting obstacles capable of causing harm to other boats. The mapshows two distinct lines of travel, likely to be the path of HMS FuryandHMS Hecla, the latter led by the then Lieutenant, George FrancisLyon. As Sorrenson argues, the ship is important and unique in theway it leaves marks of its own existence on the maps it helps make,leaving ‘a trace of its interaction with the medium it passesthrough’.60 We are here given not only a record of the route theships took, but also of how the resultant map of the coastline of thebay was constructed: one ship taking a steady course through thecentre, the other moving closer to land on both sides of the soundto take measurements of depth.

60 Sorrenson, The ship as a scientific instrument (note 10), 228.

Successful sounding was not reliant solely on suitable weatherconditions and accurate instrumentation: skilled human operatorswere vital. George Francis Lyon described the physical toll exactedon the men as a result of constant sounding with line and lead.After finding his charts to be inaccurate, the deep-sea leads werecast every hour in deep water and every quarter of an hour inshallow water, for 6 days and nights in succession. Captain Lyoncommented upon the strain this took on the men conducting thesounding, describing the constantly wet crew, operating in tem-peratures barely above freezing, but, the ship was kept safe by theiraction. When the ship was forced to sail all night after finding nosuitable point for anchor, he wrote of the ‘fatigued’ men working

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e87 85

constantly with the deep-sea and the hand leads: ‘the hands ofmanywere in so very a sore state, that I caused canvasmittens to bemade for the use of thewatch on desk.’61 If soundingwas used as anexplicit navigational tool, it was reliant on the physical capabilitiesof the men as much an interpreter’s ability to use the equipmentand comprehend the significance of its measurements.

Taking regular soundings with a lead and line or buoy andnipper was integral to ensuring safe passage in poorly-chartedArctic seas, which had the additional hazard of shifting icebergsto contend with. Sounding was not, however, used independentlyof other visual and aural clues to obtain information on the depth ofthe sea. Only when sounding became part of wider network ofactivities on board ship could it overcome the dissociating forces ofthe Arctic weather: fog, seasonal darkness and icebergs. Parryseveral times referred to the colour of the sea as a means to esti-mating depth, taking soundings when the seawas seen to be lighterthan expected, indicative of an area of shallow water.62 It was notjust colour changes that indicated water depth: John Ross took thepresence of large icebergs as proof of deep water, and sightings ofseals as evidence of shallower water. All the Polar expedition au-thors wrote more frequently about depth in situations of distress:when sight alone could not guarantee proximity to land; when thecolour of the water changed; in severe weather, particularly fog;and in fields of ice. Lyon’s Unsuccessful Attempt to Reach Repulse Bay(1825) in which he is highly critical of his own performance, con-tains more useful information on sounding in situ than many of themore successful expeditions, largely because he had great reason tocall on it as his ship was struck by misfortune. In poor weatherconditions in the Pentland Skerries they were carried straight to-wards rocks but were successfully guided to safety ‘by the sounds ofthe breakers, and our hand leads’.63 Lyon apologised to his readersfor the numerous details on scientific readings, such as compassand celestial bearings, but justified their inclusion as showing what‘materially interested us at the moment, and by attention to which,a ship in such a situation as ours, could alone be navigated insafety’.64 After an encounter with rock or ice, Lyon described hisboat using two small grounded rocks as beacons, soon after taking agroup of walruses as proof that the water must be shallow despitebeing distant from land. He continued by identifying ‘slightrippling’ in the sea’s surface a mile north which he took to indicateyet shallower water. Lyon consistently verified visual and auralevidence with recourse to sounding. Sounding confirmed what thecaptain and crew could see for themselves, and in combinationwith other methods, may also have prompted greater trust in themeasurements of the unseen sea floor when visual clues were notavailable: in fog; and at night.

