Spectres of the Atlantic Past and Present

Exchanges & Interactions Myths & Mysteries

Editor

Robynne Rogers Healey, PhD.

Creative Director

Alan A. Silva de Oliveira, MA.

Authors:

Rachel Nayaba Abou Chaibou

Tyler Burch

Danny Jeans

Hannah Kendon

Meghan McCausland

Will Taylor

Michaela Wiens

editorial

Welcome to our digital magazine project! This project is a summative, collaborative undertaking of the students in the Spring 2024 course History 392/592 – Sugar, Slaves, Silver: The Atlantic World, 1450 –1850. Atlantic history studies the interconnections between the geographic spaces around the Atlantic Ocean. It considers the Atlantic world as a unit of analysis. Historians generally periodize this world as beginning in the fifteenth century with the first interactions between Europeans, Africans, and Indigenous Americans and ending in the nineteenth century with western Atlantic independence movements, the end of the transatlantic slave trade, and the industrial revolution. Atlantic history explores the complex social, political, and economic interactions between the peoples of the Atlantic world over that time. While analyzed as a geographic unit, it was not an isolated one; as students here have learned, Atlantic history is best approached as a slice of world history.

editorial

This magazine is organized into two thematic sections—Exchanges & Interactions and Myths & Mysteries. Each section contains articles that explore an area of Atlantic history related to the theme. The authors have approached their topics from a perspective informed by their major or areas of particular interest. Readers will find that students have viewed the Atlantic world through multiple lenses. For more recognized, often romanticized topics, the focus is on the history behind invented pasts and the complexities necessary to nuance historical narratives. Our hope is that the study of Exchanges & Interactions in the Atlantic World will also disrupt simplistic ways of understanding the rich and varied history of the Atlantic world. The articles in the second section of the magazine reflect on ways that the Atlantic past remains present. The past’s Myths & Mysteries echo around us even today in the spaces we occupy, the monuments we create, and the stories we retell centuries after events have occurred. Echoes remind us of the silences inherent

in the production of history and the stories we still need to tell. As Michel-Rolph Trouillot said in his seminal 1995 work, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, “We now know that narratives are made of silences, not all of which are deliberate or even perceptible as such within the time of their production. We also know that the present is itself no clearer than the past” (152–53). Despite the magazine’s limitations, we hope that you will encounter new histories in these pages and see familiar stories in a different light.

This project would not have been possible without the collective efforts of students who willingly ventured into an unknown learning experience. Their thoughtful and committed engagement throughout this process has been inspiring. Thank you to Alan de Oliveira for sharing his talents and skills in design to create this final product at a very busy and stressful time of year.

content

Exchanges & Interactions

Interactions & Infections: How Discovery and Disease

Became a Deadly Duo

by Michaela Wiens

Pounding headaches, prevailing fevers, and pockmarks. Pustules spot nearly every inch of flesh. Blistering rashes bring nothing but utter pain and discomfort. The sounds of anguished screaming and crying ring in the ears of all those in proximity. Lie down. Stay stationary. Do not move. The desire for death to come upon the sick remains a thought kept to oneself, yet whispers of divine deliverance float i n the surrounding air. Slowly, the infection invades and conquers. Many of the infected pass on, often alone. Let us hope they made it to their forever home.

While the term “Age of Discovery” comes with a myriad of connotations, the ideas that most readily come to mind are likely related to conquests and novel goods, rather than the image of thousands of bodies irritated and inflamed with pustules and rashes. Unfortunately, this became the reality for individuals who — willingly and unwillingly — became associated with the triangular trading system. Trade across the Atlantic Ocean began in the fifteenth century between Europe, Africa, and the Americas. This

initial trading route is often referred to as the Columbian Exchange, subsequent to Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas in 1492. The Columbian Exchange quickly became associated with the widespread transfer of plants, animals, culture, and commodities. The combination of interactions and insufficient immunity of the populations in the New World created an environment in which multiple viruses thrived, though smallpox was particularly deadly. In analyzing the way in which Europeans exposed and transmitted disease to individuals native to the Americas and Africa, it is apparent that deadly diseases such as smallpox and ship fever, which emerged during the Transatlantic Trade, fostered an atrocious association with both the devastation and dehumanization of native populations.

An analysis of the transmission of diseases by Europeans, in particular the spread of smallpox, shows the way that the Columbian Exchange fundamentally altered economics and ecosystems, and introduced epidemics

to the New World. As Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian contend, “European contact enabled the transmission of diseases to previously isolated communities, which caused devastation far exceeding that of even the Black Death in fourteenth-century Europe.”1 However, during the Columbian Exchange, Europeans had herd immunity to the diseases they transmitted such as smallpox, measles, typhus, and cholera. Therefore, European populations remained relatively unscathed by the spread of diseases in comparison to the African and Native American populations. Death from these diseases affected the African and Native American populations on an infinitely larger scale than they affected European populations.

Europeans exposed the individuals in the Americas to disease very early on; as it has been recorded that smallpox “arrived in the western hemisphere in 1507 on the Caribbean island of Hispañola and went on to devastate the natives …. [thus] making European conquest of the Americas possible.”2 Prior to European contact,

“the peoples of the Americas suffered no smallpox, no measles, no chickenpox,”3 etc. However, after 1507, smallpox and a variety of other diseases remained a constant killer and “outbreaks of smallpox in the New World in the sixteenth century certainly included at least one severely fatal variant.”4 Dauril Alden and Joseph C. Miller comprehensively explain the characteristics of the disease based on severity:

The disease characteristically announced itself by provoking headaches, fevers, chills, and nausea. After those signs subsided, a rash appeared, first and most intensively on the face, throat, arms, and hands, and subsequently but with diminishing densities throughout the entire torso. More damaging than these visible manifestations were the attacks of the virus on internal organs, whose eventual failure brought death to as many as one out of four sufferers. Survivors were often left disfigured with pockmarks and sometimes suffered blindness.5

This thorough description provides insight into the devastation and damage caused by smallpox. While Alden and Miller’s explanation considers both those who succumbed to the disease and those who survived, in some Native American populations, smallpox was so destructive that the disease completely destroyed populations.

Smallpox in the Americas spread at varying rates. According to Massimo Livi-Bacci, “the extent and speed of … diffusion w[as] certainly greater in densely settled areas and much less so where the population was of small size, scattered, or isolated.”6 Nonetheless, “there was undeniably an avalanche of disease that decimated all native American peoples, and even obliterated many, such as the Tainos of the Greater Antilles.”7 While the Taino population became virtually extinct, the exact

extent of depopulation in the Americas is unknown and there is “wide disagreement about the size of the native populations at the time of first contact.”8 Even so, it has been estimated that “population losses may have been as high as 80 to 95 percent within the first 100 to 150 years of contact,”9 leaving the societies of the Americas looking quite different from pre-colonial times.

