Yorkshire Almanac Short of fresh provisions amid Arctic ice, the surgeon of the Diana of Hull decides to blame (Yorkshire) tea for symptoms of scurvy among the crew

10 January 1867: Short of fresh provisions amid Arctic ice, the surgeon of the Diana of Hull decides to blame (Yorkshire) tea for symptoms of scurvy among the crew

Watercolour by Thomas Godart of the leg of a patient with scurvy (Godart 1887).

Charles Edward Smith. 1922. From the Deep of the Sea. Ed. Charles Edward Smith Harris. London: A. and C. Black. Get it:

Unedited excerpt

If an excerpt is used in the book, it will be shorter, edited and, where applicable, translated.

Some more of our men are complaining of their gums. Luckily for my purpose, most of the men – and more especially Fred Lockham – have been smoking tea-leaves for want of tobacco. This innocent leaf provides an excellent “scapegoat,” getting the blame for causing sore mouths, and thus diverting the men’s minds from the real nature of their complaint. Anything to keep from the crew the awful fact that scurvy is on board! ‘Tis a disease all sailors have an instinctive dread and horror of. They know how hopeless and how fatal it is, and the intimation of its presence amongst us would sound in their ears like the knell of doom.

The carpenter drew my attention today to his legs. I found them thickly covered with the spots so characteristic of incipient scurvy. Upon looking at my own legs I find myself similarly affected. So is Bill Reynolds, and, indeed, most of the officers and probably most of the men. I do not want to excite alarm by appearing to attach importance to these little red spots, though I know full well their fatal meaning. I endeavour to laugh and chaff and cheer up the men, and appear cheerful and, like Mark Tapley in Martin Chuzzlewit, jolly under trying circumstances. At the same time, my mind is well-nigh depressed to the uttermost when I reflect upon the probable fate of our poor scurvy-stricken fellows. And I am the doctor of the ship, the one to whom they will look for life and health, but will look, alas! in vain. God help me! What can I do but trust in His mercy and pity and power to save?

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To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

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19 February 1866: The Diana, Hull’s first steam-assisted whaler and its last of any nature, leaves on its fateful voyage to the Arctic

30 March 1866: On Good Friday, lost northwest of Jan Mayen in the Arctic Ocean and battered by old sea ice in a terrible gale, the crew of the whaler Diana of Hull stoically awaits death

5 June 1866: Crew members of the whaler Diana (Hull) climb an Arctic hillside and leave a memento of home

24 June 1866: Captain Gravill of the Diana of Hull celebrates his crew’s failure to catch a whale on the Sabbath

30 June 1866: The crew of the Diana of Hull kill and process two right whales – a small fortune – in Melville Bay, off northwestern Greenland

25 December 1866: Starving amidst Arctic ice, and with Captain Gravill on his deathbed, the crew of the Diana of Hull celebrate a “horrible mockery of the spirit of an English Christmas”

26 April 1867: In a requiem to Hull’s whaling industry, the Diana sails into port at the end of its fateful Arctic voyage

7 August 1611: Jonas Poole’s London whaler sinks in Forlandsundet (Spitsbergen), and the survivors make for the Hopewell of Hull

3 July 1837: The Swan, a Hull whaler, returns from the dead (the ice of the Davis Strait) bearing three whales

30 July 1661: John Ray encounters the effigy of a tragic Inuit in his canoe at Hull Trinity House

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In 1613 Andrew Barker, an Elder Brother of Hull’s Trinity House & the captain of the Heartsease, took aboard an Inuit in a kayak off Greenland. The Inuit died 3 days later, but the 12-ft skin-covered kayak & its contents were brought home to Hull & are displayed in Trinity House. pic.twitter.com/7HsFqlTpj5— Former Lord Mayor of Kingston Upon Hull (@LordHull) July 16, 2020

Two hundred years later:

Capt. Henry Watson, of the ship True-love, having brought a native of Davis’s Straits to Hull, he has exhibited his canoe, in the Old Dock, where he displayed his wonderful art in the management of that boat, so peculiar to his country, and his dexterity with the harpoon and lance (Phillips 1816).

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