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AYN RAND
The professor in Car 14
As, in Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand approached the end of her prowl along the corridors of the doomed Taggart Comet, she encountered, in Bedroom A, Car No. 14, yet another professor, a class of people for whom she had a very special contempt.
The man in Bedroom F
In Atlas Shrugged, one of the passengers in the doomed Taggart Comet was a lawyer who had said, “Me? I’ll find a way to get along under any political system”. How would he have fared in John Galt’s dictatorship?
The voter in Car No 12
In Atlas Shrugged, one of the people being carried to certain death on the Taggart Comet was a housewife who believed that she had the right to elect politicians, of whom she knew nothing, to control giant industries, of which she had no knowledge. Was she justified in her belief?.
The playwright in Car No 11
Amongst the doomed passengers on the Taggart Comet in Atlas Shrugged was “a sniveling little neurotic who wrote cheap little plays into which, as a social message, he inserted cowardly little obscenities”.
Children on a train
There seems to have been little room for children in Ayn Rand’s ‘philosophy’. Reportedly, when asked if ‘children’ have any ‘rights’, she replied that they don’t.
Rand versus Trump
It seems highly improbable that any of the people posting the thoughts of Ayn Rand on LinkedIn would have voted for Harris in the 2024 presidential election. Some may have remained true to their libertarian principles and declined to vote at all, but many will have lined up behind Donald Trump. How is that working out for them?
Anger
Why are so many Americans so angry? They have a beautiful country with abundant natural resources, and live under a constitution that guarantees liberties that few other peoples possess. The middle classes live lives of peace and prosperity that are the envy of the world. Yet so many seem so very angry
West Bank
One matter on which Donald Trump, Ayn Rand and Bezalel Smotrich seem to be in complete accord is their approach to the future of Palestine. In their eyes it is unnecessary to consider the opinions of the Arabic-speaking half of the population inhabiting the land between the river and the sea. Even Ayn Rand might envy the smoothness of Smotrich’s transition, when presenting his solution to the problems, from reasonable analysis to barking madness.
Galt versus Musk
At first sight it might seem that one of Ayn Rand’s dreams has come even more true than she could ever have imagined. In her novel Atlas Shrugged it was necessary for her hero, John Galt, to take over the entire US radio network in order to get his message across. Elon Musk, his nearest modern incarnation, had a much simpler way of achieving the same ends. He bought Twitter.
The professor in Car no 9
After Rand had finished gloating over the impending demise of the woman in Car No 8, who considered that she had a right to travel on a train merely because she had bought a ticket to do so, there were still plenty of other passengers who were awake and about to meet their well-deserved ends. They included a professor of philosophy.
The value of gold
Gold seems to be enjoying a resurgence, and its fans are promoting the Randian fantasy of a return to a gold standard. But how would that work?
Rand and the weather
Ayn Rand hated altruism. How would she have responded to natural disaster?
Grenfell
Ayn Rand thought that only government bureaucrats had immunity for the consequences of their mistakes. She was wrong. In today’s world, businessmen share that immunity.
Rand and monopoly
One of the things about which Ayn Rand had something to say in one of her essays on capitalism was the emergence of monopoly. It is clear she had not grasped some of its essential features.
Consequences
Ayn Rand was fond of claiming that if a businessman made a mistake, he suffered the consequences. We shall see how that works out for the executives and board of Crowdstrike. The precedents are not encouaging.
Atlas Shrugged – the sequel
Ayn Rand was a great one for setting up ‘straw man’ imagined futures, as a way of showing how terrible things would be if her precepts were not followed. It seems fair enough, therefore, to play that same game with her imagined future, as presented in ‘Atlas Shrugged’ and imagine what would have happened next.
Rand and the motorist
In its desperate search for straws from which to fashion an election platform, the UK government has turned to the motorists, hoping against hope that they will gather votes from the people who see global conspiracies everywhere. They would have had Ayn Rand on their side
Rand and Thames Water
In the Thames Water saga, two of the key words are monopoly and environment. In her novels Ayn Rand largely ignored the latter, bu the environment and environmentalists were the subjects of one of her longest public lectures.
Mad Vlad and the 13th Century
Ayn Rand had a history degree from Petrograd University. She would surely not have muddled her centuries in the way that Valadimir Putin did, when talking to Tucker Carlson
Rand and reality
Ayn Rand hated communism, which had deprived her of what would have been a very sheltered and privileged life, and socialism, which she regarded as synonymous with it. However, the government she described with such scorn in Atlas Shrugged had far more in common with the right-wing, military-backed populist governments of the 1930s. Or indeed, with the UK’s increasingly right-wing, Conservative Party.
Road Rand
Our modern society relies not just on roads but on a road network. That connectivity has to be countrywide. How can that work without taxation? This was a question that Ayn Rand avoided, although in her books, although she assumed that road networks existed. Modern libertarians have addressed that question, but have they provided satisfactory answers?
Rand and Christmas
I assumed that Christmas would be a time of misery for Ayn Rand, being a time at which many people were giving each other presents, and in her Galt’s Gulch Utopia even the word ‘give, was forbidden. I was wrong. She loved it.
Suella and Rand
The political future of Stella Braverman, Home Secretary of the United Kingdom, hangs in the balance, as she pursues her aim of becoming leader of the Conservative party. But what sort of a leader would she be? Is she, as are some others on the right of the Tory party, an admirer of Ayn Rand?
Rand and the Palestinians
By a macabre coincidence, I had just reached the point of commenting on Ayn Rand’s take on Israeli-Palestine relations, as revealed in her speech to the West Point graduating class of 1974, when Hamas launched its attack. Not a good time to be writing about that area, I thought, but then I looked at the note at the end of the passage (which was also the end of the talk) and I saw the words ‘thunderous applause’.
Rand and the Amerindians
Having dealt with the question of slavery and its undeniable existence in the pre-Civil War United States, Rand backtracked to answer an earlier question from the West Point graduating class concerning the treatment of the Native Americans. If anything bad had been done to them, it was, according, entirely their own fault, for not obtaining clear title to the land they occupied, before the Europeans arrived. In any case, it was their treatment of the new arrivals that aroused her ire.
More of Rand on racism
Having dealt with the benefits conferred by slavery on the West Africans transported to North America, Ayn Rand turned her attention to racism, and the responsibility of liberals for its existence.
Rand on racism and slavery
In 1974 Ayn Rand was invited to address the graduating class at West Point, and in the discussion that followed defined her position on three different topics, one of which was slavery. She was against it, but her justification of that position forced her into some very contorted reasoning, and also revealed her astonishing ignorance of historical fact.
Dagny Taggart – risk taker
Ayn Rand was obsessed with railways, which she saw as symbols of progress. It is therefore not surprising that so much of the action in Atlas Shruggedl centres around a railway, or that some of its most famous passages focus on a rail disaster – the death in the Winston Tunnel of everybody on board the Taggart Comet.
Rand and royalty
Inevitably, the coronation of Charles III has focused many minds in the UK on issues surrounding the inheritance of wealth, power and privilege. Notably, it prompted the Guardian newspaper to undertake a detailed analysis of just how much the new king is worth, in strictly monetary terms and how much he costs his subjects. The results have been surprising, and shocking, but equally surprising, and shocking is the extent to which such information has been, and still is, concealed from those who, ultimately are paying the bills. That secrecy has been very necessary, because what it has hidden is almost impossible to justify.
