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Captain Weddell's voyages have made large additions to our hydrographical knowledge of the Southern Hemisphere, and have thrown much light on the history and productions of the Falkland Islands, and others which he explored—and in addition to his minute and highly valuable hydrographical information, the directions which he has laid down (in his work published by Longman and Co. of London in 1825) for doubling Cape Horn, are given with such minuteness and accuracy, that that hitherto difficult and dangerous navigation has been rendered comparatively safe and accessible. Subsequent voyagers have now fully established the accuracy and utility of Weddell's observations and surveys; and Captain Ross, in his late expedition to the Southern Seas, has borne the most honourable testimony to the same effect.
The views which have been taken of the effects of Weddell's discoveries, have not been more sanguine than are entertained by other and competent judges, and your Memorialist begs leave humbly to submit, for your Lordships' consideration, one or two extracts from a number (No. 7) of the Colonial Magazine (edited by Mr Montgomery Martin), published in July 1840. The article is entitled "Nautical Discoveries connected with our Colonial and Maritime greatness."
"Ships, colonies, and commerce' has long been England's motto, and long may England pre-eminently possess them; but a reference to the interests of science should likewise characterize her in her dominion of the seas. From the times in which Sebastian Cabot, a private adventurer of Bristol, to the present, when Weddell, a trader in seal-skins, with an intrepidity worthy of any of his predecessors, performed, in a frail bark of a hundred and sixty tons, a voyage of greater length and peril than, under the same circumstances, had ever been performed by man."—P. 332.
"With a view to discoveries towards the south, and in the hope of exploring higher latitudes than had crowned the researches of any former navigator of those little-known and remote seas—an object bespeaking an enlargement of view upon the great questions of maritime science—Weddell encountered the perils of a thousand miles of ice, and accomplished a task never performed by the skill of navigator. He traversed the seas beyond the South Shetlands. A private trader, not fitted out for the purpose of discovery—with ships not fortified and strengthened against the rude assaults of ice, in its thousand shapes—with all the unknown impediments of an unexplored polar sea—he has thrown more light upon the antarctic regions—has been more successful in his researches, and elicited more phenomena and facts connected with the high latitudes of the Southern Ocean, than all the most experienced navigators since the days of Magellan.
Important as is the information which he has thrown into the scale of science—connected with navigation, physics, and geography they are, perhaps, the more enhanced by the circumstance, that a gratuitous devotedness to the advancement of its cause, was the stimulating mean which led to their accomplishment.
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"Weddell, for instance, some years back, performed a most extraordinary voyage, in which he ascertained phenomena connected with the South Polar Seas—that its ices were not congregated in dense and impenetrable masses as in the arctic seas. Should not these things, so interesting to geography, cosmography, and physics in general, be further investigated? And should not some of the wealth of a colonial and maritime state, such as England, be more liberally and munificently employed in encouraging and rewarding perilous expeditions, for the attainment of important objects!"
"Is it yet too late, on the part of England, to pursue the tract laid open by the enterprise of Weddell? Has not the State leisure, or public ambition, to encourage such enterprises? or is this new field of scientific adventure at such a discount in England as to furnish no successor to the dauntless navigator who explored new phenomena connected with the antarctic seas? Might not, however, the trial be made? Two ships built for the occasion—their stems and stern-posts, their midship-beams, their wing decks, and lower transoms, and their ribs and planking strengthened so as to resist the hurricanes of the Fuegian seas, and the icebergs of much higher latitudes—under the genius and skill of a commander every way competent to the undertaking—might again approach the South Pole?
"A second attempt, more auspiciously equipped than that under Weddell, would, it is probable, elicit very interesting results in geography and physics. Questions unascertained, and phenomena as yet unelucidated, might, in a high degree, crown the intrepidity and the enterprise of our nautical adventurers."—Pp. 336-7.
Extracts from various other publications, relative to these voyages, of a similar import with the above, from 1825 and subsequently, might also be given. Your Memorialist, however, is unwilling to multiply them, feeling satisfied that what has already been adduced, will be sufficient.
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to shew the importance of the subject both in a scientific and maritime point of view, to which he has taken the liberty of calling the attention of your Lordships.
Your Memorialist now humbly requests your Lordships' attention to a less pleasing part of the subject, viz. that in consequence of Captain Weddell devoting so great a portion of his time when in these seas, to the purposes of investigation and discovery, he neglected the legitimate object of the undertaking (which was, as stated, the procuring seal skins) so much, that the result, in a pecuniary point of view, was most disastrous to all concerned, and ended in the total ruin and bankruptcy of the daring navigator.
Captain Weddell died without issue, or any near relation, indebted to your Memorialist in a very large sum; and Mr Mitchell was, at his bankruptcy, in your Memorialist's debt even to a larger amount; the entire losses of the voyages being thus entailed on your Memorialist, the only solvent partner in the undertaking. These losses would now amount to upwards of £6000; and in addition to other heavy losses of late years, have been the cause of your Memorialist becoming insolvent in April last, after engaging extensively in business for a period of 43 years. Your Memorialist is now advanced in life, being upwards of 63 years of age, with a large family, several of whom are entirely dependent on him for support; and in addition to these distressing circumstances, he has within the last three months, met with a very severe accident in one of his legs, from a fall, which has confined him to the house almost ever since, and may be the means of preventing him hereafter from engaging in any active employment.
Your Memorialist, in making this appeal to the benevolence of your Lordships, rests his claim for compensation on the ground of having supplied Captain Weddell with the vessels and the means of prosecuting his scientific researches; without which, in all probability, these voyages would never have taken place.
Your Memorialist trusts that the time which has elapsed since these voyages were performed, will not operate prejudicially to the case now humbly submitted. He hopes that it rather may have a contrary effect, as, but for the train of unfortunate circumstances above alluded to, and the position to which he is consequently now reduced, no such application as the present would have been made.
Your Memorialist, therefore, humbly prays, that your Lordships will be pleased to take his case into your favourable consideration, and be induced to grant him, or the female part of his family, annuities for such amounts as may compensate in some degree the heavy losses which he has sustained, in connection with voyages, by which facts, so interesting, and of such national importance, have been elicited, and the navigation of the Southern Antarctic Circle rendered more accessible to subsequent navigators. Your Memorialist hopes that your Lordships, as watching over the maritime objects of this great nation, will not allow such severe and heavy losses as those sustained by him in the cause of science or discovery, to go altogether unnoticed or unrewarded.
And your
EDINBURGH, August 1843.
Memorialist, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.