Articles on how Shackleton's Endurance expedition navigated in Antarctica, the shipboard diaries of nineteenth-century New Zealand immigrants, and how the colourful life of an one of Australasia's preeminent taxonomists was reflected in the names he gave the species he described.
Records of the Canterbury Museum Volume 33 2019
Records of the Canterbury Museum Volume 33 2019
Thu, 31 Oct 2019
Articles
Navigation on Shackleton’s voyage to Antarctica
Lars Bergman and Robin G Stuart
ABSTRACT: On 19 January 1915, the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition, under the leadership of Sir Ernest Shackleton, became trapped in their vessel Endurance in the ice pack of the Weddell Sea. The subsequent ordeal and efforts that lead to the successful rescue of all expedition members are the stuff of legend and have been extensively discussed elsewhere. Prior to that time, however, the voyage had proceeded relatively uneventfully and was dutifully recorded in Captain Frank Worsley’s log and work book. This provides a window into the navigational methods used in the day-today running of the ship by a master mariner under normal circumstances in the early twentieth century. The conclusions that can be gleaned from a careful inspection of the log book over this period are described here.
The Systematist and the Starlet: The mystery of the honourees in Tom Iredale’s scientific names
R Paul Scofield
ABSTRACT: Tom Iredale was one of the preeminent Australasian taxonomists of the twentieth century. He described more than 2,400 taxa; primarily molluscs but during his collaborations with Gregory Mathews also a large number of birds. It has long been frustrating for nomenclaturalists and those interested in the history of taxonomy that Iredale rarely gave the etymology for his nomenclatural acts. Using recent innovations in genealogy and family history we are now able to understand historical figures in more detail than they probably ever suspected we might. Examination of Iredale’s personal life using these resources allows us to determine that Iredale’s complex and rather surprising personal life was the source of many of his honorifics.
The sea was going mountains high: Shipboard accounts at Canterbury Museum
Lyndon Fraser, Joanna Szczepanski and Emily Rosevear
ABSTRACT: This paper presents the initial findings from a collaborative and cross-institutional history project between researchers at the University of Canterbury and Canterbury Museum. We aimed to establish the number and provenance of the extant shipboard narratives currently held by the Museum for the period 1842 to 1914. One of the major findings of our work has been the fact that the Museum holds more than 200 personal narratives, some of which have associated artefacts or images. This makes the collection one of the largest of its type in New Zealand and certainly very significant in the wider context of Australasian migration history.
Our discussion is in three main parts. In the first, we report on the provenance and broad parameters of the collection. We focus here on the types of shipboard accounts, explore the backgrounds of the writers and reveal and explain the patterns of acquisition. The second section links our narratives to the available historiography. Here we highlight some of the major themes that emerge in this literature and examine how historians have used this kind of primary source material in their work. In the final section, we give one example of an area of shipboard history that has been little studied by historians and which emerges from the collection. We offer a close reading of four accounts kept by married men to cast further light on the gendered dimensions of everyday life at sea with a particular focus on intimacy and the performance of masculinity.
Records of the Canterbury Museum Volume 33 2019
The full volume of Records of the Canterbury Museum 33.