The Comprehensive & Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership
So the UK is now a member of the Comprehensive & Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership, whose nearest member (Canada) is thousands of kilometres away across the Atlantic. In promoting the deal, the best our Prime Minister could find to say was that “British car producers would previously have paid tariffs of 30% to export their cars to Malaysia. From today, that goes down to 0%”.
Rand as a prophet
Ayn Rand is often credited with having made predictions that later came true, but all she ever did was follow generations of better and wiser people in deploring corruption. When it came to suggesting realistic measures to counter corruption, she failed completely.
Rand and the earthquake
During her 77 year lifetime Ayn Rand experienced disaster in many forms. She knew earthquakes happened. Did she have anything to say about them?
The utility of gold
Is the gold industry getting a wee bit nervous? It seems unlikely, with the world so invested in it, but in the last few months my LinkedIn feed has been in frequent receipt of messages pleading with me to “explore all gold’s potential benefits” and then invest in the stuff
Essential Services
In the UK, Christmas 2022 is going to be mainly notable for strikes, many of them by ‘essential workers’. Which does rather beg the question – If the services being provided are so essential, how is it that the people who provide them are not decently paid?
Car No 8 and the right to travel
Among the people whom Ayn Rand consigned to their fate in the Winston Tunnel disaster was ‘the woman in Roomette 6, Car no. 8, …. a lecturer who believed that, as a consumer, she had “a right” to transportation, whether the railroad people wished to provide it or not’. But railway workers in the UK are to be denied the right to withhold their labour, should they not wish to provide it. Would Rand have approved?
Britannia trussed
Liz Truss wants to be seen as the queen deregulator, and a tool is ready to hand. Unhampered by a written constitution, she wields the power of the King-in-Parliament and also has the Brexit-delivered opportunity of fulfilling her ambitions by the simple act of removing all EU-derived legislation. And she can cut taxes at the same time.
The worker in Car 7
According to our new prime minister. British workers are inherently lazy. This is well illustrated by her most fervent supporter, Jacob Rees-Mogg, and the teachers at Eton, the school he attended.
The Truss-Sunak war: a Randian perspective
At least two British Conservative MPs are known to be fans of Ayn Rand. Despite this, they manage to be on opposite sides in the current leadership wars.
The Man in Car No 6
After the chaos of British politics, it is almost a pleasure to turn to the simple certainties of Ayn Rand, So certain that those who disagreed with her deserved nothing better than to be packed onto a train and sent into a dark tunnel from which they would never emerge.
Gun Law
It was probably not a good idea on my part to get involved in a purely American tragedy, but I had an excuse. A fellow Brit had posted a comment suggesting that he thought that US-style gun control, or lack of it, would be a good idea in the UK. I thought some opposition to that would be worth while.
Rand, O’Connor and Musk
One of the criticisms faced by Ayn Rand in her lifetime was that her ‘rational men’simply did not exist. To this she had a standard answer. “I know they do. I married one. His name is Frank O’Connor.”
Friedman and Rand
To her credit, Ayn Rand did not approve of slavery. Through the mouth of John Galt, she not only said “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man” but added “nor ask another man to live for mine”. Whether she actually lived by the second part of that creed is another matter,
Failed state
When communism collapsed in the Soviet Union in the early 90s, the free-marketeers moved in to build their Ayn Rand paradise. They have built it, the biggest thug of all is in control and the ruins of Mariupol are the measure of his success.
Rand, Mogg and Fracking
In one respect it seems that Ayn Rand was ahead of her time; she anticipated fracking. However, tor onshore fracking to make the UK self-sufficient in gas, some two thousand wells would have to be drilled every year. Could this be realised in our tight little island?
Government by crony
One of the reasons that Ayn Rand was successful was that she very clearly identified the problem of cronyism, a far too close association between government and industry. Recognising the problem is easy, however. What she signally failed to do was provide any workable solution.
That lefty liberal, Liz Truss
It is not often I agree with Peter Hitchens, but it can happen. A few days he wrote an article for the Daily Mail, centered around a picture of the Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, taking a photo-op on a Challenger tank, somewhere in Estonia. She looked ridiculous.
A Racing Certainty
Ayn Rand believed that governments are, by their very nature, corrupt. Many people would agree that, in that respect at least, she had a point. As far as UK politics are concerned, the events of early November 2021 would certainly support that view.
Railroad Rand (5: The miner)
Ayn Rand believed that all government was evil. So evil, in fact, that even borrowing money from it to buy a business was a sin that deserved a death sentence.
The armed libertarian
Ayn Rand thought that governments were not to be trusted, and the world would be a better place if they didn’t exist, but she still thought an army to be a necessity. More extreme libertarians disagree. They want lots of them.
Mendocino dry
As far as the Mendocino water shortage is concerned, Ayn Rand’s former disciple Murray Rothbard has presented his own solution to a similar problem. He came, of course, to his inevitable conclusion. Free, unfettered private enterprise would deliver.
Railroad Rand (4: The Press Baron)
Ayn Rand’s well-documented contempt for newspaper owners and the people who worked for them was not logical. If successful, these were people living out her dream. They were in business, and businesses, in her philosophy, should not be subject to regulation.
Railroad Rand (3): The Teacher
Ayn Rand despised most educators, but at least she thought that children should be educated. Some of her erstwhile followers went much further. For Murray Rothbard, education was something that prevented children from fulfilling their proper roles, as productive economic units.
Railroad Rand (2): The journalist
One thing I didn’t anticipate when I decided to look at the role played by a railway in Atlas Shrugged was that only a few weeks later the UK would be facing something of a rail crisis of its own. But at least our rail companies have not taken the Ayn Rand option, and blamed the passengers.
Railroad Rand (1): The Professor
The past few weeks have not been good ones for rail travel, and train crash and the reasons for it is also one of the main events in Atlas Shrugged.
Ayn and Meghan
In what is still known, with unintentional irony, as the United Kingdom, we are currently enjoying the spectacle of our royal family indulging in one of its recurrent orgies of self-destruction. What would Ayn Rand have thought?
Myanmar and Ayn Rand
Ayn Rand would not have approved of the military take-over in Myanmar, but if ever a country actually tried to put her ideas into practice, it would surely end up in something very like the condition to which Myanmar now threatens to return.
80 years, two photographs
Ayn Rand hated government, and Trump’s calls to ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington would have been music to her ears
Bye bye Bourgeois?
Gilles Bourgeois, Ayn Rand’s ultimate disciple, seems to have disappeared from LinkedIn.
How to appoint a President
The one saving grace of the Trump onslaught on the US election results is that his preferred medium is still Twitter, which limits him to just a few words at a time. Ayn Rand’s heroes acknowledged no such limitation, but in his 57-page rant against government John Galt still had to acknowledge the need for a government of sorts. How to choose it? A problem he never addressed.
Rand and Patel
We have our own Ayn Rand. We have a Home Secretary cast in her image. We have Priti Patel.
In praise of postal workers
Are schools and hospitals really in danger, as one modern-day follower of Ayn Rand claims, of being taken over by ‘unionised postal workers’? Should Covid-19 not have made us realise, if we hadn’t already, that postmen and women, delivery workers, shop workers, warehouse workers, lorry drivers, home healthcare providers and childcare workers deserve both adequate pay and our respect?
