THE JOURNAL OF ERASMUS DARWIN ROGERS, THE FIRST MAN ON HEARD ISLAND

Turnbull Library Record, Volume 4, Issue 1, 1 May 1971, Page 31

THE JOURNAL OF ERASMUS DARWIN ROGERS, THE FIRST MAN ON HEARD ISLAND

Rhys Richards Helen Winslow

Many men have dreamed of discovering an uncharted island yielding incalculable wealth. Despite the extent of the oceans, the world has only a limited number of islands, few of which yield immediate or even long-term wealth. The following article describes a journal, apparently bought by Alexander Turnbull from an unknown source, of four voyages left by one such favoured explorer, Captain Erasmus Darwin Rogers. Rogers found his ‘treasure island’ as recently as 1855 and in as unlikely a place as the border of Antarctica, when he made the first landfall on Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean.

Whaling and sealing logbooks are primarily dour records of daily nautical events kept for the eventual scrutiny of each ship’s owners. Journals, which by definition are personal records rather than official, are occasionally less bald, but alas Rogers’ is not among the exceptions. For example, on first sighting Heard Island his description of it is given in only a dozen sentences, and without expressing its obvious wealth in money terms. Therefore the significance, and romance, of this journal would not be apparent without extensive explanatory notes which, it is hoped, will provide some perspective to his dry factual reporting, and provide the context of his ‘discovery’. This report is truly a joint effort for the first writer (Richards) would not venture beyond his normal frame of reference without the assistance and experience of the second writer (Miss Helen Winslow). During her brief visit to Wellington Miss Winslow provided an invaluable assessment of the importance of these four voyages in the context of the American whaling and sealing industries of the period and the expanion of both which Rogers’ discovery permitted. It is hoped that she will prepare a more detailed and scholarly report for American research workers, for the following is primarily a preliminary account for Australian and New Zealand readers.

Rogers’ journal bears the title ‘Journal of the Voyage on board the Charles Carroll of New London, bound to Dessolation [lsland] and from thence home, Captain Thomas Long Master, Kept by Erasmus D. Rogers’. This voyage commenced from New London on 21 July 1847 and the final entry records the departure from Saint Helena for home on 12 April 1848. But the same volume includes accounts of three further voyages by the same writer after he had achieved the rank of captain. The second, a brief account of a short trading voyage by the schooner E. L. Frost to the Californian goldfields and return from November 1849 to mid 1850, need not be described here. It is the record of the third and fourth voyages, from 19 August 1851 to 24 June 1853, and from 15 November 1853 to 8 June 1856, in the ship Corinthian of

New London ‘for Dessolation and else where’ under Captain Erasmus D. Rogers, which add substantially to our knowledge of the early whaling and sea elephant industries on Kerguelen or Desolation Island, and their commencement on newly discovered Heard Island. First, however, the early whalers and sealers known to have been active in Kerguelen waters are listed in some detail in order to show that by the time Rogers commenced his journal in 1847 the area had been well known and frequently visited for at least fifty years. From this arises the question as to how Heard, a high island often visible over long distances and only some 260 miles to the south, had remained so long undiscovered by the whalers, the sealers and the sea elephant hunters. Earliest Visitors

Kerguelen is a high volcanic island, some 80 miles long by 20 miles wide, lying isolated in the southern Indian Ocean at latitude 49 degrees South, longitude 69 degrees East. The coast line is a series of drowned valleys and fiords, the interior has much bare rock and extensive glaciers. The climate is severe with coastal temperatures always close to freezing, though seldom below, even in winter. The biting winds never stop. The island was first discovered on 12 February 1772 by Kerguelen who with two ships revisited it from 14 December 1773 to 18 January 1774, made several landings and proclaimed its continuing French sovereignty.