The representation: soundings on maps

The soundings derived from the Polar expeditions in the first half ofthe nineteenth century ultimately formed the basis of new charts,either by replacing existing charts or by serving as the only two-dimensional aid to navigation in what were infrequently interro-gated regions. This was especially the case for charts of harboursand inlets which could be used to shelter and anchor a boat. Despite

61 G.F. Lyon, A Brief Narrative of an Unsuccessful Attempt to Reach Repulse Bay, 1825, 91.62 Parry, Journal of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (note 49), 115.63 Lyon, Unsuccessful Attempt on Repulse Bay (note 61), 5.64 Lyon, Unsuccessful Attempt on Repulse Bay (note 61), 114.65 H. Rozwadowski, Small world: forging a scientific maritime culture, Isis 87 (2005) 466 Latour, Drawing things together (note 35), 31.67 See also: S. Naylor, Introduction: historical geographies of science: places, contexts,68 Lyon, Unsuccessful Attempt on Repulse Bay (note 61), 52e53.69 Lyon, Unsuccessful Attempt on Repulse Bay (note 61), 82.

the call for deep-sea soundings in instructions to captains, the vastmajority of soundings were taken close to land. Despite a series ofapproved patents by Edward Massey between 1802 and 1836showing modifications to his waywiser sounder that suggestsounding technology was advancing and increasing in complexitythroughout this period, the same basic designs that were beingusing during Ross’ expedition in 1818 were still being taken to seain 1839, suggesting that the technology and the resulting inscrip-tion were interlinked at this stage. All the charts continued to markparticular objects of consideration for safe navigation, such asshallow banks and rocks. The style and content of the charts madeby William Parry and James Clark Ross was very similar, although20 years apart. More complex maps of the deep-sea floor, usinginterpolation to produce contours of the sea floor, were not pro-duced until 1853 when Maury published his first bathymetric mapof the Atlantic Ocean (Fig. 3).65 Yet thesemore advancedmapswereconstructed on the basic sounding information that Parry andothers had used to construct their point-based maps. Maury’s stepforward was in suggesting, through the use of contours, thatknowledge of the intervening seabedwas available between knownpoints. According to Höhler, who draws on Latour, the way depthmeasurements were collected and arranged in charts served as ‘anew way of accumulating time and space’.66 What Humboldt haddone for a range of geological, botanical and geographical phe-nomena on land using the isoline technique of cartography, Mauryachieved for the ocean floor, ensuring that it was the representationof the sea, not the technology that was driving knowledge at thistime.67 Study of the Polar narratives from the early nineteenthcentury show that this work had important precursors.

Lyon makes explicit reference to inaccurate sounding mapsbeing used on board ship, as a prelude to the incident whicheventually forced him to turn for home on his unsuccessful 1824expedition. On 24 August 1824, he recorded sounding 5 miles fromshore, obtaining depths varying between 50 and 35 fathoms:

09e429

cartogra

I am thus particular in stating our soundings on this day, asthey are the commencement of constant labour at the leads,and also as a proof of the careless manner in which the oldcharts of the coast of Southampton Island have hitherto beenmarked; for it is in them laid down as a bold precipitousshore, having from ninety to a hundred and thirty fathomsoff it, while on almost every part which we coasted, our handleads were going at from four to ten miles from the beach,which in no own place could be approached within a mile bya ship.68

He returned to the issue later, stating that ‘the land of the Bay ofGod’s Mercy, lies immediately in the centre of the Welcome, whichis in consequence, considerably andmost dangerously narrowed byit. Hence it is evident that although Southampton Island is laiddown with a continuous outline, it has in fact never been seen,except at its Southern extreme’.69 From this point, Lyon decided notto put his trust in the charts on board, and described the leads goingday and night as the only way to obtain a timely approach to land.Lyon’s soundings caused him to disregard the charts he carried onboard and to construct new representations of the deep. In his idea

.

phies, British Journal for the History of Science 38 (2005) 9e10.

Fig. 3. Maury’s first bathymetric chart of the Atlantic Basin, from soundings taken on board the Dolphin, originally published in ‘Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany theWind and Current Charts’, 1853. From http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/history/readings/vicissitudes/media/gulf.html.

