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| Captain Edward Belcher (National Maritime Museum) |
Invigilating practical examinations was a bore. School pupils came to the University of Hong Kong for their practical biology ‘A’ levels in the 1960s. Once the ID of each pupil had been checked (including fingerprints) to prevent personation, there was little to do but to wander round, stare again at the museum specimens in their cases, be thankful that you had an easy dissection in your own A-level practical and then look out of the window at the bustle of Hong Kong and its harbour below. The Northcote Science Building of the University of Hong Kong, which survived the Japanese Occupation and looting but not road-widening in the 1980s, looked over a mass of housing on the downward slope towards Kennedy Town. The housing blocks to the left (also now demolished) were called Belcher Gardens. That whole area once contained Belcher’s Fort and Belcher’s Battery and commanded a view over the western half of the harbour. Land reclamation schemes have obliterated the original coastline but the bay beneath the two batteries was called Belcher’s Bay, while the narrow passage between Hong Kong Island and Green Island was, and still is, Sulphur Channel named after Belcher’s ship, H.M.S. Sulphur.
By an accident of history, Belcher had become involved in the First Opium War and the occupation of Hong Kong in January 1841.
Belcher, who became Admiral Sir Edward Belcher KCB (1799-1877), was in many ways admirable but in others he was a Grade A Shit. He became an embarrassment to the Royal Navy but, as I discovered long after staring out of the window, he was a major player in the collection of zoological specimens for London Zoo and its then museum.
Edward Belcher was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His family returned to England and he joined the Navy. He studied surveying and natural history. He was, therefore, ideally placed to join the famous Admiralty surveys. As Assistant Surveyor on H.M.S. Blossom he sailed to the Bering Strait. His first command was Aetna in 1830 for a survey of the West African coast. That’s when the trouble started. On the ship’s return, his officers complained about his treatment of the crew. Charge followed countercharge but Belcher was acquitted of abuse and again took command during a twenty-month voyage. The crew laid further charges of abuse and this time the Admiralty took action. He was posted to H.M.S. Lightning to survey the Irish Sea. That was disgrace number one.
Well, not quite number one, since his wife whom he had married in 1830 announced in 1833 she would not live with him again on the grounds that he had twice infected her with venereal disease. A protracted legal struggle for formal separation followed which Belcher apparently prolonged out of spite. Despite her wish to be rid of him, his wife was content, as one biographer has noted, to call herself Lady Belcher after Belcher was knighted a decade later.
But Belcher had a powerful backer—Francis Beaufort FRS, Hydrographer of the Navy and inventor of the eponymous wind-speed scale. Reading between the lines it seems that Beaufort was impressed by Belcher’s professional abilities. Beaufort persuaded the Admiralty to give Belcher the command of the survey ship, Sulphur. In 1836 he set sail to Panama to take over command of Sulphur after the captain was invalided home. He was to survey the west coasts of North and South America. In 1838, he had one officer arrested plus the ship’s surgeon; they had complained on behalf of the crew about the lack of provisions. A court of inquiry set up by the Admiral stationed in Lima, Peru, exonerated Belcher and had the arrested officer† sent home. The surgeon apologised for his conduct and was kept on. The Times of 22 November 1838 reported, ’The evidence of the parties proved that the captain had been kind and humane in the exercise of his duty. The court honourably acquitted him, and the commander-in-chief issued his public order to the squadron, to be read on board each ship, fully exonerating him. These facts are stated in a letter from Captain Belcher himself, which we have seen.’ Accusations of hard treatment of his crew—and officers—were, to put it kindly, becoming something of a habit.
Some account of Belcher’s less endearing behaviour to members of his crew during the exploration off the coast of California are outlined by Richard Beidleman in his book, California’s Frontier Naturalists.
Belcher was actually casting a Nelsonian eye to his orders from the Admiralty: ‘large collections of natural history cannot be expected, nor any connected account of the structure or geological arrangement of the great continent which you are to coast; nor indeed would minute enquiries on these subjects be at all consistent with the true objects of the survey’. His own interests though were firmly on ‘minute enquiries’ in natural history, especially in mollusc shells, and very large collections were amassed during the voyage. As the Summary of the first volume on the zoological collections states:
The arrival of Commander Belcher, by the isthmus of Panama, to take the command, gave a new impulse to affairs, particularly as he was much attached to certain departments of Natural History. His cabin was henceforth applied as a museum, and the dredge now began to be frequently in use.