In the last week of 1776, Captain Cook, unaware of Kerguelen’s visits, renamed it Desolation, by which name it soon became known to American whalers and sealers. The first of these were two Nantucket whalers, Asia and Alliance which called after a voyage including a visit to the West Australian coast. Another American whaler, the Nancy of Bedford, Mass, cruised offshore in late 1798 or early 1799. 1 The first known sealing ashore was that of Captain Robert Rhodes of the British whaler Hillsborough, who landed a sealing gang for eight months in 1799 while he charted the east coast. It is not known whether this gang obtained any sealskins but they took 450 tuns of excellent sea elephant oil. 2 It is evident that there were many sealing visitors in the early nineteenth century. John Nunn, a British sealer who wrote an excellent narrative account of his shipwreck and his experiences ashore from August 1825 to March 1828, refers to a number of earlier British visitors, including the Francis (1818-20), the Favorite (1818-20), and the Monmouth (dates unknown) as well as his own ship Royal Sovereign (1825-26?); and his rescuers, Sprightly and Lively. Except for the latter which were Enderby ships, most of the former seem to have been owned by William Bennett, a London oil merchant just as important as the Enderby family. Judging by the number of cutters which Nunn

found had been left on the island by sealers intending to return, it seems evident that British merchants operated a thriving sealing industry on Desolation at an early date. It should also be mentioned that in Monument Bay, Nunn noted the grave of Captain Matley of the Duke of Portland of London, owned by Messrs Bennett of Rotherhide. The tombstone on which Matley’s death was recorded as 12 December 1810 3 had been sent out by his widow on the next voyage of the Duke of Portland. A French sealing expedition for Nantes called in 1825-26 in the ship Emilie, as did the Union, an American whaler from Sag Harbour, NY. 4 Some British sealers are believed to have been wrecked there in 1832 or 1833. According to his chart, Captain Peter Kemp, of the 147-ton sealing schooner Magnet, also owned by William Bennett, left Desolation about 25 or 26 November 1833 on a voyage of discovery to the Antarctic coast which now bears his name. 5 On 21 April 1834, Kemp was drowned while taking 320 barrels of oil from Desolation to Capetown so he also may have been a regular visitor. 6 No doubt there were many casual visitors too, especially whalers. For example, Captain Russell of the Arab of Fairhaven called in November 1835 during a whaling cruise. 7 The most notable of these casual visitors was Captain James Ross, rn, who from 12 May to 20 July 1840 extended Cook’s survey to provide the first readily available chart.

First Mate Aboard the Charles Carroll In the latter half of the nineteenth century after the English had exhausted the island’s sealing resources, the Americans established a new industry based upon the blubber of sea elephants. By supplementing this seasonal ‘elephanting’ with off-shore and bay whaling, they established an extensive and highly lucrative industry. New London, Massachussetts, dominated though later a few other New England ports and a few Australians were also involved. The beginnings of the New London sea-elephant trade at Desolation may not be clearly known for the earliest records of ships departing specifically for Desolation begin in 1844 when three New London partnerships despatched a veritable fleet of two ships and five schooners. 8 During the next decade there were on the average three New London ships and four tenders at Desolation each year. Voyages generally lasted from two to five years during which very good cargoes were obtained. One of the original New London vessels was the 404-ton ship Charles Carroll, Captain Thomas Long, which reached home in June 1845 and made a second voyage from August 1845 to May 847. 9 It is not known whether Erasmus Rogers was aboard the Charles Carroll for either of its two relatively short, earlier voyages, but, as first mate, he was an experienced seaman when he commenced his journal

on 21 July 1847 as that ship began her third voyage to Desolation. When Rogers in the Charles Carroll arrived at Desolation on 7 November 1847 the sea elephant industry there was already well developed with three ‘mother’ ships and four tenders operating systematically from various points about the coast. Shortly after their arrival, a fifth tender, Diana, was found ashore where it had been stranded some years before by an English sealing expedition. Rogers soon repaired her as his own command, and remained aboard her, apart for short periods at the ship, until at least April 1848. Rogers also repaired an English shallop found ashore.