While the perspectives of those in the Americas who suffered from smallpox are not available as they were not given a voice to share their stories, there are first-hand accounts of the brutality of the conditions. A Franciscan friar named Fray Bernardino de Sahagún wrote in the Florentine Codex:

They could not walk; they only lay in their resting places and beds. They could not move; they could not stir; they could not change position, nor lie on one side, nor face down, nor on their backs. And if they stirred, much did they cry out. Great was

its destruction. Covered, mantled with pustules, very many people died of them. And very many starved; there was death from hunger, [for] none could take care of [the sick]; nothing could be done for them.10

In a sixteenth century Aztec diagram11 created by an unknown artist, smallpox victims are depicted in a state identical to the way in which Fray Bernardino de Sahagún described them in the Florentine Codex. Victims are lying down in a state of anguish, they are spotted with pustules from head to toe, and they are unbearably uncomfortable. The discomfort and death that became associated with this disease had a major impact on the Transatlantic world. While precise population numbers of the pre-colonial Americas remain up for debate, the diffusion of smallpox did indeed lead to varying degrees of death, which ultimately resulted in devastation and destruction for those indigenous to the land. This has

had lasting impacts, one of which is the loss of cultural stories and identities, which continues to impact Native American communities to this day.

While the African experience with disease during the period of Transatlantic trade bears similarities to the experience in the Americas, it is Africa in particular in which the correlation between disease and dehumanization, rather than decimation, is evident. Smallpox spread in Africa as it did in the Americas. James Carrick Moore, a surgeon interested in vaccination, described that smallpox “had … spread among the common people along the coast of Africa, to Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and as far as Senegal.”12 However, smallpox did not kill African populations to the same extent as it did in the Americas. Due to “the devastation of native populations from disease, [there became] a demand for labor that was met with the abduction and forced movement of over 12 million Africans during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries.”13 Essentially, disease produced labour shortages, which in turn “encourage[d] slavery as a way to refill the ranks of labourers.”14 This dynamic thus influenced the dehumanization of slaves and racialization of disease, as the interaction between disease and slavery further supported the European notions of African dispensability and inferiority.

While Africans on the continent were already exposed to a myriad of diseases from European colonists, such as smallpox, typhus, and cholera, the inhumane conditions in which Africans were subject while transported on slaveships fostered a breeding ground for disease to quickly multiply. Sowande Mustakeem retells a specific account of a smallpox outbreak on a ship that had yet to leave the African coast:

Henry Ellison, the ship’s surgeon, warned that he discovered the beginnings of smallpox during his examination of the newly purchased bondman.

Despite his preliminary findings, the captain of the ship disregarded the physician’s warnings. Instead, the captain explained to Ellison that ‘he did not believe it, and if it was, he would keep him [the captive male] as he was a fine man.’ Much to the captain’s dismay, after boarding the bondman, smallpox broke out among ‘almost all the Slaves on the ship,’ resulting in the death of ten captives by the next morning. Upon bringing their diseased bodies on the top deck, Ellison observed that, ‘the flesh and skin ha[d] peeled off their wrists when we ha[d] taken hold of them,’ which in his medical view represented merely one devastation of this disease. The outcome of this case highlights how quickly diseases spread and resulted in deaths even before the ship left the African coast.15

An account such as this one provides insight into the rate at which disease spread on slave ships. As seen in slave ship diagrams of the time, such as the “Diagram of the slave ship Vigilante 1823,”16 as well as depictions of chained African slaves arranged and treated like cargo,17 it is evident that hygiene and humane treatment were utterly disregarded, which resulted in a constant threat of disease. These conditions prompted the emergence of “ship fever” in which many enslaved Africans became “afflicted by a ‘general lassitude’, pain in the head and eyes, delirium, and swelling in the face,”18 which in a week’s time, could turn fatal. The voyage between Africa and the Americas, often referred to as the “Middle Passage,” claimed millions of African lives. This passage was so deadly that “Europeans involved in the trade as captains,

“Diagram of the slave ship Vigilante 1823” 1823 - 1830. ©New York Public Library.

“View of chained African slaves in cargo hold of slave ship, measuring three feet and three inches high” 1801 - 1900. ©New York Public Library.

sailors, or surgeons commonly referred to the slave ships as “slaughterhouses,” “coffins,” or “floating tombs.”19 These terms further the notion that disease was associated with dehumanizing conditions. Europeans were fully aware of the way in which disease spread and led to death, yet they continued to travel the passage and export slaves in conditions that favoured the spread of disease. It has been suggested that “doctors understood this disease [ship fever] as threatening to vulnerable White sailors, soldiers, and prisoners on transports, but not to Black captives on slavers,20 though this notion contributes to a racialized ideology that European lives were worth more than African lives. If doctors understood the basics of the threat of the disease, they would understand that the threat would be higher for those in closer contact to one another and those in insanitary conditions, which were the captives, not the captains.

Olaudah Equiano provides a first-hand account of the conditions during the Middle Passage in his personal biography, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, Or Gustavus Vassa, The African:

When I looked round the ship too and saw a large furnace or copper boiling, and a multitude of black people of every description chained together, every one of their countenances expressing dejection and sorrow, I no longer doubted of my fate; and, quite overpowered with horror and anguish, I fell motionless on the deck and fainted…. The closeness of the place, and the heat of the climate, added to

the number in the ship, which was so crowded that each had scarcely room to turn himself, almost suffocated us. This produced copious perspirations, so that the air soon became unfit for respiration, from a variety of loathsome smells, and brought on a sickness among the slaves, of which many died, thus falling victims to the improvident avarice, as I may call it, of their purchasers. This wretched situation was again aggravated by the galling of the chains, now become insupportable; and the filth of the necessary tubs, into which the children often fell, and were almost suffocated. The shrieks of the women, and the groans of the dying, rendered the whole a scene of horror almost inconceivable.21

Equiano’s immensely descriptive account vividly recounts smells and sights in such a way that one could imagine being there and witnessing the horrors, though these cruelties are only a glimpse of everything the occurred during the Transatlantic Slave Trade. Even when efforts were made to effectively fight the diseases which had plagued these individuals for years, Africans continued to remain disadvantaged as the “goal of stopping the

spread of diseases allowed for the implementation of a number of measures, which also had the effect of preventing African populations from challenging the power of European and American oficers on land and at sea.”22 Ultimately, Europeans utilized the diseases that plagued the New World to their economic advantage, systematically dehumanizing Africans for centuries, as the slave trade was not abolished until the 1800s.

In analyzing the ways Europeans exposed and transmitted disease to individuals native to the Americas and Africa, it has become apparent that deadly diseases which circulated during Transatlantic Trade, such as smallpox and ship fever, became associated with both decimation and dehumanization. The mixture of discovery and disease became a deadly duo and the ramifications of this combination have continued to have an impact on global systems and relationships throughout time.

