REVIEW - ARCTIC WHALING JOURNALS

Scoresby, William the Younger, The Arctic Whaling Journals. Volume III: Voyages of 1817, 1818, and 1820. C. Ian Jackson, editor, Fred M. Walker, appendix. Hakluyt Society. 212 pages plus appendix, works cited, and index. £50.

This is the third volume of the journals of William Scoresby, who began sailing when he was ten and stowed away on his father's whaling ship. He grew into a captain with his own ship and some personal difficulties with his father at times.

The journals were turned by him into the two volume Account of the Arctic Regions with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery published in 1820 and an instant success. Scoresby was not the usual whaler; he had a scientific bent and tried various experiments with specific gravity, marine biology and sea colour, electricity, and ocean currents among other observations. He also became more religious, not surprising in the atmosphere of the Arctic oceans, where ice could arrive at any time on an unknown ocean current to smash into the ship, crew members changed each time and sometimes produced mutineers, and sudden storms come along to shred the sails, not forgetting whales that would fight back when harpooned from the small boats.

If you are fascinated with whaling in the Atlantic at that time, or simply enjoy reading captains' journals, or want to know the origin of his famous book, you will find this authentic and interesting.

However, there is one large problem. The Hakluyt Society house style should be hanged from its footnotes. There are too many footnotes, even for this inveterate reader of the same, but the biggest trouble is with two irritating habits. One is the practice of adding the rest of a word in italics, even if the abbreviation is easily followed. For instance, "begin to ply to windwd" has "windward"; on the same page "thick snow shoers" is changed to "showers". When Scoresby deletes a phrase or sentence, the editor helpfully adds it as [along with the Mars deleted] and, [& deleted] ; all of these examples are from just one page. It doesn't get better. These distractions make it impossible to simply read the journals themselves; rather like hitting a stoplight every other paragraph, and coming to a dead stop before resuming.

There are also the definitions of words. Nautical terms are fine in case the reader knows nothing about them, but very annoying is the lack of definition of some, such as Razorbacks which they saw in the ocean occasionally. What in the world are they? I rather doubt large pigs were rolling in the waves. And what on earth is a Specksioneer, as in the shifts, or watches, assigned to the crew; we have the Mate's Watch, Specksioneer's Watch, and the Captain's Watch listed. Google informs us the specksioneer is the chief harpooner on a whaling ship; why aren't we told that amongst all the unnecessary verbiage weeds infesting the book?

It is a great relief to come to the appendix which explains with words and drawings the building of a wooden whaling ship. Excellent, even if I know nothing about ship construction.

So, next time tell the Hakluyt's style setters not to be so helpful. It makes for very tough going for the reader.

D. L.