S.L. Millar / Journal of Historical Geography 42 (2013) 77e8786

of ‘Circulating Reference’, Latour suggests that the transformationfrom a three-dimensional object into a two-dimensional repre-sentation increases the durability of the object in question, and,ultimately, its stability. The transformation does not have to e

should not e resemble anything that led to its production: it ismore than a copy; rather it ‘takes the place of the original situa-tion’.70 Lyon, however, was not willing to take what had beentranscribed previously (that is, depth soundings marked on anexisting chart) without questioning it. On testing the representa-tion, and finding it to be false, he went about making a new rep-resentation of the deep in which he could trust. Yet this was notstable or immutable: for Lyon, and the other expedition captains,the chart-as-transcriptionwas liable to be changed and updated, assuccessive trips took place over the same area, with new, moreaccurate instrumentation.

Identifying areas of shallow water from existing charts was aclear motivation to undertake soundings. In his first Polar narrative,Parry described sounding an area where Lieutenant Pickersgill hadpreviously obtained and recorded soundings during the PhippsArctic voyage of 1773.71 He referred to the deep-sea clamms beingsent down and finding no bottom with 1020 fathoms of line, inconflict with Pickersgill’s readings of 320e330 fathoms. This

70 B. Latour, Pandora’s Hope: An Essay on the Reality of Science Studies, London, 1999, 671 C. Phipps, A Voyage towards the North Pole undertaken by His Majesty’s Command 1772 Parry, Journal of a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage (note 59)73 J. Franklin, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21Bus and Busse at this time.74 Franklin, Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea (note 73), 13.

instance suggests that Parry was keen to test others’ soundingmeasurements, and, in so doing, confirm his own position and itsdepth accuracy on the chart he carried with him. As this instancealso shows, however, further soundings tended not to agree withexisting depthmarks on the charts carried. In his Journal of a Voyagefor the Discovery of a North-West Passage (1821), Parry also madereference to passing over an area he termed the ‘Sunken Land ofBus’, as recorded on ‘Steel’s chart from England to Greenland’.72

Despite including a table of depth measurements taken over thecourse of the 2 days it took to pass over the area, Parry tried forsoundings without success. Franklin also noted passing over ‘part ofthe ocean where the ‘sunken land of Buss’ [sic] is laid down in theold, and continued in the Admiralty charts’ and commented uponinformation he had received from the commander of their com-panion boat, Mr Bell, about soundings taken in 12 feet of water‘somewhere hereabout’.73 He matched this information with hisown experience of a turbulent sea at this part, and continued: ‘Icannot but regret that the commander of the ship [Mr Bell] did nottry for soundings at frequent intervals’, in order to corroborate theinformation.74

The first soundings James Clark Ross described with his newly-constructed instrument were taken in an area marked as

7.73, London, 1774., 5.-22, London, 1824, 13. Note that the Sunken Isle of Buss was spelt variously as: Buss,

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significantly shallower than the surrounding area on a chart of date1701.75 Ross was unable to find any areas of shallower water sug-gestive of a significant underwater bank. The significance of a shipin 1839 carrying charts that had been produced over a hundredyears earlier draws attention to the difficulties in constructing,let alone revising, charts of the Polar seas. Whilst Latour argues thatthe inscription e in this case the map e becomes transportable andcomparable, the Polar expedition captains in reality found theywere in poorly mapped, inaccurately measured, and oftencompletely uncharted waters, with no existing maps as reference,or, worse, misleading information derived from sounding thatserved to hinder rather than to help the expedition and its safepassage. Because the representation of the sea and its depth wasconstantly in flux, in the early nineteenth century, attempts toverify existing measurements often led instead to their dismissal.

Conclusions

Polar expedition narratives provide important insight into whatsounding at sea involved in the early nineteenth century. They alsooffer something greater than that: they help illustrate and consti-tute our understanding of this practice in a period of technologicaldevelopment and as a form of sea-borne instrumental science oftenoverlooked in accounts of exploration and expeditionary culturewhich focus only on the actual successes, less often on their oper-ational and technological procedures.