ENDNOTES

Michaela Wiens Bachelor Student at TWU

Major: General Studies

Indigenous-French Relations in North America

by Danny Jeans

The cooperative relations between First Nations and the French in the seventeenth century are generally attributed to the small number of French colonists, the French reliance on Native fur trade partners, and the French’s relative acceptance of Native culture.23

The Relationship Pre-1608

Scholars have posited that that the relationship between the French and Indigenous peoples of North America was more cooperative than that of other imperial powers and Indigenous peoples.24 Eyeing the financial success the Spanish reaped from their empire in Central and South America, the French dreamed of a new world empire of their own.25 Beginning as early as 1534, Jacques Cartier and the French explored the Grand Banks of modern-day Newfoundland and Labrador and the St. Lawrence River, even planting a colony at Cap-Rouge (Quebec) in 1541.26 France’s colonial objectives early on did not have a focus on

cooperative relations; they were more focused on setting up new colonies, fishing, locating a Northwest Passage, and finding mines.27 During the sixteenth century, the French, like other European kingdoms, sought to protect their European territories and expand their military power through imperial expansion overseas. However, the bitterly cold winters, lack of wealth other than furs, and conflict with the local First Nations ended these early efforts.28 Even though the colony did not last, and the French were driven out by the Iroquois, the important groundwork of trade between the French and Indigenous people was laid.29

During the latter part of the sixteenth century, it was the French fishermen who continued quietly to expand the frontiers of France’s overseas claims and lay the groundwork for the expansion of French claims in North America.30 Norman and Breton fishermen who had long exploited the teeming cod stocks of the Grand banks of Newfoundland began pushing farther westward into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, in search of less crowded waters. As they did, the First Nations they met while drying or

salting their fish on Canadian shores plied them with furs in return for the iron knives, axes, kettles, pots, beads, and clothes that the French offered.31 Eventually, the furs themselves became the basis for trading expeditions farther up the St. Lawrence as French merchants sought out Indigenous traders before other European ships could compete.32

After the French failed at planting fur trading posts a number of times, explorer Samuel de Champlain who is considered the father of New France, pushed upriver and landed at Quebec in 1608.33 By establishing a permanent base there, Champlain hoped to get traders from up and down the St. Lawrence.34 The French were tired of having to trade with the Huron and Algonquian through the Montagnais who were acting as middlemen. The outpost along the St. Lawrence was intended to cut out the middleman and give the French direct access to trade with the Huron and Algonquian.35 This was a strategic move for the French and one that they needed to navigate very carefully if they wanted to establish a settlement that lasted. Through the new settlement at

Quebec, Champlain went on to foster a relationship with the local Indigenous peoples that set the stage for the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century expansion of the French empire in North America.

French Reliance on First Nations Fur Trade Partners

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the First Nations most commonly traded furs but also bark canoes, corn, berries, meat, and fish.36 Trade became the foundation of French and First Nations relations. The French gave the Algonquians cloth, clothing, alcohol, tobacco, awls, knives, hatchets, kettles, muskets, and other miscellaneous goods. In addition, when First Nations provided their labour to the French, either in their service as warriors or sexual partners, goods changed hands.37 The goal of the transaction was not necessarily profit. It was to satisfy the needs, of each party. In that context, the relation of the buyer and the seller was not incidental to the transaction, it was critical.38

The relationship that the French had with First Nations people is what enabled the French to be such large players in the fur trade business. It is important to remember that not one fur would have made it to Europe without the labour of First Nations trappers and their willingness to trade with Europeans.39 The French were able to remain in New France because the First Nations people permitted them to be there.40 Without First Nations alliances that the French had created with the Huron and Anishinaabeg, the French might have survived for considerably less time on the continent than they did. The French alliances with Indigenous peoples made French settlements targets of the English-allied Iroquois Confederacy who were rivals of the Huron, Anishinaabeg, and Algonquian peoples. Only their alliances with First Nations saved them.41

Samuel de Champlain played a significant role in cultivating that cooperative relationship with the First Nations. Champlain eagerly sought out the friendship and trade of First Nations, specifically the Algonquins and Hurons.42 These First Nations said they were willing

to exchange their pelts for the valuable goods and arms the French offered. However, before they would agree to the trading relationship, the French had to prove themselves worthy trading partners by supporting the Huron and Algonquian peoples in their ongoing conflict with the Iroquois. 43 Within the first year of Champlain’s settlement in Quebec, Champlain accompanied the Huron and Algonquians on a mission to ambush the Iroquois to show the French allegiance in helping defeat the Iroquois.44 After the Iroquois defeat, Champlain

wrote in his journal, “well satisfied with the results of the war, and that I had accompanied them so readily. We separated accordingly with loud protestations of mutual friendship; and they asked me whether I would not like to go into their country, to assist them with continued fraternal relations; and I promised that I would do so.”45

The Anishinaabeg, Odawa, Algonquian, and Huron First Nations continued to draw French newcomers into a world of First Nation warfare that almost consumed them.46 Yet, even in the midst of the destructive wars with the Iroquois in the seventeenth century, the Anishinaabeg—and especially the Odawa—created an important link between the French in Quebec and thousands of First Nations deep into the river valleys south of the Great Lakes. Those alliances, carefully

maintained with gifts and trade goods, helped save the struggling French colony.47 After the seventeenth-century wars, the Odawa effectively managed their relationship with the French, helping the French to build an empire into the North American interior, while protecting the trade they coveted and maintaining their own key position in the expanding trade.48 The French needed their alliance with the First Nations people and knew that they were the ones that ultimately would help them succeed in the fur trade industry.49 The French relied on their fur trade partners to obtain the fur, and in trade, the French supported First Nations in wars against their enemies, and provided them with the trade goods they wanted. The French depended on this partnership to expand the fur trade and their empire.

The Small Number of French Colonists

With France’s motivation in North America being centered around trade, they knew that their strong relations with the First Nations were dependent on traders, not settlers. The result was that colony of Quebec was more like a business operation than a colony.50 Since Champlain had arrived in 1608, few settlers had remained or survived, and by 1625–1626, the settler population numbered a mere forty-three souls.51 Over a decade later, there were still only 356 European settlers in all of New France.52 And, by 1663 there were only 3000 Europeans living in New France.53 Since Champlain had founded the colony of Quebec, it had effectively been run by a group of shareholders, the Company of One Hundred Associates.54 The company was the driving force of the French settlement. Those who chose to live there found it not only extremely dangerous due to wars and disease, but also a place that revolved mostly around the fur trade.55 Almost every European who lived there participated in the fur trade or enabled it in some way. Due to the ongoing war with the Iroquois, the colonists who were living in fear turned to France for help, and the king sent a new governor who would tighten his grip on the colony. And in 1663, the French crown assumed direct control over the colony.

When comparing the French population with the First Nations population that the French were in contact with across North America, the French only totaled around 3000 people, and the First Nations totaled more than 125,000 people.56 The difference between the number of Indigenous people and French settlers meant that the French relied on First Nations people to obtain furs for trade. The French needed strong cooperative relations to maintain the fur trade and not get kicked out.57 First Nations’ numerical superiority could have ended the

French colonial holdings. The First Nations also provided the French with knowledge and skills for surviving in North America.58 Despite having far fewer settlers than the English (between 1608 and 1760, the French brought 51,000 settlers to North America while the English settled 722,000 in that same period),59 New France’s colonial population was focussed on the success of the fur trade.60 It did not need a large number of settlers to claim large swathes of territory because it developed a cooperative relationship with First Nations people.

The French’s Relative Acceptance of First Nations Culture

The cooperative relationship between the French and Firth Nations has been referred to as the middle ground, a space where both groups worked to understand the other. According to Richard White, “the middle ground grew according to the need of people to find a means, other than force, to gain the cooperation or consent of foreigners. To succeed, those who operated on the middle ground had, of necessity, to attempt to understand the world and the reasoning of others and to assimilate enough of that reasoning to put it to their own purposes.”61 Both the French and First Nations learned about the other and lived according to their customs and accepted the other’s culture.