“Anthem” and “Nineteen Eighty-four”
Ayn Rand’s early novella ‘Anthem’ is often compared with George Orwell’s ‘;Nineteen Eighty-four’. There are some rather significant differences.
The UKs Randian wannabees
In a recent article in The Observer, Andrew Rawnsley turned his attention to the three people who are at this moment taking the UK wherever it is going (or, quite possibly, wherever its constituent nation are independently going).
Rand and race
It is often said in Ayn Rand’s favour that she was not a racist . But is that true?
Randian medicine
One thing that a pandemic does is concentrate the mind on essentials, the availability of medical care being about the most essential of all. Here in the UK most medical care is provided to most people by the National Health Service, but ‘socialized medicine’ was, of course, anathema to Ayn Rand.
Lock-down
My step-son lives in Torino, which means he has been on lock-down or more than a month. But he is lucky, because his flat, like most flats, even old ones, in Mediterranean countries has a balcony.
COVID-19
What we are now learning to call Covid-19 is taking an ever tighter grip on the world. In every country, as cases of the disease are recognised, government intervention increases. What would Ayn Rand have made of it all?
Ayn Rand and the floods
The water level in the River Lugg, a couple of hundred metres away, is now falling. Four days ago it was three to four metres above normal ….
Boeing
Ayn Rand wrote in America and for Americans, butI avoid in principle commenting on American issues. However, even foreigners are entitled to comment on today’s release of a flood of emails between Boeing employees about the 737 Max, because so many of us fly in Boeing aircraft.
Lock-down
The Gladestry Old Men’s Lunch was unanimous in its opinion that there was not one person in the upper levels of any of the three main political parties for whom one could feel the slightest shred of respect. Ayn Rand would, of course, have agreed …..
Mogg in meltdown
It seems that Jacob Rees-Mogg thinks that the people who died in the Grenfell fire did so because they lacked common-sense, and that Andrew Bridgen, his apologist who has now himself apologised, thinks that Mogg would have survived because he is clever.
The looters of Thomas Cook
In Atlas Shrugged there are three types of people who matter. There are the god-like ‘rational men’, whose every action is dictated by reasoned self interest, there are the ‘moochers’ who seek to be parasitic on them, pleading always for hand-outs based on their ‘need’, and there are the ‘looters’, who want much more and take action, sometimes violent, to ensure that they get it.
An education
One result of the chaos created in the UK over the last few years by old Etonians (with some help from the alumni of other ‘public’ schools such as Dulwich and Durham) has been a renewal of calls for the dismantling of our dual approach to education,
The gold of the Rand
So, the frenzy of the Brecon & Radnor by-election is now behind us and we can all move on. A frenzy, it has to be said, that was more apparent in the pages of the national press than it ever was here on the ground in East Radnorshire. Faced with a line-up of five of the most lack-lustre prospective MPs ever presented to voters in what was billed as a crucial by-election…
“The Fountainhead” on stage
If I had been following the theatre more consistently, I would have known some weeks ago, when I was writing the previous blog, that Ivo van Hove’s theatrical realisation of Ayn Rand’s ‘The Fountainhead’ was about to hit Manchester. Ten days ago it was on stage at The Lowry, as part of the city’s International Festival…
The Defence of Howard Roark
According to an article by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator of 11 February 2017, “Just before Christmas, Sajid Javid performed a ritual he has observed twice a year throughout his adult life: he read the courtroom scene in The Fountainhead.” Nelson also reported that “As a student, Javid read the passage to his now-wife, but only once — she told him she’d have nothing more to do with him if he tried it again.” A sensible woman, obviously…
BOUGER
History in my hands
The Capricorn expedition of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in 1951-52 was notable for many things, among them the presence on board of Ron Mason, later the discoverer of the oceanic magnetic stripes, and Helen Raitt, the first woman to take part in an extended US oceanographic cruise. After it was over, Helen wrote a book about the cruise, and sent Ron a copy.
The facilitator
One way of looking at the history of plate tectonics is to identify people without whose intervention general acceptance of the theory might have been delayed by years. Some names emerge that are now almost forgotten. One name in particular springs to mind.
Gravity in Croatia
Every so often I trawl the internet in search of gravity information on East and Central Europe, with a particular focus on Croatia and the northern end of the Adriatic. Good maps of those areas have only recently become readily available.
Plate tectonics: a memoir
In 2003 the historian Naomi Oreskes published Plate Tectonics: an Insider’s History of the Modern Theory of the Earth. But what of those who were not insiders? How did it seem to them?
Oreskes’ errors
On 12 May 2025 the Earth Science historian Naomi Oreskes delivered a Royal Institution lecture with the title ‘Rethinking the origins of plate tectonics’. The advance publicity suggested that she was about to overturn the whole history of that theory. Was that true?
Open Access?
Posts by one of the major scientific publishers appearing recently on LinkedIn make the claim that it publishes papers Open Access without demanding Article Processing Fees. Is this really true?
VH-GEO and Renison Bell
In 1964, low level aeromagnetic surveys at Renison posed challenges not encountered in previous such surveys by the Bureau of Mineral Resources. Magnetic anomalies of hundreds and even thousands of nanotesla were much larger than any previously measured, and none of the topography previously flown was as extreme as that typical of western Tasmania.
The instrument that changed the world
Ways of measuring magnetic field developed during the 1930s were considered early in the Second World War as possible means of detecting submerged submarines. In the end they did rather more than that.
Tikopia
Volcanoes that look like volcanoes fascinate. Almost all appear in the catalogue of the Smithsonian Institution Global Volcanism Program, but one at least does not.
The Emergence of Geophysics: a review
In November the Geological Society of London published Volume 60 in its Memoir series, with the title “The Emergence of Geophysics: A Journey into the Twentieth Century”. In his Introduction the author stipulates that he is considering developments as far as the end of the 20th century but will not venture into the 21st.
Geologic Life
A book with the title ‘Geologic Life’, and the subtitle ‘Inhuman Intimacies and the Geophysics of Race’ has recently given rise to a considerable amount of comment on LinkedIn. What, on Earth, is it all about?
An Iceland in the South Atlantic ?
The Rio Grande Rise Massif and the Valdivia Bank have been interpreted as the two halves of an originally continuous hot-spot-related plateau formed on the Mid Atlantic Ridge. Is Iceland an example of what that plateau might have been like, geologically at least, at the time of its formation?
Gravity and the Middle Amazon Basin
If it had not been for LinkedIn, I might never have been aware of the existence of the 2024 Bouguer gravity map of Brazil, and that would have been a pity. Some things jump out almost at first sight, and one of these is the narrow and almost linear gravity high that roughly coincides with the main course of the middle Amazon.
The D’Entrecaseaux Ridge: a southwest Pacific enigma
Free-air gravity maps suggest that, rather than having been a rectilinear feature, the subducted portion of the D’Entrecasteaux ridge, which impacts the Vanuatu Trench at a high angle, was curvilinear. The entire region is reminiscent, in size and the disposition of subduction -related volcanics and collision orogens, to the Banda Sea region of eastern Indonesia.
Gravity gradients – a beginning
Modern airborne gravity relies largely on measurements of gravity gradients. Given how very small the signal will inevitably be, it is clear that measuring it is bound to be very, very difficult. Nevertheless, it was being done in Australia in the late 1920s with some success.