Their first elephanting season commenced in December 1847. The ships, the tenders and occasionally the ship’s boats were stationed at various points about the island while gangs of men were sent ashore, often for many weeks at a time, with only barrels and their beached and upturned boats for shelter. Skins and blubber were collected into depots (and buried for storage when necessary) which the tenders visited from time to time to deliver them aboard the ships where the blubber was minced and boiled down. It seems also likely that blubber was minced and boiled ashore at Pot Harbour (Accessable Bay) which seems to have been the sealers’ main focal point on the island. Because Rogers moved about the coast delivering, servicing and collecting shore gangs, his journal reflects much more than had he been merely an AB working ashore on one or two stretches of the bleak coast. He seems to have kept a meticulous record of the skins and blubber taken at each locality, but without a record of the quantities taken by the other tenders, his figures are insufficient for comparisons of the ‘productivity’ of the various areas involved. His record, of course, does reveal a prodigious slaughter of sea elephants; bulls, cows and pups together.

Rogers spent from 6 December 1847 to 19 January 1848, Kerguelen’s brief summer, on the exposed western (windward) coast taking mainly adult bulls. On 29 January, the ships assembled in Pot Harbour before abandoning ‘elephanting’ for off-season whaling for right whales until early March. The Diana under Rogers cruised with the other tenders off the south east coast where at least nine right whales and several calves were taken, five and one calf by the Diana between 8 and 13 February. Thereafter the weather was too bad to permit further offshore pelagic whaling, even by the ships. On 6 March 1848 one of the tenders, the Atlas, ‘started to the windward for elephant’, probably to look for off-season strays, but Rogers spent from March to September ‘bay whaling’ for humpbacks in the sheltered bays along the indented south and south eastern coasts. The weather in June was very bad - one seaman was washed overboard and drowned - and the first whale was not taken until July. At least thirteen

humpbacks were taken, several with calves. These adult female humpbacks were much smaller, probably averaging from 25 to 30 barrels each. From 7 September to 31 January 1849 ‘elephanting’ recommenced with Rogers delivering, servicing and collecting shore gangs, mainly along the south, south east and west coasts. On 1 February 1849 the Charles Carroll departed for home, which was reached on 3 June 1849 after a sixty-three day stay at Georgetown, St Helena, possibly to cure scurvy. Aboard were 3,600 barrels of‘whale oil’.

As noted earlier, Rogers captained the trading schooner E. L. Frost on a trading voyage to the Californian goldfields and back from November 1849 to mid-1850. (The journal entries are brief and disjointed.) Captain Rogers of the Corinthian The industry at Desolation was flourishing and had proved so lucrative that New London owners purchased two new ships and a schooner for this trade in 1851 10 and by December at Desolation there were three ships and six schooners carrying 175 men (almost all of whom were under 25 years old). Rogers was then given command of the largest Desolation veteran, the 505-ton Corinthian which left New London on 19 August 1851, and reached Desolation ninety-six days later. Two cutters left ashore, Industry and Kerguelen, were refitted before ‘elephanting’ commenced in December. However the season was over and in January 1852 the cutters and six tenders were left behind to search about the bays of stragglers, whilst the three ships, Corinthian, Peruvian and Julius Caesar, undertook whaling cruises off-shore for right whales. It is known that the latter ship took 800 barrels and 6,000 lb of whale bone in a 41-day cruise, 11 but the Corinthian probably did not do so well.