For the French, close cooperation with the First Nations was further encouraged because knowledge of native cultures and customs was essential to the success of New France.

The French adopted First Nations’ technologies such as fur clothing, techniques of hut building, and transport by canoe and snowshoes in order to survive in their new environment.62 The French needed cooperative relationship and showed it by adopting many First Nations’ customs.

The French also chose to live among the First Nations. Champlain recorded his thoughts about French traders living among the local population: “I had a young lad,

who had already spent two winters at Quebec, and who was Desirous of going with the Algonquins to learn their language. … Going to Captain Yroquet, who was strongly attached to me, I asked him if he would like to take this young boy to his country to spend the winter with him and bring him back in the spring. He promised to do so, and treat him as his own son, saying that he was greatly pleased with the idea.”63 A year later, Champlain encountered the young man, Étienne Brûlé, who had chosen to live with the Algonquin. He recalled, “I saw too my lad come dressed in the manner of the savages, mightily pleased with the treatment which the savages had accorded him, according to the custom of their country, and he related to me all that he had seen during his winter among them and had learned from said savages. … My lad … had learned their language very well.”64 Brûlé’s success in strengthening the French relationship with the Algonquin with whom he lived, Champlain realized he did not need to develop individual relationships with all the tribes himself. He could, instead, rely on traders who could live among the First Nations. The most influential and important French settlers for maintaining positive relations became trading company employees who lived with various

groups to encourage them to collect as many furs as they could and trade them to the French.65 These French traders managed to integrate into First Nations families, something French imperial officials and Jesuit missionaries tried but rarely succeeded.66

Through his relationship with the Hurons, Brûlé is remembered as a valuable employee who helped to expand French trade. These traders were paid highly for their services.67 Ethnohistorian Bruce Trigger contends that, “most of the French traders quickly adopted items of First Nations dress, accustomed themselves to use canoes and snowshoes, hunted alongside the men, and joined them in their ritual steam baths. All these activities won them the approval of their First Nations companions”68 These traders provided their indigenous allies with a more intimate and comprehensible view of Europeans than either French priests or government officials did. Moreover, apart from persuading their hosts to collect and trade larger numbers of beaver pelts, they had no motive to challenge or disrupt First Nations life. Hence the two groups got on well together.69

Champlain himself became increasingly accepting of First Nations culture. He went from questioning war rituals to being committed to his First Nations allies and to their methods of forest warfare.70 He also agreed to transport one of the Iroquois scalps back to France as a gift for the French king. This exchange symbolically represented the creation of Canadien culture based on French acceptance of certain indigenous traditions.71 By choosing adopt assimilation, rather than coercion, as a colonizing strategy, France utilized a different approach to colonization in North America.72 The French valued a cooperative relationship and did so by taking on certain First Nations teachings, techniques, clothing, and other cultural things and creating a middle ground where both parties could come together.

Conclusion

The cooperative First Nation relations established by the French in the seventeenth century are generally attributed to the French reliance on Native fur trade partners, the small number of French colonists, and

French acceptance of aspects of Native culture.73 The French did things differently than other colonizing empires in the early modern period due to their desire to control the fur trade. The Indigenous peoples of North America became part of a global market that stretched across the Atlantic. When they accepted European goods in return for furs, an emerging European market impinged on their lives.74 Their relationship with the French not only changed their own future, but it changed the lives of the French in North America, creating a new world for them both. The French showed a willingness to coexist, but their motives for that were not based on their concern for the First Nations people but for their desire to expand the fur trade. 75

ENDNOTES

Danny Jeans

Bachelor Student at TWU

Major: General Studies

Colonization & Resistance: The Impact of Dutch Rule on the Khoikhoi People of South Africa

by Hannah Kendon

For centuries, South Africa has been ruled and controlled by foreign powers. Its history has been coloured with periods of struggle, resilience, and cultural diversity. The heart of this article lies with the story of the Khoikhoi people, an ethnic group of the southern tip of Africa, the Cape of Good Hope. The Khoikhoi form part of the Khoisan people, an ethnic group comprised of two distinct cultural and linguistic groups, the Khoikhoi (whom the Dutch referred to as Hottentots), who were also known as herdsmen or pastoralists, and the San (Bushmen), who were hunter-gatherers. The fate of these two groups was intertwined with European ambitions and their search for dominion and influence in lands on distant shores as soon as the Dutch settled in 1652. Their lives were fundamentally transformed, and their way of life forever changed after the colonization by the Dutch, and later the British. Their societies, economies, and identities were shaped in ways that continue to reverberate from the past and ultimately led to their collapse. However, this article will explore the complex and often tumultuous relationship between the Khoikhoi specifically, and the Dutch colonial power.

children, helping carry heavy baskets, drumming and dancing, fashioning tools to chase away lions, and so much more.77 The Khoikhoi lived as a community, as if from the same family, in kraals or villages with a shared right over the cattle.78 Land was important to them as a resource for their livelihoods, but also as a cultural practice or rite. For example, a child’s umbilical cord was buried in the family kraal, and likewise, its funeral would occur in the same spot.79 Due to their livelihoods as herders, they moved constantly depending on the season and weather, which meant that temporary huts were built and considered their

Before European settlers reached the shores of the southern tip of Africa, the Khoikhoi had their own way of life, society, language, and customs. They were community-driven, with each family member having their own role to play within the immediate family, but also within the greater community. The economy of the Khoikhoi was largely focused on subsistence, restricted to agricultural production, cattle raising, and hunting.76 One could find them herding cattle and sheep, milking cows, travelling on a tethered ox, women tending to homes. Additionally, the community demonstrated a collectivist culture; even if only one man successfully hunted game for food, it would be shared with other families and people in their community.80

While the first Dutch settlement occurred in 1652, the first European sighting of the southern tip of Africa was in 1488 when the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the coast. The Portuguese described the

native tribes as being “rich in cattle, living in a happy and comfortable manner [...] remarkable for the excellence of their morals, that they kept the law of nations better than most civilized people.”81 This description contradicts what many other narratives of the Khoikhoi or indigenous people of the Cape of Good Hope were described as in later years by the Dutch colonials. For example, they are also known for being fearless in battle, which was evident through the death of Francisca de Almeida (the first viceroy of the Portuguese in India), who was set upon and killed by the Khoikhoi after he attempted to manipulate a barter and kidnapped Khoikhoi children.82 This, in some ways, explains the descriptions and depictions of the Khoikhoi as barbaric, uncivilized, and bloodthirsty in other accounts by the Portuguese as well as the Dutch colonials.