The Imperial geophysicists
In the Preface to the report in the Imperial Geophysical Experimental Survey in Australia in the late 1920s and early 1930s, a few unforgettable names were listed. Attached to the survey was ‘J. M. Rayner, of the New South Wales Department of Mines’, and moving to the lower echelons, the Electrical Section had a field assistant called R. F. Thyer, while designated as a Temporary Assistant was one N.H Fisher.
In Memoriam – Hugh Davies
It is not given to many people to be recognised as the most important figure in the geological history of an entire country, but Hugh Davies, who died on April 26 this year, had that distinction.
‘From Compass to Drone’ – a book review
In late 2022, Bill Hinze published, through the Minnesota Geological Survey, a book entitled From Compass to Drone: The Evolving Role of Magnetics in Mapping the Geology and Ore Deposits of the Lake Superior Region: 1830-2022.
Tapping Jenny
Coincidentally, two recent threads on LinkedIn brought Assynt to mind. And one of those threads concerned Janet Watson, geological queen of the Northwest Highlands
Float
In the instructions Joseph Gaimard copied into the diary before he left Toulon, there is a long section on field geology. Despite being written in 1817, it could very usefully be given as a guide to first-year geology students in our universities. Amongst other things, it has some very nice sketches and some wise words on the importance of context, but it also has comments on the importance of rocks that are not in situ
Welcome to Duroca**
It took a few years for the significance of the linear magnetic anomalies discovered by Ron Mason and Arthur Raff to be realised, but they were key factors in the development of Plate Tectonics. This development might have been considerably delayed if their work, arguably the first systematic magnetic survey of a large area of oceanic crust, had instead been carried out over the seas east of Queensland. Even today the uniform data set that provides the best approach to study of this region is gravitational, not magnetic.
The Louisiade Plateau: what’s in a name?
Back in the mid-1960s, plate tectonics was still in its infancy but the origin of the shallow rises in the Tasman Sea, as strips of Australia peeled away like layers on an onion, was already pretty obvious. Inevitably, there was speculation on possible links between ophiolites in eastern Papua and New Caledonia.
Eddie Polak at the AGH
Giving a talk in the AGH university building in Krakow was memorable, as far as I was concerned, because it was the building where Eddie Polak, one of my first geophysical mentors, studied during the four years that preceded the invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War. I was able to imagine him in his time there all the better because he had left me with a typescript of his memoirs.
Zealandia completely mapped?
On 9 October, GNS Science, which is effectively New Zealand’s geological survey organisation, made a startling announcement. “Zealandia”, so its publicity department contended “just became the first continent to be completely mapped”. But what is Zealandia, and are these extravagant claims justified?
Referential
The world of scientific publishing is coming in for a lot of criticism these days, and rightly so in many cases. But are scientists not in some respects their own worst enemies, making rods for their own backs by custom and convention rather direct outright instruction?
IGCP 710 and the case for a new PANCARDI
In the late 1990s the European Science Foundation, taking advantage of the new possibilities for scientific interchange and fieldwork in a Europe no longer divided by an Iron Curtain, sponsored an international programme known as PANCARDI within which geologists and geophysicists from the countries of the Carpathian and Dinaric orogens and the Pannonian Basin came together to exchange information and reach a better understanding of the evolution through time of that very complex region. Is it not time for a second such programme?
More on Myanmar
Most of Myanmar considered prospective for hydrocarbons was covered by gravity surveys between 1964 and 1975. The results have been published as small-scale contour maps, but with gravity values referred to an arbitrary datum; there are also significant errors and ambiguities in the contouring. An approximate transfer to the current international IGSN71 system has proved possible, but correction of the contouring errors will not be possible without access to the underlying data.
The magnetics of Seram
The presence of ultramafic rocks on the eastern Indonesian islands of Ambon and Seram has been known since the work of the early Dutch geologists in the East Indies. Have geophysical potential-field data anything to contribute to understanding their distribution and emplacement history?
Before longitude
In her best-selling book Longitude, Dava Sobell told the story of the ultimately successful efforts made in the England of the first half of the Eighteenth Century to measure longitude at sea using very accurate clocks, and also mentioned that attempts had been made in the second half of the Seventeenth Century to do the same thing. Christiaan Huygens figured prominently in the account but there is much more to that part of the story than appeared in the book. It began with an obscure Scottish nobleman.
The perils of processing gravity data
LinkedIn is full of people claiming that just because their opinions conflict with the those of the majority, that does not mean they are wrong. No quarrel with that, but problems arise when they reverse the argument and claim that it somehow proves they are right. When, in doing so, they wander into areas about which I think I know something, I have to protest. And increasingly I see that happening when gravity is being used to investigate geology.
The perils of big gravity data
According to NASA, the new Earth Gravity Model EGM2020, although not yet released, has been completed, .It will be based on a great deal of new data and will be a valuable addition for regional studies. But, like its predecessors, there is a danger that it will be misused.
The break-up of the Banda slab
Plots of earthquake hypocentres on north-south swathes across the Banda Sea show that the northern and southern Wadati-Benioff Zones zones involve the same slab of subducted lithosphere. But can that scoop-shaped slab hang together?
Tomography and the Molucca Sea
Improvements in seismic tomography have allowed subducted slabs to be identified in the mantle even when they are no longer seismogenic. How well do tomographic models from different researchers compare?
The questions of Solomon
A paper from an unusual source has provided new ways of seeing the subduction of the oceanic crust of the Solomon Sea.
The shrinking of Adria
Adria, or at least that bit of it positioned near the top of the crustal stack, just got a little bit smaller. At about half past eight local time in the morning of the 9th of November 2022, a Magnitude 5.6 earthquake nucleated at a nominal depth of 10 km beneath the Adriatic sea near Ancona.
What was Adria?
Despite more than two hundred years of geological investigations, there are still huge unanswered questions regarding the Alps. Given my own geographical bias towards the extreme northern Adriatic, one question in particular dominates my thought. What was Adria?
A scientific hatchet job
Scientific debate can sometimes be carried on in a most unscientific fashion, even by the most reputable of scientists. An article by Professors Alice Roberts and Mark Maslin entitled “Sorry David Attenborough, we didn’t evolve from ‘aquatic apes’ – here’s why”, first published in Scientific American, is a good example.
Apolaki and Anagolay: closely related LIPs
From the 12th to the 14th of September this year the 15th Emile Argand Conference on Alpine Geological Studies is being held in Ljubljana and on the final day of the conference I am down to give the keynote address. I shall be talking about the Philippines, and I shall be building my talk around the Tagalog mother and son deities Anagolay and Apolaki. How can that possibly be?
Shark Bay: a problem with pendulums
Louis de Freycinet elected not to use the method of coincidences when making pendulum observations on hos circumnavigation in the Uranie. There are, however, all sorts of difficulties in discovering what he actually did do.
Airy’s error
The experiment described by George Airy in his 1857 paper entitled “Account of pendulum experiments undertaken in the Harton colliery, for the purpose of determining the mean density of the Earth” produced an estimate of the mean density of the Earth that was 20% in error. Why was this?
Airy under ground
After his failure to measure the mean density of the Earth in the Dolcoath mine in Cornwall in 1826, George Airy waited 30 years before making another attempt. For this he went to the Harton Pit near South Shields and used innovations such as electrical signalling. But was he any more successful?
A new statue in Zagreb
The Republic of Croatia can lay claim to being the homeland of two scientists whose names are, if not exactly household words, have at least integrated themselves into the international vocabulary., but until April 2022, only one of them had a statue in Zagreb.