Rogers took two right whales on 24 and 26 January and lost a third on 31 January with ‘Dambd hard luck’. At least four others were killed but later lost because the weather was too rough to allow the carcases to be brought alongside and ‘cut in’. During February the weather was so rough only five whales and one calf were saved. A boatsteerer was drowned and foul weather kept the Corinthian off-shore well after her provisions had run low. It was not until 29 February that she finally entered Three Island Harbour, where all six schooners were also sheltering. After an even less successful cruise for two weeks near the south east coast, the Corinthian beat her way into Pot Harbour. All three ships spent the remainder of the winter there for Desolation’s boisterous winds prohibit off-shore pelagic whaling for nine months of the year. The shallower draughted tenders, however, were able to continue

bay whaling, for humpbacks, in the extensive inland harbours and bays along the east coast. Rogers transferred to the Atlas where he took eight humpbacks between April and June but lost at least as many again, mainly through bad weather. Of the other tenders, the Franklin lost several and saved three, while the Maria took at least four in June alone. Though right whale captures are recorded on 17 July (80 barrels), 13 August (100 barrels), and 19 September, the record for the latter part of the season is not clear, partly because from 19 July to 31 December 1852 the journal is kept not by Rogers but by his first mate, John Beaumis. Rogers spent this period in Pot Harbour aboard the Corinthian. However it should be mentioned that just before relinquishing his journal, and presumably his command of the Atlas, Rogers had deserted bay whaling for a week’s cruise in her from 10 to 17 July to check the southern and south-eastern beaches for stray sea elephants. One hundred and twenty were taken there, while, presumably, other schooners and cutters may have made similar unseasonal forays on other beaches around the island.

The only full elephanting season of this voyage was from 13 September to 31 December 1852 during which time Beaumis kept the Atlas busy landing, provisioning and collecting gangs along the southern coasts, especially the south west, though some visits were also made briefly to the east and northern coasts. Again a meticulous record was kept of the catch but without similar data for the same period at other points of the coast, an overall analysis is not possible. Suffice to say that the journal gives ample evidence of a highly successful season for the Atlas made frequent trips to Pot Harbour to discharge blubber for mincing and boiling on the ships, and also, from time to time, some barrels of oil from blubber boiled down by the gangs ashore or on the Atlas itself.

A second off-shore whaling season commenced in the Corinthian on 12 January 1853 and lasted until 7 March. Rogers took at least five right whales and a calf in January and eight in February. But in each month at least three others were lost before they could be brought to the ship and ‘cut in’. Where recorded the average yield per adult whale was 64 barrels. On 4 March, Captain Rogers told Captain Morgan of the Julius Caesar that he had taken fourteen whales that season and remarked, with justified pride, that he required only one more to fill his ship. 12 The Julius Caesar left Desolation for home that day with 2,391 barrels of‘whale oil’ and 10,500 lb of whale-bone. The Corinthian followed on 20 March with a very rich cargo of 3,058 barrels of ‘whale oil’ and 1,000 lb of whale-bone. 13 En route home a week was spent at Mocamedez in Angola. The Corinthian reached New London on 24 June 1853, a full ship after a voyage of less than two years.

Our knowledge of this highly successful voyage is substantially enhanced by the excellent narrative account kept aboard the Julius Caesar by Dr Nathaniel Taylor who spent much time with both Captain Rogers and John Beaumis. 14 He commented that the friendly relations which existed between the rival captains (who often represented rival owners) resulted in an equal division of all beaches which the sea elephants frequented for the main elephanting season in 1852. This may have been one factor in their combined success. His account of daily life there adds warmth and detail entirely lacking in Rogers’ journal, including, for example, that Captain Morgan’s wife was aboard the Julius Caesar, that Captain Brown’s wife and daughter held piano recitals aboard the Peruvian, and that on the Corinthian on 25 December Mrs Williams (of the tiny 119-ton schooner Franklin ) was delivered of a 10 lb son. Rogers mentions none of these ladies and appears to have been a bachelor.