The first recorded European representation of the Khoikhoi was Hans Burgkmair’s 1508 woodcuts.83 His woodcuts alongside other sketches and personal reports

paint a European vision of the practices and livelihoods of the ethnic group before colonial influence, as the interaction occurred during an expedition to Asia and primarily consisted of trading. As recorded by Willem Lodewijckzoon in 1595, who travelled with Cornelius Hartman, the experience was successful with iron, copper, and Spanish wine being traded for sheep and cattle to aid their journey.84 Yet, the interaction also led to a discovery of the differences between the European and indigenous Khoikhoi when it came to food. The Khoikhoi ate the raw entrails of oxen killed by the voyagers and ate the flesh of men whether they were dead or alive.85 “This experience shocked the voyagers and set the stage for future interactions in which the indigenous inhabitants were viewed as barbaric. This vignette of the indigenous peoples of Africa was to remain for many centuries on maps depicting the southern-most tip of the ‘dark continent’; further reports describing the ethnic group made use of words such as “black,” “uncivilized,” and “beast-like.”86

It is important to acknowledge that the descriptions of the Khoikhoi do not all follow this same narrative. One writer recorded that the Hottentots are “capable of strong attachments [... and] I never found that any little act of kindness or attention was thrown away upon a Hottentot.”87

In other words, they were also known to greatly express their gratitude when given the opportunity. There was a sense of contentment and joy that the native tribes expressed in the most menial of tasks that in other foreign European societies would not have been expressed, such as singing and dancing whilst walking the cattle and milking them. On the other hand, Johann Jakob Merklein reported his experience during the initial settlement and described the natives as “savages, not tall in stature, thin, smeared with grease and filth,” and their dress consisted of sheepskin that merely covered their private areas.88

In 1652 the Dutch established their first settlement of one hundred males on the southern tip of Africa as a trading post for the Dutch East India Company (VOC).89 While it marked the start of a new period of exploration and trade for the Dutch, it was the beginning of a period of colonial subjugation for the Khoisan.90 The interests of this initial settlement were focused on supplying VOC vessels as they passed Africa travelling to and from the Spice Islands. However, Jan van Riebeeck, the

first commander, also wanted the Khoikhoi to adopt Western culture, the Dutch language, and to convert to Christianity.91 Initially, the relations between the Khoikhoi and the Dutch were peaceful and consisted of the settlers trading tobacco and metals for Khoikhoi beef.92 As the settler numbers increased and more land was needed to supply their people and their ships, this fair trade of goods could not be sustained.93 Settlers encroached further onto indigenous lands, forcing the native tribes to move away from the Cape Peninsular. By 1657, the Dutch were permitted by the Company to take land and encourage Dutch settlement, initiating the first permanent white population in the Cape.94 This growth of white settlers and expansion of land use by whites meant that the settlers would need slave labour, so free independent farmers were brought to work the land. The Khoikhoi, however, resisted Dutch expansion and land dispossession and went to war against the Dutch in 1659, attacking the Dutch food supply, destroying their farms, and stealing their cattle and sheep.95 At the beginning of 1660, after a period of inaction with little movement from either side to continue engaging in battle, the war ended with an acknowledgement of the colonists’ presence and land they had claimed, while the Khoikhoi kept the stolen livestock.

By the 1670s there was a shift in the impact of the Dutch on the Khoikhoi. The Dutch waned in its commitment to Khoikhoi independence by further encroaching on their land, but also militarily, economically, judicially, and diplomatically.96 The second Khoikhoi-Dutch War began in 1673 with both sides attacking each other as the colonists invaded on more indigenous land, and the natives attempted to push them back.97 The war ended in 1677 when the Dutch realized “little further booty” would come out of the war and a peace agreement was concluded.98 In this way, the “Khoikhoi retained internal

political control of their affairs, but permanently lost that most fundamental aspect of political authority -- the ability to secure the integrity of their own territory.”99 The Khoikhoi lived in areas controlled by Europeans according to terms established by the VOC. This meant that the Dutch had free access to Khoikhoi land as they controlled it, and the Khoikhoi were no longer able to access land that they had previously lived on.100 Additionally, the VOC began handing out land it controlled to free independent farmers to cultivate, consequently forcing the Khoikhoi out of the land they had once used for pasturing as their “patterns of transhumance created only a seasonal demand on the land.”101 The incorporation of the Khoikhoi into the colony, according to C.W. de Kiewiet, was undramatic,102 as the people quickly fell into the category of a subordinate ‘labouring class.’103 As their access to land dwindled and they were unable to support their livestock due to lack of resources (grazing fields and water), some Khoikhoi “were compelled by necessity to work for burgher farmers at harvest time, or to tend their cattle.”104 Although the Khoikhoi learned a

significant amount about veterinary skills to look after their livestock, train oxen for ploughing, break horses, do kitchen work, prune vines, and work wine presses, their earnings were meagre.105 Nevertheless, in payment for their work, they were provided with a supply of tobacco, alcohol, bread, milk, vegetables, and sometimes calves and sheep.106 Therefore, the relations between the Khoikhoi and the Dutch were not always tense and violent, as there were many instances of Khoikhoi serving in the farms of the free independent farmers in a mutually beneficial relationship.

Additionally, as the Khoikhoi lifestyle diminished, many lost their livestock and resorted to a huntergatherer lifestyle, essentially becoming Bushmen. 107 The years 1731 and 1739 particularly showcased the Khoikhoi resistance to the Dutch colony in the Cape through raids on farms and the stealing of cattle and sheep. In 1739, the Khoikhois stole more than 400 cattle and 2,400 sheep, sending a message to the Dutch that the Khoikhoi would continue to raid and destroy farms

to drive the Dutch out of their land.108 The Khoikhoi lost their ethnic identity, their land, their way of life, and their cultural rites of passage. While originally a collectivist group, the Khoikhoi had to adapt due to the encroaching of the Dutch and began stealing from other Khoikhoi; the Dutch presence and involvement turned kraal against kraal. 109 Due to land dispossession, many of the Khoikhoi moved inland either combining with other native tribes or battling them for land. Even those who joined European settler farmlands as servants were only gradually incorporated and their numbers picked up more after the collapse of the Khoikhoi chiefdoms.110 In other words, a number of characteristics that separated the Khoikhoi from the Dutch settlers and colonists had eroded. These factors included: incorporating the Khoikhoi into Dutch society as wage labourers, cultural exchanges,111 and their partial or total dependence on the Dutch.112 It is important to note that the incorporation of the Khoikhoi and thus cultural exchanges were gradual, as the Khoikhoi “possess a homogenous culture and a family structure, undamaged by slavery, to transfer to their young: independent domicile and family solidarity often continued undisturbed.”113 This, however, did not remove the fact that land dispossession further inhibited the Khoikhoi from continuing their way of life before the Dutch settlers arrived. Moreover, their transhumance systems that had allowed them to roam the lands of the Cape of Good Hope seasonally were no longer possible as the Dutch controlled more of their former land. The geopolitical power that the VOC held over the Khoikhoi’s way of life eventually led to the dissolution of their culture, “opting for dependence over a barren, insecure, and waterless independence away from their homes.”114

The story of the Khoisan is one of resilience and resistance in the face of centuries of colonization and oppression. Their story encapsulates the tragic consequences of colonialism, as their once vibrant culture eroded and diminished as the Dutch expansion influenced Southern Africa. From the arrival of the Dutch in 1652, the Khoisan experienced profound changes to their way of life, land, and culture. Dutch rule brought about land dispossession, servant labour, and cultural assimilation, which deeply impacted Khoisan communities and shaped their experiences for generations to come. They faced relentless pressure and displacement at the hands of foreign powers seeking dominion and economic gain. The initial peaceful interactions between the Khoikhoi

and the Dutch quickly gave way to violent conflicts and land dispossession. The Khoikhoi lost their ethnic identity, land, and cultural practices. The dissolution of Khoikhoi culture and the loss of their ancestral lands underscore the profound injustices perpetrated by colonial powers. Yet, amidst these challenges, they demonstrated remarkable strength and resistance. They fought back against colonial encroachment through armed uprisings, alliances with other indigenous groups (the San), and acts of cultural preservation.