More airmag history – and a bit of interpretation
Between 1967 and 1913 aeromagnetic surveys were flown over eastern Papua New Guinea, but the results only became available during the country’s transition to full independence. Overlooked at the time, they now seem to have been largely forgotten
Cobar – aeromagnetic pioneer
In early 1963 Australia’s Bureau of Mineral Resources, the BMR. carried out the first airborne proton magnetometer survey in the country, using the instrument designed and largely built by John Newman.
Ways of seeing – the Dayman Dome
The availability of very detailed topographic grids has provided geologists of new ways of looking at areas. Sometimes the results can be spectacular.
Who now remembers MIN?
In December 2021, someone from the South Australia Department of Mines and Energy posted a historical note on LinkedIn., with pictures of survey aircraft VH-BUR. It brought vividly to mind the sight, and odour, of her companion, VH-MIN
Wherein lieth the fault?
A paper published in 2014 shows two possible locations for the Owen Stanley Fault Zone in eastern Papua, one based on gravity, the other on geology. Which is right?
A potato for a geoid
In mid-October 2021 an image of the geoid based on data from NASA’s GRACE satellite was posted on LinkedIn. It was an object lesson in the perils of attempting to disseminate science via a platform that restricts posts to 2500 characters and comments to 1250 characters.
A very smart scientist
One milligal is approximately one millionth of the Earth’s gravity field, so it would seem that the periods of pendulums used for measuring gravity would have to be measured to a few millionths of a second for the results to be useful. This was simply not possible in the early nineteenth century, but pendulums were being used then to obtain results accurate to a few tens of milligal. How was it done?
Alejandro Malaspina and the first global gravity survey
Between April 1791 and January 1794, officers of Alejandro Malaspina’s mission to the Pacific measured gravity at no fewer than 17 different locations. It was the first truly global gravity survey, but how accurate was it?
Refracted thoughts
In the past, we learned from people we respected how to do refraction surveys. Now we have committees to tell us what to do.
Hooke, Newton and Peer Review
Peer review comes in for a lot of criticism, and University College London is trialling a different system. But historical precedents, going back to the early days of the Royal Society, suggest that it is unlikely to work.
Approaches to Macquarie
A recent paper by Brandon Shuck and colleagues has presented detailed information from seismic reflection lines in the vicinity of the northernmost segment of the Macquarie Ridge Complex. For the regional picture, gravity maps are hard to beat, but they must be used with care.
The starry sisters
Historically, women have always had a hard time breaking into science but two women, both sisters of astronomers but separated in time by 150 years, did manage it.
Magnetic memories
In 2020 the Geological Survey of Australia’s Northern Territory had published a full-colour magnetic map of the whole of their area, with accompanying grids. For me, a trip into the days of my youth, because in mid-1964 I was party chief of a team flying part of a feature centred on Tennant Creek that had come to be known as the ‘Aeromagnetic Ridge’.
Those damned beach balls
The Kaverina diagram used to display different tectonic regimes as defined by different styles of faulting has been modified by the addition of focal mechanism ‘beach-balls’. How helpful is that?
Mohorovičić’s Fault
The last twelve months have not been kind to Croatia, thanks to the jostling of crustal blocks for space as the northern edge of Africa advances relentlessly towards Europe.
The mystery of Mayotte
In May 2018, something very curious happened. The marine area immediately to the east of Mayotte, the easternmost major island in the Comoros chain, became seismically active.
The Aves Ridge and the migration of mammals
The leading article in the November 19 issue of Eos was entitled “By Land or Sea: How Did Mammals Get to the Caribbean Islands?” Could gravity maps have anything to tell us about the possibilities?
A geophysical rant
In an ideal world, there would be a continuous dialogue between geologists and geophysicists. Sadly, there seems to have been little progress in that direction in the last fifty years.
A confusion of units
Gravity units are a mess. About half of all surveys have their results reported in the c,g,s unit, the mGal, and half in the S.I unit, which differs by a factor of ten. And very few people have any idea of why the Eötvös unit is defined in the way that it is.
Mohorovičić geophysicist
There is no doubt that Andrija Mohorovičić deserves to be remembered. The work he did laid the foundations for the use of earthquake waves in understanding the Earth, but brilliance has not always been enough to ensure that a scientist is remembered. His work might easily have been overlooked, or lesser men might have received the credit, but this is one case where the right man has been honoured.
The young Mohorovičić
For scientists their late twenties and early thirties are commonly crucial years. They may not do their most important work during them, but it is then that they establish the habits and attitudes that will serve them throughout their careers. Andrija Mohorovičić may not have established a lasting reputation in Bakar, and the work he did there may be largely forgotten, but without Bakar he might never have had a reputation of any sort.
Global gravity models – a tangled web
The idea of making global maps of Earth gravity must go back a very long way, but it was really only after artificial satellites began to be tossed into orbit that the dream became any sort of reality. Unfortunately, where Bouguer gravity is concerned, there is still a very long way to go.
The Fall Guys
‘Is a degree in Physics a necessary prerequisite to argue that an anecdote in history is not well documented (or perhaps even to write history of science)?’
Santa Marta and the WGM2012
WGM2012 shows that the highest Earth-surface free-air gravity anywhere in the world is about +970 mGal in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in NE Colombia. But there are problems with those values.
Pendulums and the Mascarenes
In 1819, between the 19th and 25th of May, Louis de Freycinet, with the help of some of his officers from the corvette Uranie, used pendulums to measure gravity in Port Louis, the capital of Mauritius.
Climate of suspicion
Scepticism is great, and vitally important in any science, but when science itself is under attack, anyone who claims to be a scientist needs to stand up and defend it.
Extreme gravity
Extremes are now again fashionable in many areas of life. But – extreme gravity? Is there anything to be gained by searching for those points on the Earth’s surface where gravity is highest, lowest, steepest?
Pendulum gravity on Guam
In 1819 Louis de Freycinet measured gravity on Guam using four pendulums, and in 1828 Fyodor Litke did the same thing, with just one pendulum. How well did they do?
Pulau Anso: another missed opportunity
The astronomer John Goldingham makes an appearance in ‘The Hunt for Earth Gravity’ on account of pendulum measurements he made in his observatory in Madras (modern Chennai), but he has another claim to fame. He was responsible the first gravity measurements made in Sumatra or, rather, on one of its offshore islands.
The magnetics of DC power
For magnetic surveys, power lines are a nuisance. Normal AC lines can interfere with magnetometer electronics if you get too close. But what about DC lines? Just forget about working anywhere near them.
Pendulums and geology’s strongest gravity effect
There has to be a point on the Earth’s surface where the effect of geology on gravity is greatest. With the sea-covered areas unlikely settings because of the low density of sea water and almost all land areas now covered to some extent by gravity surveys, it is possible to say, with a fair degree of confidence, where that place is. It is on the largest of the Bonin (or Ogasawara) Islands, Chichi-jima,
Thoughts on the Lairg gravity low
“Mea culpa” on Myanmar gravity
The scandal of Henry Browne
In 1823 Basil Hall, a British naval officer who became the first person to measure gravity in the Galapagos Islands, advised anyone who might imitate him by taking gravity pendulums overseas to recognise the “….advantage which … would arise from having the whole experiment performed in England, by the person who is afterwards to repeat it abroad, not under the hospitable roof of Mr. BROWNE … but in the fields, and with no advantages save those he could carry with him…”
URANIE
The Abbaye after Jeanne
Among the residents at the Abbaye aux Bois when Rose de Freycinet’s mother was there was the famous (or perhaps infamous) socialite, Juliette Récamier. She was still there when, many years later, she was visited by Anthony Trollope’s mother.