Rogers Returns to Desolation Again A record number of vessels were active at Desolation by the end of 1853 when there were four ships and seven schooners, plus many shallops and longboats, active along the coasts. The ship Corinthian, again under the command of Captain Erasmus D. Rogers, left New London on 15 November 1853. 15 After brief stops at Brava and Tristan D’Acunha for potatoes, and a close inspection of Bouvet Island, Rogers brought the Corinthian into Pot Harbour at Desolation Island on 16 April 1854. Bay whaling commenced promptly with the early capture of a humpback. Rogers had unusually good luck and caught right whales throughout the ‘bay whaling’ season: three in April, at least five in May, and three small whales in June. Their whalebone would be a bonus worth almost as much as their oil. No catches are mentioned in July, which in part is because from 15 to 24 July Rogers took the Atlas around the southern shores where 224 stray ‘winter’ sea elephants were taken. Whaling was resumed until 25 August, apparently without any further success. The main sea elephant season began on 1 September when Rogers set out in the Corinthian to deposit gangs along the north coasts, and to participate in the sealing along the exposed western coasts until early December. He then transferred to the Atlas to collect depots along the north and north west coasts before returning to Pot Harbour to rejoin the Corinthian and the tenders for the New Year.

An extraordinarily lucrative week of whaling ensued in Pot Harbour from 4 to 11 January when no less than twenty-four whales were taken, four by the Corinthian. None were recorded before or after that profitable week. It will be recognised that a seasonal pattern of activities was well established. The main elephanting season was limited from between

September to January whereafter their captors had to make do with offshore whaling for right whales each January and February and some whaling inshore from the schooners between March and September, mainly for humpbacks. The seasonal habits of the sea elephants at Desolation are also clearly evident. A few juvenile males and females were taken in September and October, adult females and their pups in November and December, and adult males in December and January. The New Land Reported to the South and East When the New London bark, Hannah Brewer, arrived at Pot Harbour on 21 January 1855, Captain Smith brought the news, probably obtained via Captain Maury, that in November 1853 Captain James J. Heard of the barque Oriental had discovered a new island some 260 miles south of Desolation. 16

Thus, on 10 February 1855, Rogers wrote ‘At 9 am started from Pott Harbour for offshore and to look for the land reported to the S & E of Desolation.’ After steering south-south-west in bad stormy weather for five days, he wrote on 15 February: ‘At daylight raised land ahead bearing SSW dist. about twenty miles. Made sail and stood in to land with the wind from the W. run in to leeward within a mile and a half. Saw plenty of elephant on 3 different beaches, all within 3 miles on the east side of the island. Found no harbour. To leeward landed with one boat [nb First landing on Heard Island] and sounded off the beach with another. Found 5 fathoms water close in and good beaches to work. Hard bottom. I should think it was 40 miles from E to W and looks like two islands or a deep bay is on the N side, and looks as though there was harbours in the bay. There is a large rock to the NE of the land about 10 miles.’ ‘lt blows so heavy I could not work up to find a harbour as I would like to. Should think the three beaches had 2,500 barrels of oil on them, mostly cows.’

‘The lat. 53.00 S and long. 73.29 E point.’ [The correct figures are 53.06 S and 73.30 E] Rogers had ‘discovered’ a lizard shape island some 25 miles by 10 miles, with a high mountain range from NW to SE. Almost all the island is covered in permanent ice which, between bold, black-cliffed headlands, flows in deeply crevassed glaciers to the sea where they terminate in high ice cliffs. Bleak, stark and inhospitable, the landscape is more desolate than Desolation, under 300 miles to the north where the glaciers have retreated into the interior. On Heard, the 9,000-foot volcano, Big Ben, provides a vast catchment whose glaciers cover everything except a few parts of the north-east coast, and even these are frequently covered by winter snow. Freezing winds blow constantly, snow falls even in summer, and the climate is truly execrable.