Hannah Kendon Bachelor Student at TWU Major: International Studies

Discovering the Luso-African World

by Rachel Nayaba Abou Chaibou

In the fifteenth century, the Portuguese played a significant role in what Western historians call the Age of Discovery. They embarked on maritime expeditions that ultimately led to their arrival into the continent of Africa. During the fifteenth century, the Spanish and the Portuguese were at the top of their navigation pursuits. The Portuguese had many motivations to broaden their navigation and their exploration of Africa and the rest of the world. First, they were trying to find a route around the Cape of Good Hope because they wanted to access the trading riches in South Asia. These riches included lucrative spices like pepper, cloves, and cinnamon. Second, they wanted to bypass the Arab Muslims of the Indian Ocean and the Turks of the Mediterranean. They also wanted to access the West African gold trade in the Mali and Asante Kingdoms. A third motivation was the desire to spread Christianity; this was called the Reconquista. They wanted to retake the area that the Muslims had conquered. Fourth, they were looking for wealth and glory. There were many Portuguese expeditions

along the coast of Africa during the fifteenth century, starting with the Azores islands in the North of Africa, all the way to present-day Angola. As the Portuguese ships continued to explore southward, they established trading posts and forts along the African coast. These posts served as bases for further exploration, trade, and missionary activities. These Portuguese settlements have left their footprints along the coast of Africa, and their culture has been imparted to many of the African states they interacted with, especially through the creation of the Luso-Africans.

The Luso-Africans were the offspring of the Portuguese settlers and traders and the local Africans in the places they settled or visited. The Luso-Africans were considered to be in a category of their own. They were neither regarded as Portuguese, nor were they seen as Africans.115 As a minority group they faced challenges, but they negotiated a place in the social hierarchy of the communities in which they lived. Luso-Africans were present down the West coast of Africa wherever the Portuguese had set up their trading posts. In Senegambia, they were known to be traders and middlemen between the Portuguese and local African communities, they spoke a distinctive language, were members of the Catholic faith, and their unique mixed culture is evident in the distinctive architecture they developed.

After many expeditions, Portugal established a trading presence along the Upper Guinea Coast from Senegal to Sierra Leone. Many Portuguese emigrants settled along the coast. A large number of these Portuguese settlers were Jews escaping the religious persecution of the Reconquista. They were known as lançados 116 Many of them married women from the local communities. By the early sixteenth century, Luso-Africans (or “Portuguese” as they called themselves) were established at trading posts from Petite Côte in Senegal south to Sierra Leone. The Luso-Africans

developed a new culture that blended both African and European elements. The earliest lançados established themselves along the coast as commercial middlemen between African and European traders and as the coastal traders between Sierra Leone and Senegambia.117 Though they had taken this occupation upon themselves, the Portuguese Crown strongly discouraged their involvement as middlemen until the second decade of the sixteenth century. Even with those obstacles, the Luso-Africans played an important role in trade with Portugal and the Cape Verde islands. In Petite Côte in Senegal, the lançados involved in commerce were settled permanently and were mostly sedentary, while in Sierra Leone and Rio Nunez,

Casta Painting dating from the early 1700s. By Juan Rodríguez Juárez (1675-1728), an important

the lançados sailed there regularly from S. Domingos (north of present-day Bissau).

The Portuguese name for the Luso-Africans was filhos de terra. There were two subgroups of Luso-Africans— mainland Luso-Africans and Cape Verdeans, both descendants of the Portuguese. Both subgroups employed the same essential cultural criteria of group identification. Many characteristics were attributed to being part of the Luso-African community and by the second half of the sixteenth century significantly, those characteristics were defined not racially, but by cultural and socio-economic characteristics.118

To be Luso-African was to be a trader. Many LusoAfricans were the trading bridge between the Portuguese and the local African communities. Several Luso-Africans were employed on Portuguese trading ships where they worked as grumetes, 119 or apprentices. Many grumetes gained valuable commercial experience and skills in navigating European-style vessels. They had a foot in each world because of their ability to communicate with the Portuguese and local Africans. The further the Portuguese went inland, the more indispensable the Luso-Africans became. The acted as pilots, boat hands, and interpreters.

Luso-Africans were also active in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The trans-Atlantic slave trade during this era was just starting to gain traction. The Senegambia

Miguel Cabrera, Pintura de Castas, 5. from Spaniard and Mulatto, Morisca. Circa 1763. Museo de Historia Mexicana, Monterrey

region exported around seven hundred slaves annually, not including slaves exported illegally.120 Including illegal slave exports would increase the number to between two thousand to three thousand slaves exported annually. Lack of evidence makes it hard to gauge how influential the Luso-Africans were in the slave trade. It is certain that they engaged in the selling of slaves; it is not clear how involved they were.121

Portuguese identities were also defined by language. In the beginning, the language they spoke was Portuguese, but over time the language developed into Creole or Crioulo. Crioulo conjoins vocabulary that is derived from Portuguese and uses a grammatical structure derived from West Atlantic languages. This was the result of a process of cultural assimilation. This Luso-African language emphasized the hybrid of the community, and it portrayed the assimilative nature of the culture with which it was associated. This language evolved over a long time. Because of the lack of enough historical resources, it is estimated that the first form of Crioulo evolved in the Petite Côte-Gambia region during the first half of the seventeenth century.122 In 1602, a trader named Pieter de Marees noticed that the local people at Portudal on the Petite Côte had their own unique language that was a mixture of many different languages.123 This notation strongly speaks to the existence of a hybrid trading language along the Petite Côte by the early seventeenth century. In 1646, further south from Petite Côte in the Gambia, Christian missionaries stated, “many Christians ... who have never taken Confession and who speak a little Portuguese, by means of which they express themselves as best they can.”124 This implies that there was a form of Crioulo along the lower Gambia by the early to midseventeenth century.

Due to the expansion of Portuguese presence on the West African Coast, many different forms of Crioulo

emerged, depending on the local African language around them. There are three that are most common. The first is the Crioulo that is found in the Upper Guinea Coast. This form of Crioulo has lexical Wolof origins and is entangled with Portuguese. It can be found on the island of Rufisque, Portudal, Joal, River Gambia, Cacheu, Bissau, and Sierra Leone.125 Eventually this form of Crioulo was naturalized and used in day-to-day life. The second form is found in Lower Guinea Coast. The Crioulo here is largely mixed with Edo the language of Benin, but also with many other languages.126 In different areas this Crioulo had a different affect. In the Gold Coast, around the trading post of Elmina, Crioulo was only used as a form of trading language, and it was only naturalized by Luso-Africans. In Sao Tome and Principe, Edo Crioulo was naturalized and used in everyday life even among non Luso-Africans. This is because many slaves in this area were transported from the Kingdom of Benin where Edo was the main language. The third form of Crioulo can be found in what is today Angola and Namibia.127 This Crioulo was an amalgamation of the Bantu languages of the area and was closer to Portuguese than the other two. Today Angola has the strongest remnants of the Portuguese language than anywhere else in Africa.