The Astrolabe voyage: Gaimard’s first letter
Throughout the Astrolabe voyage, Gaimard kept his former captain, Louis de Freycinet, informed of its progress. In the first of the letters that he sent to him he described the relatively uneventful voyage as far as New South Wales
Wives at Sea
When the Uranie entered the roadstead of Port Louis, Mauritius, a British frigate was already there, and for Rose de Freycinet there was a surprise in store. She discovered the frigate captain’s wife often accompanied her husband on his voyages. Were French and British naval practices so very different in this respect?
Revolution 1830
Following his return to France in 1829 from serving on the Astrolabe during Dumont d’Urvilles’s first voyage as expedition commander, Gaimard continued to write to his former commander on the Uranie, Louis de Freycinet. Two of his letters described the July revolution in 1830 Paris and its aftermath.
Admiral Manby announces
In October 1825, Volume XX of the Asiatic Journal carried an announcement by Admiral Thomas Manby of the probable discovery of relics of the LaPérouse. expedition. But from where did Manby get his information?
Eugène Chaigneau: an unlucky life
In October 1827, a brief note appeared in the Bulletin de la Société de géographie, informing its readers of the contents of a letter, dated 17 January 1827 sent from the survey ship belonging to the Honourable East India Company. However, the 26-year-old author of the letter, Eugène Chaigneau, was French. How did he come to be on board?
The House of the Mad
There are plenty of places where it is recorded that Jacques Arago spent some time in the mental hospital run by Esprit Blanche and his wife in Montparnasse. That, however, is as far as the information goes. We do not know why he was consigned to the hospital, when this happened or how long he remained incarcerated. But we do, al least, have his own account of the experience.
A kangaroo court
On the 5th of April 1827, the survey vessel Research anchored off Hobart. The next day her captain, Peter Dillon, was arraigned for assault and wrongful imprisonment by the ship’s doctor, Robert Tytler. He was convicted, fined fifty pounds and sentenced to two months imprisonment. But was that justified?
Early charts of the Carolines
In 1790 the cartographer Aaron Arrowsmith produced a comprehensive map of the world. It was an impressive achievement, but how accurate was it, as far as Micronesia was concerned?
Jacques Arago and Dom Pedro II
The third of Jacques Arago.s four visits to Rio de Janeiro was made during the reign of Dom Pedro II. His account of his relations with the emperor is very different from that provided by at least one other French visitor to the city.
The Marianas before the Uranie
An essay with the title HISTORY and GEOGRAPHY of the ARCHIPELAGO of the MARIANAS, in the 1809 volume of the journal Annales des Voyages de la Géographie et de l’Histoire, may well have been Louis de Freycinet’s main source of information on the Marianas when he was planning his voyage. What he read there may have been a factor in his decision to send three members of his état-major on a rather risky voyage with a Carolinian fleet from Guam to Rota and Tinian.
The Aragonauts
Most of what has been written about Jacques Arago concentrates on the voyage of the Uranie, and only to a lesser extent on his literary career in the 1830s. Mentions of his second major journey, which began with a plan to join the California gold rush, are far less common.
The execution connoisseur
The Livre des Cent-et-un was published in Paris from 1831 to 1834. Each of the fifteen volumes had between 400 and 500 pages, and among the contributors were Alexandre Dumas, Chateaubriand, Lamartine, and Victor Hugo. And also Jacques Arago, who wrote three pieces, including a strange tale of a man who loved executions.
Bouchard in the West Pacific
Rose de Freycinet wrote to her mother that the governor of Guam was in Humåtak to greet a Spanish vessel, the La Paz, when the Uranie arrived. He needed to satisfy himself that it was not in unfriendly hands.
From Abbé to Abbaye
When Rose de Freycinet’s mother opened her school for young ladies in 1803, she did so with the aid of a loan of 500 francs from the Abbé Sicard. When, fourteen years later, the school closed, she found a retirement refuge in the Abbaye aux Bois. Abbé to Abbaye, surely there must be some link between the two? If so, it is hard to find.
More thoughts on some letters
On Page 34 of Volume 1 of the Historique, the six-volume narrative section of Louis de Freycinet’s Voyage autour du Monde, he described a visit to a church service in Rio de Janeiro. His description is almost identical to that provided by his wife, in a letter to her mother that survives today only in a manuscript copy. This provides some constraints on hypotheses as to when the copy might have been made.
Bretillard, a most unsatisfactory consul
The French consul in Tenerife, who might have been expected to provide all sorts of services to the Uranie expedition, seems to have concentrated on just one. He offered to buy wine on its behalf.
Rose’s booklist
On the 29th of April 1820, Rose de Freycinet was uncomfortably installed in the American three-master Mercury that was making heavy weather of the transit to Montevideo. She did, however, have some books to read.
Smith and Hall
When the Uranie arrived off Mauritius, Rose and Louis de Freycinet found an island that had, in the previous ten years, suffered many misfortunes. Amongst these was a feud between the acting governor ad the island’s chief judge.
Witness statements: the wreck of the Uranie
On 14 February 1820, the French corvette Uranie, in the last stages of what was planned to be a science-based circumnavigation of the globe, was entering Berkeley Sound in East Falkland when it struck a rock and began to sink. Four of the people aboard the corvette left written records of the event that survive to this day.
Joseph-Paul Gaimard – a life (work in progress)
Joseph-Paul Gaimard’s life was a complicated one. In1832 he transitioned from being an explorer of the Pacific tropics to becoming an explorer of the sub-Arctic. Tracking his lif in contemporary documnts is a large project, and far from complete.
The name’s Bond …. Alan Bond
On 26 September 2002, the London auction house Christie’s sold an archive described as ‘The Freycinet collection’. At its heart was a collection of early publications and original artwork from the 1817-20 voyage of the Uranie. But how did this collection, originating in France, come to be auctioned in London? That is a story that has its origins in Wesrern Australia.
Naming the Carolines
IOn the 12th of March 1819 the Uranie passed close to the island known to those onboard as Bartolomé, but to the people who actually lived there as Pulusuk. The following day, the corvette was in sight of the island of Alet on the Poluwat atoll and of Tamatam, Fanadik and Pollap on the Pollap atoll, just 50 km to the NNE. They did not stop at any of these places, but the proas of the Carolinians were easily able to keep up with them while mutually satisfactory trading was carried on. Given that this was the nearest that Gaimard came to actually visiting the Carolinians on their home islands, he wrote a surprising amount about them.
Tidore
It was spice that brought Europeans to the remote shores of the northern Moluccas. By the time of the Uranie voyage the outlines of the future colonial empires had been established. Two hundred years earlier, however, things had been very different.
La Ciotat
When Louis de Freycinet was looking for a suitable vessel for his round-the-world expedition, he rejected the first one that he was offered, but eventually found just what he was looking for in the French port of La Ciotat, near Toulon. A port with a more recent reputation that has nothing to do with shipping.