Unlike Desolation where there is a meagre stunted vegetation, on Heard there is even less, with the greater part of the land entirely devoid of plant life. As an island, Rogers’ 130 square mile discovery was not much. But as a treasure trove, its wealth was staggering. He would know that the value of the sea elephants he saw (on three of the four main beaches) was worth, even if conservatively estimated with a very low contemporary price of only 70 cents per gallon, 17 not less than $u557,000. Clearly Heard Island would provide the basis for a new industry for many years. It soon became the richest sea elephant breeding ground known to the industry. The Riddle of the Multiple Discovery of Heard Island Before following the development of the new industry on Heard Island, however, some comment must be made as to how Heard, a high island often visible over long distances, had remained so long undiscovered by the sealers, whalers and sea elephant hunters. The volume of visitors at Desolation, both before and after iB6O, has been described at some length in order to show the frequency with which vessels cruised only a few hundred miles to the north of Heard. To those must be added the commercial and other traffic from Europe and America, to the South Pacific, Australia, New Zealand and even China.

If the curt note ‘saw land’ which appears on the chart of Captain Peter Kemp of the English brig Magnet on 27 November 1833 some two or three days after leaving Desolation, was actually the very first discovery of ‘Heard’ Island, it may be passed over as his premature death prevented the wide dissemination of news of his discovery. 18 The first rediscovery was in November 1853 by a trading barque, Oriental, under Captain J. J. Heard, whilst en route from Boston to Melbourne. The island which bears Heard’s name was then the subject of a bewildering number of rediscoveries, mainly by traders, only the first few of which need be mentioned here: In January 1854 Captain McDonald of the British ship Samarang rediscovered Heard Island and the small western group which bears his name. A Captain Young reported them at about the same time, but McDonald was the first to make them generally known. 19 In December 1854 the English merchant ships Earl of Eglington (Captain James S. Hutton), Herald of the Morning (Captain John Attwaye) and Lincluden Castle (Captain Rees) each independently rediscovered and renamed Heard and McDonald Islands. 20 As noted, Rogers’ ‘rediscovery’ followed on 15 February 1855. As late as 1858 Captain J. Meyer of the German ship La Rochette renamed them ‘Koenig Max Inseln’. 21 The independent arrival of eight ships in four years where none had been before seems inexplicable. What factor which had previously

discouraged vessels from entering the dangerous iceberg-carrying waters about Heard Island no longer applied after the early 1850 s? The only speculation which seems at all likely is that suddenly the world’s captains became more aware of, and more interested in, the substantial economies which can be gained by following great circle routes between the North Atlantic and Australia, some of which pass between Desolation and Heard Island. What factors could have prompted the abandonment of the safer, established routes passing closer to the Cape? What urgency could justify the increased risks? Could it be that the multiple discoveries of Heard are in some way related to the flood of merchantmen and transports which rushed to Australia upon the announcement of the discovery of gold there in 1851? As yet this is mere speculation, the verification of which must await the attention of someone better acquainted with the merchant marine fleet of the 1850 s which serviced the Australian goldfields. Captain Rogers Establishes the Heard Island Industry Captain Rogers returned to Desolation to advise his tenders of the bonanza he had found. After taking aboard casks previously landed there, the Corinthian left Pot Harbour on 26 February 1855 leading a small flotilla of three tenders: the Atlas, Mechanic and Marcia. On 1 March, Rogers wrote: ‘Saw the land to the westward about ten miles. Found it to be an island not seen before for 2 to four miles long.’ [This must have been McDonald Island.] ‘Raised the Atlas. Saw the large island to leeward and run down to it. I went on board the Atlas and sounded in two bites [bays] and found hard bottom. Could lay in one of them with the wind from any way but the eastward with heavy anchors, with anchors heavy enough but I should think that it blowed very heavy in the place. Run down to leeward and looked behind another bluff land but found no harbour and went to the ship. [Corinthian] At 4 pm the schooner Atlas went in to anchor. Saw the Mechanic to wind about five miles.’

