Killed ♀ Ivory Gull

’The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’ This is from the diary of Henry Wemyss Feilden - born 190 years ago today - who served as naturalist on Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in 1875.

Feilden was born at Newbridge Barracks in Kildare on 6 October 1838 the second son of Sir William Henry Feilden, 2nd Baronet of Feniscowles. He was educated at Cheltenham College before joining, aged 19, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Regiment of Scotland (The Black Watch). He fought in the suppression of the Indian Mutiny 1857-1858 and at the Taku Forts in China in 1860. In 1862, he volunteered for the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War, serving as assistant adjutant-general with the remnant of the Army of Tennessee under General Joseph E. Johnston. In 1864, he married Julia, daughter of a South Carolina judge. He returned to the British Army, where he made captain in the Royal Artillery, in 1874. 

The following year, Feilden was selected to serve as naturalist to Sir George Nare’s Polar Expedition in H.M.S. Alert. After the expedition, he returned to active service, participating in the South African campaign between 1880 and 1881. He visited Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya as a naturalist on private expeditions between 1894 and 1897, publishing short notes on his findings. During the Boer War, he returned to South Africa as Paymaster of the Imperial Yeomanry, retiring from the army as a colonel. He was decorated for his service in India, China and South Africa, and was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath in 1900. 

From 1880, Feilden had lived in Wells-next-the-Sea, Norfolk, becoming, for a while, president of the Norfolk and Norwich Naturalists’ Society, but he moved to a property he inherited in Burwash, Sussex, in 1902. He died in 1921, a year after his wife had passed away. A little further information is available from Wikipedia, British Birds and Archives Hub.

Although not known as a diarist, Feilden did keep a detailed log during his polar expedition. This was only edited and annotated recently, by Trevor Levere, and published as The Arctic Journal of Captain Henry Wemyss Feilden, R. A., The Naturalist in H. M. S. Alert, 1875-1876 (Hakluyt Society, 2019). Many pages from the book can be sampled at Googlebooks. In his introduction, Levere explains the background to the expedition and the journal:

‘The disappearance of Sir John Franklin’s Arctic expedition of 1846-1847 and the failure of numerous attempts to find the ships and men made the British Admiralty reluctant to expend any more resources on Arctic exploration, despite appeals from the Royal Geographical Society and other scientific organizations. However, in 1874 the leader of the Conservative Party, Benjamin Disraeli (1804-81), became Prime Minister and he decided, partly for political reasons, that a new expedition should be sent to explore towards the North Pole, carrying out scientific work en route. A British Arctic Expedition, commanded by George Strong Nares (1831-1915), was swiftly called into being, with detailed scientific as well as naval instructions. Henry Wemyss Feilden (1838-1921) was the naturalist in Nares’s ship, H.M.S. Alert, which wintered at the north-east corner of Ellesmere Island. This volume is an annotated version of the journal which Feilden kept during that expedition, including the preparations and the immediate aftermath, from 1 February 1875 until 7 January 1877. The original manuscript is in the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London and it has never been published before, although Nares as leader produced a two-volume account of the expedition, to which Feilden contributed appendices on ethnology, mammalia, and ornithology. Feilden’s journal has the immediacy of an account written day by day, illustrated by sketches, all of which have been reproduced.’

Here are several extracts from the edited diaries.

10 August I876
‘Dobbin Bay. The young ice is forming rapidly and consolidating the loose floe-pieces. Captain Nares after ascending a hill and looking round thought that we could reach some loose looking stuff outside of Cape Hawks. Under steam by 2 p.m. both boilers, Discovery and ourselves boring through the pack. We could make but little way. It is extraordinary the rapidity with which the young ice even when only an inch or two thick joins the floes together. We moored again between 4 and 5 p.m. after getting about three-quarters of the way across Dobbin Bay.

Thermo sunk to +18° it feels quite cold again. Markham landed on Prince Imperial Island, and brought from it a skull of the walrus, it had been broken by human agency.

Ginger the cat invaded my sanctum this evening tore off the head of a Ptarmigan I killed yesterday and which I took great pains to carry clean onboard and also destroyed two snow-buntings.’

23 August 1876
‘The wind blew so strong directly in our teeth this morning that with 98 revolutions we could hardly hold our own. We took shelter in a small bay which I take to be Hayes’ Gould Bay. If I am right then our next Cape South is Leidy and then Cape Louis Napoleon. A tremendous big floe is jammed against the shore and extends out into the channel, at 9 a.m. we moored to this floe waiting for something to turn up.