A third characteristic that makes up the Luso-African identity is their religion. Along the coast of Africa, different groups were associated with different religions and their religious practices. The Luso-Africans were characterized as “Catholics.” Their Catholicism was an amalgamation of Christianity, Judaism, and different African practices.128 Because of the scarcity of priests, many Catholic LusoAfricans lacked regular access to the sacraments, leading them to participate in African rituals on the side. Many Luso-Africans converted to Catholicism for strategic business reasons since European merchants often

threatened not to conduct business with them because they were not Catholics or Christians. Because of this, many Luso-Africans were content to be perceived as Catholics while still engaging in their African rituals behind the scenes. Over time their “Catholicism” diminished, and the Christians whose religion was mixed with African rituals increased. In 1607, a priest by the name of Father Barreria visited Sierra Leone, and upon his return, he stated that Sierra Leone was more heathen than Christian, and they were people who went many years without sacraments or mass. Under Portuguese influence the biggest conversion to Christianity happened in the Kingdom of Kongo.129 During this time, the King of Kongo and the royal family converted to Christianity. As a result, thousands also converted, but many aspects of their religious beliefs also lingered.

The fourth characteristic attributed to Luso-African identity is a distinctive architecture. Luso-Africans built houses that had a vestibule at the entrance and were surrounded by a verandah known as an alpainter The houses were rectangular, and the exterior walls were painted white with a wash of clay or lime. Over time from Senegal to Bissau, this style of architecture became to be known as à la portugaise . This style of building was employed throughout the eighteenth century, and in places as far as the islands of Réunion. This distinctive building style cemented the LusoAfricans’ role as commercial middlemen because it afforded them a place to entertain traveling merchants in the vestibule. The dwelling also was ideal for the climate in the area.

As the Portuguese explored further south, Luso-African communities emerged wherever they established trading posts. Luso-Africans also inhabited the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe in the Gulf of Guinea, which became important centers of Portuguese trading and colonial activities. The Portuguese transported slaves to these islands to engage in the production of sugar and cocoa. Here, too, a Luso-African community emerged. On this island, the Luso-African community also migrated from the African coast where they were living. The LusoAfricans were involved heavily in the slave trade and were known to be commercial middlemen between the Portuguese and the local Africans. In Central West Africa, Angola was a Portuguese colony for many centuries, and it received large numbers of Portuguese settlers. This resulted in a massive Luso-African community. Just as in Senegambia, São Tomé and Príncipe, the Luso-African identity was largely attributed to being tradesmen and the middlemen between the Portuguese and the local African community. In Angola, the Luso-African community was nominally known for transporting many slaves to Luanda, a major trading post for the Portuguese and a major slave port. Because of their investments in land and slaves, the Luso-Africans were known as the middle class of the social hierarchy.130 Portuguese independent merchants and commission agents came ashore in different major cities such as Dondo, Ambaca, Libolo, and Kasanje131. They sold trade goods and commodities such as textiles, guns, and rum on credit to the LusoAfricans (or sertanejos as they were known here). These sertanejos were licensed to trade, and prepared caravans that travelled to the slave markets inland to exchange European trade goods for captives.

Sertanejos were often compared to the French Canadian coureurs de bois, the Argentine gaucho, the American cowboy, or the Brazilian bandeirante 132 This is because,

while engaging in trade with local African groups, they had to go so far inland sometimes that they could be considered explorers. They went places no one had gone before to find slaves and other commodities. Among some of these sertanejos were Tomé Francisco, Luiz Aras, and Felipe da Costa Palermo.133 A trip from Luanda inland to get slaves could take anywhere from several months to years to complete. Many times, the sertanejos would have to make several stops at different slave markets until they had a full libambo (coffle). A full coffle could range from twenty slaves up to one hundred slaves. Once the coffle of enslaved Africans was full, the sertanejo led the caravan on the long march back to Luanda where they sold the captives and then repaid the independent merchants who had sold them goods on credit.134 The merchants then offered new assortments of trading goods, and the cycle commenced again. During the first half of the seventeenth century, many Luso-Africans also engaged in the transportation of slaves across the middle passage to the Portuguese colonies of Brazil.135 Towards the end of the eighteenth century, their involvement in that part of the slave trade declined, and they focused their resources on the internal African trading network. Central West Africa had the largest number of slaves taken out of its ports. So many slaves shipped across the Atlantic from this area that it was nicknamed Mae Negra,136 which means Black Mother.

Luso-African communities arose because of the assimilation between Portuguese settlers and local communities. Due to the expansive exploration of the Portuguese, the Portuguese settled across the Western Coast of Africa. Luso-Africans were found down the entire West African coast. Luso-African communities emerged wherever the Portuguese established trading posts. Far from being identified solely as a mixedrace people, Luso-Africans were identified by their

occupation as intermediaries between the Europeans and Africans. They were actively involved in coastal trade, and expanded their commercial activities inland, capturing and selling Africans from inland spaces where the Portuguese could not venture. While they were nominally Catholic, they retained remnants of African worship, and they had their own languages, which were an amalgamation of Portuguese and local West African languages. Their identity was also tied to the particular

style of architecture they developed called a la portugaise.

To this day there are remnants of Luso-African history and culture—language, religion, and architecture— throughout former Portuguese colonies.

Rachel Nayaba Abou Chaibou

Bachelor Student at TWU

Major: International Studies

Myths & Mysteries

Mysteries Hidden in Ice: The Story of a Lost Expedition & the Search for its Ghosts

Tyler Burch

In 1845, England sent out an expedition to the Arctic in search of the formidable “Northwest Passage.” This was a journey led by the British Captain Sir John Franklin, a gentle and veteran sailor, who was accompanied by a crew of 129 men, two dogs, and a pet monkey.137 The crew sailed in the famous HMS Erebus and the Terror, the strongest navy ships available, built with the strongest English oak and equipped with powerful steam engines.138 They were given the task of connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific by finding a new route through the Arctic Ocean. What was supposed to be a short journey that would benefit the British empire ended with the mysterious disappearance of the expedition, leading to multiple searches over decades and mysteries that continue to preoccupy the world.

The fascination with discovering the Northwest Passage was not new in 1845; in fact, there is evidence that dates to the early 1500s that shows an interest in finding a passage in the north.139 Early motives for finding a route included finding open seas

beyond the ice, British competition with the Spanish, finding a direct route to Asia, the hunt to test scientific theories and answer other questions.140 This was an area that was relatively unexplored by Europeans, so the search for a route that would further connect the world motivated those willing to finance and lead expeditions.

Back in the 1760s, a Swiss geographer had suggested that seawater cannot freeze because of its salt composition.141

This theory led Franklin to undertake his first voyage to the Arctic in 1818 where he and his fellow explorers discovered, much to their surprise, that saltwater seas do freeze. Because of this, the 1818 expedition was forced to turn around and return to England having accomplished virtually nothing.142 Though Franklin’s Arctic experience disproved the theory that seas do not freeze, the lack of European experience in the Arctic continued to produce untested theories. These theories inspired adventurous men like Franklin to explore the Arctic, seeking answers to the region’s unsolved mysteries.