Lahaina remembered
On the 16th of August 1819, after a less than satisfactory stay on the Big Island, where it had been impossible to obtain the supplies needed for the next leg of his voyage, and after having rounded Kaho’olawe island on the previous day, Louis de Freycinet dropped anchor off the settlement he knew as Reheina
The pay of seamen
The ordinary seamen listed in Gaimard’s diary were divided into First, Second and Third Class categories. The first two people listed as belonging to the First Class (Matelots de première classe) were further described as ‘matelots à 30 francs’, Presumably this was their rate of pay, but was it for a day, a week, a month or a year?
Lacaille on Mauritius
In Gaimard’s account of the visit of the Uranie to Mauritius he listed the heights and in some cases the latitudes of more than two dozen prominent topographic features. It is not difficult to discover the primary source of the information, but the story is an interesting one. It links Louis de Freycinet to a member of the island’s mixed-race community and to a now almost forgotten French cleric who died more than fifty years before the Uranie arrived off Port Louis..
Manuela’s marriage
When Rose de Freycinet was in Rio de Janeiro in December 1817 and January 1818 she saw very little of the crioulas, the women of pure Portuguese decent, but what she did see did not impress her. She had a much better opinionof of their Spanish-speaking sisters, the criollas of Montevideo, a city she visited in May 2020, but had she been at that time by some miracle transported across the continent to the city of Quito, she would have found there a criolla whose conduct she would have found even more shocking, but for very different reasons.
The illness of Louis de Freycinet
For the first few days after the beaching of the Uranie in Berkely Sound, Louis de Freycinet proved himself a man of action, but then he became ill, and remained so for much of his remaining time on the island. However, the French editors of Rose de Freycinet’s diary, published in 1927, decided that this fact should be very largely supressed.
Ida’s Sumatra Journey
Perhaps the most determined of all the women who travelled during the 19th Century was a Viennese widow called Ida Pfeiffer. One of her most dangerous undertakings was to enter, unaccompanied by any other Europeans, into the lands of the Bataks of Sumatra
Kergariou
Just as Rose was about to leave Réunion, the French frigate Cybèle anchored in the roads a few cable lengths away and collided with the Uranie, breaking loose an anchor and nearly breaking the bowsprit. Who was this careless and incompetent captain, and why was he in the Indian Ocean?
Charles de Freycinet
Readers of the 1927 edited version of Rose de Freycinet’s diary may well feel that she could have said more about her meeting on Mauritius with her brother-in-law Charles. But she did say more. It was simply edited out.
Caroline
When Rose de Freycinet started to write her diary of her voyage on the Uranie, she began with two very personal paragraphs addressed to the person for whom it was intended. She did not name the friend, not did she explain why she ended her diary so abruptly, writing almost nothing about her last month in Rio de Janeiro and nothing at all about the journey home from there
Beginning with the beginning
Neither Rose de Freycimet’s journal nor the letters to her mother provide a complete account of her voyage but, by the greatest of good fortunes, they do when put together. Moreover, for the latter part of the stay in Sydney, and for the voyage as far as Dili, we have both letters and the journal. Where they overlap, the letters have been neglected in favour of the journal, but was that the right thing to do? A question that can be answered only by comparing the two. But therein lies an additional problem.
Rose de Freycinet: a footnote
After the deaths of the two eldest de Freycinet brothers, Alexandre Dezos de La Roquette wrote a joint obituary and summary of their lives for the Bulletin de la Société de Géographie. He included in it, in a long footnote that extended over parts of four pages, a summary of the life of Rose de Freycinet.
The gallant governor of Dili
If the length of time the Uranie spent in a port is compared with the amount of space Rose gave to the visit in her diary or letters, then the stay in Dili is a stand-out item. For this the credit must go to its Portuguese governor, Don José Pinto Alcoforado de Azevedo e Sousa.
A secretary’s life
When Isidore Duperrey took the Coquille out of Toulon, he took with him several of those who had sailed with the Uranie and had returned on the Physicienne. They included Auguste Bérard and the master-gunner Rolland, and one other who might not have been expected to be there.
Freycinet at Shark
The sequence of events during the visit of the Uranie to Shark Bay is outlined in Gaimard’s diary. Gaps in this narrative can be filled by reference to accounts prepared by other members of the expedition.
Durville’s rant
In 1831 Dumont Durville made a contribution to the Bulletin of the Société de Géographie that was billed as a book review. It began, however, not with a discussion of the book in question but with an extended rant against the French naval establishment.
Taunay
In finding a place to stay in Rio de Janeiro, Rose and Louis de Freycinet were indebted to a “M. Taunay,, the son of a painter and a member of the Institute’s Academy of Fine Arts, whose name and works are well known in Europe”. But who was this friend in need?
Rose, by Suzanne Falkiner: a book review
When, on the 13th of June 1820, Rose de Freycinet stepped ashore for the second time in Rio de Janeiro, she became just the second women to make a complete circuit of the globe. The Australian author Suzanne Falkiner has recognised the need for a biography and has filled it with a handsome volume simply entitled Rose.
A Freycinet catalogue
The Internet is a treasure trove for the early publications on the Uranie voyage but, like all good hidden treasures, there are many obstacles to their retrieval. Digital images of the volumes of the ‘Voyage autour du Monde’ can be found, but quality is very variable and not all volumes are easy to find. There are, moreover, some issues surrounding the contents of the various volumes and their the dates of publication.
A letter from the Falklands
Rose de Freycinet sent letters to her mother on every occasion when there was some prospect of their reaching France, up to and including the stay in Sydney. She continued to write after that, but we know this only because she mentioned sending a letter from the Falklands in her diary. A copy of a letter from her to her parennts-in-law sent at the same time has survived.
Gaimard, linguist
Despite the distances involved, there was clearly much coming and going between the islands of the central Carolines in the early 1800s, and their languages, or dialects, would be expected to be very similar also. Gaimard, however, provided two vocabularies for these islands and where they overlap they have major differences, even in such basic matters as the names of the numerals.
Christmas on the Uranie
It being close to Christmas as I write, I began to think about how that was celebrated on board the Uranie. The fact is – hardly at all.
A missing letter?
We know that Rose de Freycinet sent at least fifteen letters to her mother between Toulon and Sydney, because copies have survived. But were there any others, that were sent on their way and never reached their destination?
Rose de Freycinet – artist?
Rose de Freycinet was certainly no artist, to judge from the only drawing possibly by her that is readily accessible, but she did have many other qualities and abilities, as revealed in her letters to her mother.
The Elder Brother
Louis de Freycinet had an elder brother, Henri,, and the two brothers joined the French navy on the same day in 1794. On the face of it, Henri had the more successful career, administering three colonies in succession, reaching the rank of Rear Admiral and becoming a baron. But it is Louis who is better remembered.
The Quoy-Gaimard double act
Jean René Constant Quoy, senior surgeon on the Uranie, is something of a shadowy figure, but he did eventually write his memoirs.
Louis de Freycinet – plagiarist
When it came to writing the account of the voyage of the Uranie, Louis de Freycinet could not give any credit to his wife Rose, because she was not supposed to have been on board, But did she make any contribution to what he wrote?
Captain Thomas Forrest
Despite its remote location on the island of Rawak north of Waigeo, which is in turn north of the Bird’s Head of New Guinea, the place Louis de Freycinet chose for his ‘equatorial’ pendulum observations was, for the time and area, already remarkably well mapped. It was also known to have a good source of water nearby.