A fine falcon Falco graenlandicus flew round the ship, but did not come within range. Parr shot a floe-rat P. hispida a female weight 65 lbs. Tip of hind flipper to snout 4’. 3 1/2”. Girth behind axillae 2’.4”. Front of fore-flipper to nose 1’.0” girth round umbilicus 2’’.4 1/2” occiput to nose 7 ins. Length between fore and hind flipper 2’. 2 1/4” Length of fore-flipper 5 1/2” Length hind flipper 8 in. Dovekies are numerous in the pools around us, counted 27 in one party. The big floe to which we were moored drifted N. so we ran for shelter into the little bay we left this morning.

Landed with Nares & Hart, found many fossils - saw a Walrus. Parr saw a little auk.’

25 August 1876
‘At 3 a.m. the Captain called me and asked me to accompany him on shore and look at two old Eskimo camps that he had seen on the beach, from the crowsnest.

He and I and Malley landed. The Eskimo traces consisted of two rings of stones for summer tents, placed on a shingle beach raised 15 feet above high-water mark. The sea must have encroached at this particular point for half of one of the circles had been undermined and washed away.

Saw a magnificent Falco candicans sitting on the slope of Cape Leidy. Crawled up to him and let rip two barrels at him 70 yards off. No result. Walking towards the south, Malley picked up a broken Eskimo harpoon. Found a foxes skull, and a few fossils. (Trilobite.).

Back to the ship by 6 a.m. got under weigh and worked through the pack some five miles, moored to floe two miles north of Cape Napoleon. Several broods of Eiders were passed, the old birds became much excited. Landed in the evening with Nares, and walked along the beach round Cape Napoleon, until we saw well into Raised Beach Bay, this was rimmed with heavy ice, and so was Dobbin Bay beyond. It appears to me as if a deal of heavy ice from the N. had drifted down here and stuck

The ice-foot along this coast is beautifully wide and smooth. At this late period of the summer it is much cut up by water channels but in the spring in must be fine travelling.

Saw a circle of stones marking Eskimo encampment a mile and a half N. of Cape Napoleon.’

28 August 1876
‘Dobbin Bay. A cheerless looking day. The snow has covered the hills with their winter garb. Several Ivory Gulls are cruising round the ship just out of shot, and picking up their livelyhood [sic] from the small pools still left open. The ice we are amongst is chiefly this years, but fragments of older floes are intermixed and some heavy pieces of berg. A large one is lying at the head of the bay inside of Prince Imperial Island. I suppose there must be a discharging glacier somewhere at the head of the bay. Depth 47 fathoms mud. Killed ♀ Ivory Gull.’

7 September 1876
‘Franklin Pierce Bay. Up steam at 9.30 a.m. and the ice slackening we moved into a large pool of water extending some distance to the eastern side of Walrus Island. Moored to a berg and landed on the island. Snow about 3 inches in depth, effectually concealed the Eskimo traces which we know to be so numerous on the Island.

Here and there a cache or the walls of an unroofed igloo were to be seen. I took a pick with me but the soil was too hard frozen to make any impression. Numerous skulls of Walrus showed above the snow, these crania are interesting because they have all been broken in the same manner, the skull broken through across the eye-holes and the front part split in order to extract the tusks. I also found the skull of a large seal P. barbata.

Several broods of eider ducks in a pool were still unable to fly. Giffard bagged 8, Malley was carrying them when the ice breaking, Malley let go the ducks, Giffard only managed to save one. I saw a pair of Ravens, and 2 Ptarmigan. A Phoca hispida was shot in the afternoon.

It was a strange sensation standing alone on the point of Cape Isabella, to the north lay the channel to the unreached Pole, a route ever to be impressed on our minds by the recollection of our dangers and escapes. The ships were drifting with the tide along with heavy masses of ice to the northward, and to the south an open sea with dark lowering clouds hanging over it. the boom of the waves breaking against the granite shore, brought back a flood of recollections from the outer world that have not crossed my mind for 18 months. So interested have I been in my work that up till now, I have never let the thought of home enter my mind, but the southern wind and open sea brought back a strange longing for home, which our letters did not dispel.’