The instruments taken on board the expedition vessels wereintegral to producing a credible measurement of the deep sea andexpedition sailors had a real effect on the instrumentation thatwould continue to be used and adapted in the first half of thenineteenth century. Whilst overt criticism of the sounding deviceswas not apparent in the expedition narratives, disparagement oftheMassey sounder led to its discontinuation, despite protests fromMassey about lack of funds for proper testing. As Pinch and Bikersuggest, it was the user community, in this case in relation to thesounding technology that eventually influenced the design andsuccess of an instrument, not the instrumentmakers at home. Sincetesting was difficult for the instrument builders, most real modi-fication had to occur at sea, and by the people using it on a day-to-day basis, such as the ‘hands’. Sir John Ross developed an integratedgrab sampling function to add to the standard sounder afterproblems using the issued model; Sir James Clark Ross lengthenedand strengthened the line used for deep-sea soundings when hefound the issued length unsatisfactory on his Antarctic voyage.Although Parry described taking soundings in a small boat whenhis ship neared danger, soundings were more commonly taken by acrewmember. For a relatively unskilled crewman to perform thetask successfully, the simpler the equipment the better: this wasone of the main reasons for the success of Burt’s nipper overMassey’s sounder.

Whilst the instrument was integral to ensuring a credible result,the level of trust in the measurements taken was dependent on a

75 An Admiralty-supported project in search of the magnetic South Pole was commissiocan be assumed that the chart Ross was using was from data collected on this voyage.76 Latour, Pandora’s Hope (note 70), 42.77 I. Hacking, The Social Construction of What? Cambridge, MA, 1999.

number of additional factors: the authority of the sounder, therecorder of the event, and the way in which the measurement wasrecorded. A list of measurements in a table was one thing, but torecord the measurement on a chart lent recordings increasedimportance. Navigation charts were still in use e and being testedby sounding e over a hundred years after their creation. Just asLatour has described the researcher standing in a field site in theAmazon rainforest looking at a graph, so the mariner in a feature-less expanse of sea looks at a representation of the deep on a chartto understand location and position. For Latour, the representationis stronger, more durable, and harder to disbelieve than the originalsituation, especially when the ‘phenomena we are asked to believeare invisible to the naked eye’.76 Some measurements, and conse-quently some charts, were shown to have been accurate, and sotrust in the representation and so in the deep sea was reinforced. Inmany cases, however, measurements were found to be incorrectwhen new instruments and new personnel sounded an area of sea.It was in reality potentially ruinous for an expedition captain to relyon his chart of the Polar sea rather than to take direct soundings toestablish depth and, possibly, position. It is also unsurprising thatparticular soundings were not repeated even if they had beencorrect at the time, as the means by which position at sea wasestablished at this time were anything but reliable. In such cir-cumstances, the representation of the deep was fragile andchangeable: any mark of deep water suggesting safe passage wasnot taken on trust but interrogated afresh.

Soundings formed part of and led a wider network of scientificactivities pursued at sea. Some components of this oceanographicnetwork were too strong to be easily overcome: ice sheets; the longperiods of winter darkness; and fog made standard clues to posi-tion hard to visualise. When the shoreline could not be seen, or thecolour and movement of water assessed, soundings offered thecrew a way of visualising and interpreting their surroundings.Hacking has suggested that inscriptions themselves could betreated as actants in the networks that Latour proposes.77 In thefirst half of the nineteenth century, however, no network of tech-nology, men and representations was constructed that was strongenough to overcome the difficulties posed by measuring and rep-resenting the depths of the oceans in the Polar sea: soundings werestill often taken inaccurately, especially in the case of the deep sea,and the resultant charts were likewise frequently misleading. Polarexpedition narratives sketch a picture of sounding in the earlynineteenth century as a science in flux.

Acknowledgements

The research for this paper was conducted with the help of a stu-dentship from the Economic and Social Research Council. I am verygrateful to Charlie Withers, Fraser Macdonald and William Hastyfor their constructive comments on early versions of this paper, andalso to the reviewers who gave such full and helpful comments onthe original paper.

ned in 1701, commanded by the astronomer Edmund Halley in the Paramour, and it