Madame de Roquefeuil
When the Uranie was approaching Rio de Janeiro, it had on board a very unhappy Rose de Freycinet. That changed soon after they had landed, because in Rio she found two new friends.
France’s lost opportunity
When Rose de Freycinet visited Sydney, and despite having been robbed almost as soon as she set foot in the town, she saw advantages in the British method of founding a colony.
A colony of thieves
In the published French editions of Rose de Freycinet’s journal there is a gap between the arrival of the Uranie off the coast of New South Wales and the 27th of November, more than a week after she anchored in Neutral Bay. Was that week devoid of incident? Absolutely not.
A problem with some letters
During the three long years she was away from France, Rose de Freycinet wrote letters to her mother, and after her return copies were made and were preserved in the Freycinet family archives. Is it possible that there were not one but two transcriptions, and the second set was never completed?
Gabert’s complaint
One of the most prized possessions in Western Australia’s Battye Library is the manuscript of the diary kept by Joseph-Paul Gaimard during the first half of the planned (but never to be completed) round-the-world scientific voyage of the French corvette Uranie. For Western Australians its main interest is in the pages devoted to the ship’s two-week stay in Shark Bay, in 1818.
Rossel & Co.
When I first began working in the eastern part of Papua New Guinea, I was struck by the quite aggressively English names of the major features of its geography. But then, as our project moved offshore, a French influence began to appear.
The return of the de Freycinets: a 200th anniversary
On the 10th of November 1820 the three-master Physicienne, formerly the American gun-runner Mercury but recently bought into the French Navy and now commanded by Captain Louis de Freycinet, dropped anchor off Cherbourg. Also on board was his wife Rose, who had just become only the second woman ever to circumnavigate the globe, and was the first to leave behind a journal of her adventures.
Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled ………. penguins?
But who was Peter Piper, and what is his connection with penguins?
The partitioning of Timor
Alone among the islands between Borneo and New Guinea, the middling-sized island of Timor stands out as a land of two masters. The western part belongs with all its neighbours, as part of the Republic of Indonesia, but the slightly larger eastern part is the main component of the independent state of Timor Leste,
Gaimard’s diary – a puzzle
The first set of instructions issued by Louis de Freycinet to his officers was delivered to them in Sainte-Croix de Ténériffe on the 23 of October 1817, and the second, much longer, set ends with the statement that it was issued in the harbour of Rio de Janeiro on 28 December 1817. The diary proper then begins with the departure of the Uranie from Toulon on 17 September 1817.
The boats of the Uranie
No sailing ship ever went to sea in the 18th or 19th centuries without boats, either on board or in tow. . Oddly, in none of the equipment lists that I have seen so far, which meticulously list the supplies and provisions taken on board, is there any mention of the boats that went with the Uranie,, but there were at least four.
The strange affair of Lieutenant LeBlanc.
In the Introduction to the first (1927) publication of Rose de Freycinet’s journal, Baron Henri de Freycinet wrote that although it had been rumoured in Toulon that, to better accommodate his wife, Louis de Freycinet had disembarked his First Lieutenant LeBlanc before departure, the maritime prefect had no difficulty in doing justice to this malicious remark. It was a summary that was some distance short of the full truth.
Renira Purvis
One surprise for Rose when she was on Mauritius was an encounter with another naval wife in a somewhat similar position to her own. There were, however, also very important differences.
Kate Cochrane
If she had been taken to Valparaiso Rose would almost certainly have found herself meeting another extraordinary woman who, like her, had married a sailor many years older than herself. But unlike her, Kate Cochrane had not been welcomed into her husband’s family.
The hope of rescue
200 years ago, it was the approach of winter that was to give the castaways from the Uranie their first sight of a potential rescuer, because was that which was driving the whaling and sealing fleets north
The wreck of the Uranie
Exactly 200 years ago, on 14 February 1820, the French corvette Uranie, captained by Louis de Freycinet and with his wife illegally on board, struck a submerged rock and was wrecked on the uninhabited Falkland Islands.
Arago in love
In The Hunt for Earth Gravity there is a description of Jacques Arago’s last minute dash from Apra Harbour to Hågatña (and back) for a final farewell to a Chamorro girl with whom he had fallen, very temporarily, in love. Twenty years later he wrote much more about this.
Foreigners in the northern Marianas
Amongst the entertainments provided on Guam for the de Freycinets (and almost every other foreign visitor) was a performance of a close relative of the All Black’s haka, by a group of Hawaiians.
The Bonin Europeans
Had Louis de Freycinet, when he left Guam, chosen to go a little bit west of north, instead of a little bit east, and had he held that course a little bit longer before turning east, he could have visited the Bonin Islands,
Rose Atoll
On the 21st of October 1819, exactly 200 years before this blog was being posted, Rose de Freycinet wrote to her mother “Allow me, Madam, to inform you that the corvette Uranie discovered, to the east of the Archipelago of the Navigators, a small island that does not appear on any of the most recent charts ….”
Jean Baptiste Rives
None of the crew of the Uranie deserted in Hawaii, but when the corvette left the islands at least one Frenchman was left behind. He had been there when the expedition arrived …..
Hawaii at last
The ungovernable governors of Guam
When Dumont d’Urville visited Guam in 1828, he reported that the whole of the Marianas was administered by a single governor who… “maintains a shadow of a militia of one hundred to one hundred and fifty poorly dressed men, whom he pays in cloth from his stores, and who would be incapable of opposing the slightest resistance to the smallest regular force…
The Surprise
It was Don Watts, my friend and former colleague in Australia’s Bureau of Mineral Resources (now Geoscience Australia, but we are going back fifty years here) who put me on to this. Don is a fan of Patrick O’Brien’s Napoleonic wars novels, chronicling the deeds and disasters of Captain Jack Aubrey and his close friend, the part–Catalan ship’s doctor and scientist Stephen Maturin. We are already getting a feel here for being in the world of the Uranie…
LONG READ
Arago’s madness
In 1932 Jacques Arago wrote an account of his time in the mental hospital of Dr Esprit Blanche for the short lived journal Paris ou le Livre des Cent-et-Un (v.4, 197 – 226,). The original text reproduced hereis followed by an English translation
Quoy and Gaimard on reefs
TRANSLATION WORK IN PROGRESS. After their return from the Uranie expedition, Quoy and Gaimard presented a paper to the Académie royale des Sciences on the origin of coral reefs. It was a significant advance on what had gone before but, because they had never seen an atoll with a central volcanic peak, there was little chance that they would achieve the insights gifted to Darwin b his observations of TAhiti and Bora Bora.
Balance on climate
It takes a very special sort of arrogance to suppose that all climate scientists who accept Anthropogenic Global Warming as a reality are not only venal, self-serving and corrupt but also so mind-bogglingly stupid that they will repeatedly issue diagrams containing errors of the magnitude suggested by the overprints. The sort of arrogance, perhaps, that believes an argument is enhanced by spelling climate as ‘klimut’ and science as ‘siyenz’.
More on The scandal of Henry Browne
In 1823 Basil Hall, a British naval officer who was the first person to measure gravity in the Galapagos Islands, advised anyone who might follow him in taking gravity pendulums overseas to recognise the “… advantage which … would arise from having the whole experiment performed in England, by the person who is afterwards to repeat it abroad, not under the hospitable roof of Mr. BROWNE … but in the fields, and with no advantages save those he could carry with him…”