On 3 March the Corinthian and the schooners anchored in ‘the socalled Atlas Harbour’ and all available hands spent from 3to 11 March ashore, after which ‘over 14 rafts of blubber’ were rafted aboard the ship. (A source with access to contemporary sealers states that four or five hundred barrels were procured on the first day, a staggering haul which would be worth almost 10,000 22 Their success was all the more remarkable since this was only the very end of the normal elephanting season for Heard where all the bulls and most of the cows depart in late February leaving only a few stray cows and juveniles in March and April. Perhaps Rogers recognised that the season at Heard is different from that at Desolation, some 260 miles to the north, for after only eight days the Corinthian and her fleet left Heard for the relative shelter of Desolation.

Whaling was resumed from Pot Harbour where the Corinthian remained until January 1856. After the heady success at Heard, the return for whaling was meagre: Rogers who was apparently in charge of the Mechanic, recorded taking only a humpback on 23 April and a right whale on 4 June. Thereafter the four tenders took 11 whales in June, five in July and two in August, probably mainly humpbacks. During the last week in July, the customary brief elephanting cruise was made to check the southern beaches for winter stragglers. The Marcia was absent between 20 March and 30 May, having been despatched to Capetown with Rogers’ report to his owners, Perkins and Smith, on the new island and his recommendations that they urgently despatch at least one additional ship for this promising new field. The response was immediate. Perkins and Smith bought the 420-ton ship Laurens which was despatched under Captain Franklin Smith, Junior, on 17 September 1855. 23 Clearly, however, the discovery was an ill-kept secret for two other businessmen followed suit with newly purchased ships which set forth in October. 24 Meanwhile the elephanting season was resumed on Desolation in early September with the Mechanic operating along the north and especially the north-west coasts throughout the normal season until the New Year.

On 20 January 1856, Rogers, once again on the Corinthian, wrote ‘Good weather, got all ready for Heard’s Island’ which is his first mention of that name. On 23 January ‘came to anchor in Corinthian Bay [Heard Island] with the Mechanic, Marcia and Laurens’. A busy and lucrative period ensued. On 1 February Rogers wrote ‘went to the weather bay and took off some blubber. Come on to blow from the eastward and had to stay onshore all night with 30 men and stayed in Captain Smith’s [new] house. His men and ours counted 74 men.’ The Franklin is also mentioned at Heard Island on 7 February, and on 13 February the brig Zoe arrived there too. It took the Corinthian less than a month to complete her cargo for she left Heard for Desolation on 20 February. After making the necessary preparations there for the voyage home she departed in company with two tenders, the Atlas and the Franklin, on 10 March.

Rogers mentions a week spent en route at St Helena, but concludes his journal when the Corinthian reached New London on 9 June 1856. Within the next two weeks, four other vessels arrived home from Desolation and Heard Island. Their cargoes were as follows: Whale oil Bone Length of voyage ship Corinthian 3,208 barrels 21,937 lb 31 months schooner Marcia 218 barrels schooner Atlas 115 barrels schooner Franklin 133 barrels

bark Alert 3,374 barrels 7,400 lb 33 months 7,048 barrels 29,337 lb If the respective owners obtained average prices for 1856, that is, 79! cents per gallon for the whale (and sea elephant) oil, and 58 cents per pound for the right whale baleen or bone, the cargoes unloaded at New London that fortnight valued over susi 84,000 gross, of which Captain Rogers had brought home just over susß9,ooo. Conclusion Captain Rogers made another profitable voyage to Desolation and Heard Islands in the Corinthian from 9 July 1856 to 10 April 1858 26 but was lost at sea on 10 August 1858. 27 [Meanwhile a veritable ‘gold rush’ had developed on ‘his’ island.]