Conchology, to reiterate was Belcher’s great interest. The volume on those species collected during the voyage begins:
The voyage of H. M. S. Sulphur proved eminently prolific in shells, and a very considerable acquisition has been made to science. The very careful search which was unceasingly made on all the shores visited throughout the voyage, and the constant use of the dredge and trawl, whenever circumstances permitted, have contributed to this; but, above all, the close examination of the proceeds of the dredge, by siftings and diligent washings, brought into notice a great number of small but very interesting species, the great majority of which was previously unknown.
On Sulphur Belcher had collecting assistance: Assistant Surgeon Richard Brinsley Hinds (1811-1846) as well as a civilian botanical collector from Kew. Hinds collected the first botanical specimens from Hong Kong. There was rivalry and resentment, with the botanical collections going to different recipients. Barclay, the Kew collector, obviously sent his specimens there; Hinds sent his to George Bentham’s private herbarium. Hinds was invalided home from the China Coast in April 1941. However, he was kept on by the navy to work on the natural history collections and the publications (they are his words from the zoology volumes above) arising from Belcher’s voyage on Sulphur. For his work Hinds was highly praised by the Admiralty. Their Lordships contributed £500 towards his expenses in editing the publications and promoted him Surgeon. He was proposed by the head of the medical services for the Navy for election to Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons. But he was ill (‘phthisis’, usually meaning in today’s terminology, tuberculosis). He was placed on the unfit list and travelled to Western Australia. Hinds died there in 1847.
After the survey of the Americas, Belcher took Sulphur across the Pacific. While at Singapore he received orders to proceed to the China coast to take part in the First Opium War. During the attack up the Pearl River by naval ships and the secretly-built East India Company’s steamship, Nemesis, Belcher was in charge of the ships and he used the six guns of Nemesis, the first steamship to be used in action by Britain and of very shallow draught, to devastating effect.
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| Nemesis and boats of Sulphur, Calliope, Larne and Starling destroying the Chinese war junks on 7 January 1841 (from Allom & Wright, The Chinese Empire Illustrated, 1858 |
As a result of these actions, Hong Kong was ceded by China. Belcher landed on Hong Kong Island on 25 January 1841. The formal possession of Hong Kong took place the next day. Belcher in Sulphur then surveyed the new possession and its surrounding waters and islands. However, fighting continued and after further actions Sulphur was only released to return to Singapore in late November.
Belcher won high praise from his Commander-in-Chief, Commodore (later Rear-Admiral) Sir James John Gordon Bremer (1786-1850), who described him as ‘that able and intelligent officer’ in a despatch published in The Times on 11 October 1841. Others on the scene were less impressed and there were disputatious exchanges in print.
For his actions, Belcher was promoted Captain and appointed Companion of the Bath. Further survey work and collection of specimens followed on the voyage back to Britain. He arrived home in July 1842 after six years away and was knighted in January 1843. He was given command, as Captain Sir Edward Belcher, of another vessel, H.M.S. Samarang, to survey the South China Sea and the East Indies. He returned after nearly four years, in December 1846.
No naval job followed until 1852 when he was given command of five ships to search for the ships and men of the Franklin expedition to the Canadian arctic who had not been seen since 1845. The fact that the remains of those famous ships, Erebus and Terror, were not discovered until 2014 and 2016 respectively is an indication that Belcher’s mission was a failure. But it was more than that; it ended in debacle.
The summer ice conditions were not kind but Belcher apparently refused to take the advice of experienced navigators in the Arctic and found himself trapped in the heaviest ice. He had split his ships; his other division was also stuck. Instead of waiting to see if they would eventually be freed, Belcher ordered all the ships to be abandoned. The crews found their way back to Beechey Island where transport ships were waiting. An automatic court-martial for losing the ships followed but Belcher, to everybody’s surprise, was acquitted since his orders had given him complete discretion over his actions. Belcher’s sword though was returned to him 'without observation’ i.e. in silence. By contrast, the other captains who had lost their ships (under Belcher’s orders) were acquitted with honour and warm words of praise.
Belcher’s active naval career was over. To add insult to injury, one of the ships, H.M.S. Resolute, commanded by Henry Kellett* (1806-1875) broke free of the ice and drifted off to sea. An American whaler spotted her and towed her to New London, Connecticut. The U.S. Congress bought the salvaged vessel and returned her to the U.K. As a mark of gratitude timber was taken from the ship when she was being broken up and made into a desk as a gift from Queen Victoria to the President of the U.S.A. The desk is still used in the Oval Office of the White House.
