The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger / Volume I / The Voyages of 1811, 1812 and 1813: The Voyages of 1817, 1818 and 1820

ISBN-13: 9781032319346 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022 / 310 str.

Jackson, C. Ian

Opis

The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger is the first of three projected volumes of the unpublished journals kept by William Scoresby (1789-1857) of his voyages to the Arctic. Scoresby made his first voyage in the whaler Resolution from Whitby to the Greenland Sea, west of Spitsbergen, in 1800 and in 1810, on his twenty-first birthday, ’the earliest at which, by reason of age, I could legally hold a command’, his father relinquished the Resolution to him. A brief spell at Edinburgh University, and the encouragement of John Playfair, Robert Jameson and Sir Joseph Banks, stimulated his scientific observations, and in 1820 he published what has been called ’the foundation stone of Arctic science’. The lengthy journals of his annual voyages are remarkable accounts in their own right, containing scientific records and social and religious comment as well as detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling.

Spis treści

Illustrations and maps; Preface; Glossary; Introduction: The journals; The Scoresby family; Whitby and the whaling industry in the early 19th century; The Bowhead whale; The whaling process; Whaling in wartime; Father and son: The Scoresbys and their ships 1811-13; 'Open' and 'close' seasons; Scoresby's navigation; Conclusion: the emerging Arctic scientist; The Journals of William Scoresby the Younger: Journal of the 1811 voyage; Journal of the 1812 voyage; Journal of the 1813 voyage; List of works cited; Index.

O autorze

Ian Jackson took part in the Canadian International Geophysical Year expedition to northern Ellesmere Island in 1957-58 and then taught at the London School of Economics and worked for the Canadian Government in Ottawa. He is a former Executive Director of Sigma Xi in New Haven, Connecticut, and is an Associate Fellow of Timothy Dwight College, Yale University. His publications include 'Letters from the 49th Parallel, 1857-1873' for the Champlain Society (Toronto, 2000).