Captain Smith of the Laurens, who with Rogers is reputed to have fully explored and mapped Heard Island, brought home in May 1857 a huge cargo of 4,324 barrels valued at over susi3o,ooo. 28 In 1857 Captain Henry Rogers, with a gang of 25 men, was the first to remain on Heard Island throughout the winter. 29 Such vast profits could not be kept secret, and other American ports soon entered the trade (Fairhaven in 1857; Mystic, Warren (Rhode Island) and Nantucket in 1858). 30 Australia’s first, the Elizabeth Jane of Hobart, arrived in 1859. 31 The Desolation and Heard sea elephant industries rapidly achieved a high degree of sophistication. Though by 1874 their decline was evident, the various scientific and narrative reports by the members of the Challenger expedition of their visits to Desolation and Heard that year, provide excellent descriptions of the activities there. On Heard alone in 1874, there were forty men, some of whom had returned year after year to the slaughter, to the isolation, to the perpetually howling winds and to the permanent snow from which their miserable huts sunk in the black lava ground for warmth and protection. By then the slaughter had been tremendous. One scientist noted that the rookeries of former times, and indeed the tracks of the sealers, could be readily traced for sea elephant bones lay on some beaches in curved piles so thick as to appear like the lines of flotsam and jetsam left by high tides. 32

The island could not support such slaughter indefinitely: the last American ship to depart solely for elephanting at Desolation and Heard left New London in 1887. Thereafter the islands were visited only at very long intervals by a few scientific expeditions. The first official occupation of Kerguelen (Desolation) was in 1949 when the French asserted their claims to sovereignty by establishing several permanent scientific research stations. Last year, these included over eighty men. Similarly, after the sovereignty of Heard had been transferred from Great Britain, in 1947 the Australian Government estab-

lished a permanent research station for meteorological, hydrological and biological studies. In 1951 there were 15 men on Heard and about 4,000 unmolested sea elephants. 33 Acknowledgement Both authors wish to thank Mrs G. Hughes of the Library’s Reference staff for her special assistance in obtaining some of the more obscure references to Heard and Kerguelen Islands.

NOTES FOOTNOTES AND BIBLIOGRAPHY I Stackpole, E. A., The Sea Hunters . J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, 1953, pp 199-202. 2 Roberts, 8., ‘Chronological list of Antarctic Expeditions’ in Polar Record, Vol 9, Nos 59 and 60, May-September 1958, pp 97-134 and 191-239. Also Jurgensen, J., Efterretning om Englaen Dernes og Nordamerikanernes, Copenhagen, 1807, pp 25-6. 3 Clark, W. D. (ed), Narrative of the wreck of the Favorite on the Island of Desolation: Detailing the Adventures, Suffering and Privations of John Nunn . . . W. E. Painter, London, 1850. 4 Roberts, 8., ibid. s Price, A. G., The Winning of Australian Antarctica, Angus and Robertson, 1962, pp 4-5. 6 South African Commercial Advertiser, 17 May 1834. (Pers. comm. Dr John Cumpston, 19 March 1970.)

7 Logbook in Old Dartmouth Historical Society Whaling Museum, New Bedford. 8-13 Starbuck, A., History of the American Whale Fishery from its Earliest Inception to the Year 1876, Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1878. 13-14 Taylor, N. W., Life on a Whaler, or Antarctic Adventures on the Island of Desolation, New London County Historical Society, New London, Conn., 1929 (with introduction by Howard Palmer). 15 Starbuck, A., ibid. 16 Roberts, 8., ibid. 17 Starbuck, A., ibid. 18-21 Roberts, 8., ibid. 22 Thomson, C. W., and Murray, J., Report of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of hms Challenger During the Years 1873-76, Narrative, Vol I, First Part, Chapter X, p 376, Longmans, 1885. 23-25 Starbuck, A., ibid. 26 Rogers’ log of his 1856-58 voyage is now in the Nicholson Collection, Providence Public Library, Providence, Rhode Island. 27 Roberts, 8., ibid. 28 - 29 Pa lm er, H., in Taylor, N. W., ibid, pp iv-v. 30-31 Roberts, 8., ibid. 32 Thomson, C. W., and Murray, J., ibid, p 373. (Many other reports of the Challenger expedition were also consulted.) 33 Scholes, A., Fourteen Men, F. W. Cheshire, Melbourne, 1949.