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| Belcher's illustration of the winter quarters dubbed 'Crystal Palace' during the search for the Franklin Expeditiion |
The naval historian Sir John Knox Laughton (1830-1915) wrote of Belcher’s appointment to the expedition in the Dictionary of National Biography:
The appointment was unfortunate, for though an able and experienced surveyor he had neither the temper nor tact for a commanding officer under circumstances of peculiar difficulty. Perhaps no officer of equal ability has ever succeeded in inspiring so much personal dislike, and the customary exercise of his authority did not make Arctic service less trying. Nor did any happy success make amends for much discomfort and annoyance, and his expedition is distinguished from all other Arctic expeditions as the one in which the commanding officer showed an undue haste to abandon his ships when in difficulties, and in which one of the ships so abandoned rescued herself from the ice and was picked up floating freely in the open Atlantic.
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| Belcher in 1861, the year of his promotion to Rear-Admiral Carte-de-visite by Camille Silvy |
The end of Belcher’s active career did not stop his automatic upward progression from Captain to flag officer as those higher in seniority died or retired. It is difficult to conceive that such a system ever operated but operate it did and Belcher became a Rear-Admiral in 1861, Vice-Admiral in 1866 and Admiral in 1872—at the age of 73!
Belcher was a prolific writer and illustrator; a book was written about each voyage. Even on his failed Arctic expedition he collected specimens vigorously and the book contained notes by luminaries such as Richard Owen. He even wrote a novel.
Basil Stuart-Stubbs !1930-2012) summed up Belcher in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography:
During his career, Belcher was one of the most controversial figures in the Royal Navy. As an officer he had many desirable attributes: scientific curiosity, technical competence, inventiveness, physical energy, and sometimes reckless bravery. However, he suffered from an irritable, quarrelsome, and hypercritical nature which made relations with superiors and subordinates alike extremely difficult. Although he was in many ways a capable officer, his record remains blighted by his ignominious failure as commander in chief of the Franklin search expedition, an appointment which has been described as “unfortunate” since Belcher’s temperament did not enable him to function as the situation demanded.
Anybody reading the story now would conclude that Belcher was in the wrong job. The description of his attributes temperament would fit many a university professor of the 20th Century.
In the volume celebrating the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Zoological Society of London, its librarian, Mr R. Fish, and the occasional zoologist, film maker, promoter of table tennis, journalist, communist and Soviet (GRU) spy, Ivor Montagu (1904-1984) wrote of Belcher:
He might almost have had a subsidiary profession as animal collector. From everywhere that Belcher went, specimens were sure to go. Skins to the museum, live animals to the menagerie. Remember the conditions on board in that era, the tiny working space available, the problems of live transport. Yet he was one of the most prolific donors the Society was ever privileged to have. He contributed four papers to PZS [Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London, now Journal of Zoology] and wrote a book about every voyage.
Belcher had a number of species named after him including the sea-snake Hydrophis belcheri, the gull Larus belcheri, the prion Pachyptila belcheri, the Chinese amphioxus Branchiostoma belcheri, the fish Psettodes belcheri, the pipefish Phoxocampus belcheri and the sea star Nepanthia belcheri.
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| Larus belcheri at Arica, Chile Photographed by Alastair Rae (Flickr) |
Belcher’s name lives on in Hong Kong. Belcher Gardens was demolished but a collection of six residential tower blocks was built on the site as The Belchers. Belcher street remains in the newly trendy Kennedy Town along with the nearby Belcher Bay Park.
†The officer who fell foul of Belcher appears not to have suffered from his arrest and dismissal. He became Admiral Sir Richard Collinson (1811-1883). He too was involved as Captain of H.M.S. Plover, along with Kellett, in the survey of Hong Kong (hence Plover Cove) and in naval actions during the First Opium War. He was appointed surveying officer to the China fleet, to the intense annoyance of Belcher who had had him dismissed from Sulphur in Peru. His surveys of the China Coast (1842-1846) form the basis of subsequent Admiralty charts. Like Belcher, he was unsuccessful in a search for Franklin and his ships, a result that did not impress the Admiralty. He resented the lack of appreciation and refused further appointments, nevertheless being promoted to Admiral on the retired list in 1875, three years after, but considerably younger than, Belcher. His brother, Thomas, was a military surveyor in Hong Kong after whom Cape Collinson is named.
*Kellett was one of the captains acquitted with honour and warm words and who had protested at Belcher’s order to abandon his ship in the ice. Kellett had been in command of another survey ship, H.M.S. Starling, which accompanied Sulphur on its long voyage and in the First Opium War (hence Starling Inlet in Hong Kong). He became Vice-Admiral Sir Henry Kellett and Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Navy’s China Station in 1869 (Kellett Island, Mount Kellett in Hong Kong).
Video footage of Belcher's Sea Snake:
UPDATED: 14 December 2018
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