Franklin was born in Spilsby, England in 1786, and from a noticeably early age, he was fascinated with maritime exploration. At the age of fourteen, he entered the Royal Navy and served in many battles, including the famous Napoleonic Wars.143 Franklin has been described as a complex intelligent man, a strong yet gentle leader, a bold and brave explorer, and pious and pure.144 Along with his experience in the navy, he was an avid explorer, involved in many global expeditions, including three to the Arctic.145 When a new opportunity to revisit the Arctic came into focus in 1844, Franklin knew he had to apply. His goal was simple: find and sail through the entirety of the Northwest Passage, creating a direct route to Asia.146 Whoever completed this first could claim the discovery of the full Northwest Passage.

Franklin got the job. In May of 1845, the expedition set off from Britain with a mission to sail through Baffin Bay and

Lancaster Sound through to the Bering Strait to complete the Northwest Passage.147 Three smaller vessels accompanied the voyage to the Whalefish Islands in Disco Bay on the west coast of Greenland, where they stopped to collect supplies. The smaller ships returned to England, bringing back five

William Derby, John Franklin, before 1845,

sailors, leaving the expedition with 129 sailors.148 On July 12, the expedition sailed North to Baffin Bay where they came across two whaling ships. They had a brief encounter. No one on the whaling ships knew that they would be the last people to encounter Franklin’s crew alive.149

Today, we know that Franklin’s expedition made it as far as the Barrow Strait, but due to ice, they were forced to seek shelter during the winter of 1845-46 near an island known as Beechey Island.150 In the spring, it is assumed that the ships followed a route past Prince of Wales Island, until they were taken over by ice off the north coast of King William Island.151

What happened next? Were they stuck in the ice all year? Did the ships sink? These were possibilities. Anthony Brandt explains the dangers of the Arctic:

Storms come up quickly, without warning. Mist freezes on ropes and sails and makes them too stiff to manage. Fog can last for days, for a week, two weeks. Ice floes six eight, ten feet or more thick and two or three square miles in area drive implacably on ships. Ice can wedge a ship right out of the water. The animals can be dangerous. Polar bears will attack people, drag them off, and eat them.152

Despite these dangers, England sent one of their best and most experienced Arctic sailors on this expedition, believing that he surely knew how to deal with ice. When the ships had not returned in more than two years, an expedition led by Sir John Richardson was sent out to find them.153 Richardson’s expedition did not find Franklin and his crew. For twelve consecutive years, further expeditions tried to find out what had happened to the Franklin expedition.154 Nearly thirty separate expeditions tried to find Franklin and his men. Only a few were able to provide some clues about the fate of the Franklin expedition.

One of the expeditions that found traces of Franklin and his crew was led by Captain Austin. In 1850, Austin found an empty cairn155 on Beechey Island in the Barrow

Supposed Route of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror During Franklin’s Expedition 1845-48, 2019, map

Strait. However, around the cairn were traces of a tent, broken bottles, and other items that suggested Franklin and his men might have been there. Further exploration on the island pointed to more clues such as the remains of a garden, empty tin cans, and other scattered debris. More importantly was the discovery of three graves with headboards, signifying that three men had died and been buried on Beechey Island during the winter of 1845–46.156

There were no more clues until Captain John Rae’s discoveries in 1854. By this time, nine years after Franklin’s expedition had left England, most people had given up, believing that Franklin and his men were dead. Still, Rae went to the Arctic searching for the remains of Franklin’s expedition. Rae’s discovery came through the insights of the Inuit whom Rae met. They said they had heard of thirty-five or forty white men who starved to death. Rae subsequently met more Inuit who had items

like spoons and forks that were engraved with the names of crew members such as Francis Crozier, Franklin’s second in command.157 Rae spent months with these Inuit learning about what about what had happened, eventually uncovering some horrifying news: “From the mutilated state of many of the bodies and the contents of the kettles, it is evident that our wretched Countrymen had been driven to the last dread alternative, as a means of sustaining life.”158 By this, he meant cannibalism.

The news that the survivors had eaten each other haunted the people back in England, especially Jane Franklin who, on hearing this horrific news, used her own money to fund one final search. She funded an expedition led by Francis L. McClintock, who captained the Fox outfitted with a crew of twenty-five sailors. They left for the Arctic on July 1, 1857, but it was not until 1859 that they finally found some answers.159 With the help of some Inuit, they

found a skeleton in a uniform, in which it was assumed that the individual had fallen while he was walking and died.160 Later, more cairns and a note were found near Victory Point. The note stated:161

(25th April) 1848-HM’s Ships Terror and Erebus were deserted on the 22nd April, 5 leagues NNW of this, having been beset since 12th Septr. 1846. The Officers and Crews, consisting of 105 souls, under the command of Captain F.R.M. Crozier landed here in Lat. 69° 37’ 42” Long. 98° 41’ … Sir John Franklin died on 11th of June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 Officers and 15 Men.162

While this answered the question about what happened to Franklin and some of his crew, there were still many unanswered questions. The unknowns of this expedition led to an obsession with trying to solve the mysteries, not only immediately after the expedition went missing, but still today. As humans, no matter the era, we seem to be drawn to stories of cannibalism, freezing in the ice, or even getting mauled by a polar bear.

What happened to these 129 men who went missing in the ice and why are we still obsessed with this story today? The answer is complicated. The desire to solve the mysteries surrounding the Franklin expedition has led to a number of discoveries. The specter of this story has taken researchers well beyond discoveries of cannibalism to find mummies, evidence of lead poisoning, and, most recently, the remains of the two ships, the Erebus and Terror

After Rae’s discoveries that cannibalism must have occurred, many sailors and scientists have looked for evidence to support this terrifying claim. Owen Beattie, an assistant professor at the University of Alberta (UA), was fascinated with this story, and decided to pursue it further by going to the Arctic in 1881 to collect any skeletal remains left on King William Island.163 Collected bones were sent to UA for examination. The results proved that there was physical evidence to support the likelihood of cannibalism. The bones had cut marks created by a metal

Victory Point Note, 1847, photograph of note, Canadian Museum of History

Franklin Expedition, 1874, From The Frozen Zone and its Explorers, by Alexander Hyde © Encyclopedia Britannica

tool, and the fractures in the bones showed that they had been forcibly broken.164 This evidence along with Rae’s account in 1854, and many Inuit reports, such as Inuit findings of boots filled with cooked human flesh, bodies that had been sawed, skulls with holes in them, and more, shows that some of Franklin’s men likely resorted to cannibalism to keep themselves alive.165 Beattie provides a stark description of how this might have unfolded:

So cannibalism follows a pattern: once the decision is made, the initial sections removed from the body are the meatier areas like the buttocks, thighs, lower legs and arms. Recognizably human parts, such as hands and feet, are not eaten at first. As time passes and hunger continues to tear at the survivors, the options of where the flesh comes from are reduced, and bone marrow, organs, arteries and skin are consumed. Removal of muscle tissue is usually done with a knife or other sharp object, and this can leave butchering marks on the bone. Removal of bone marrow requires the bone to be smashed open. The brain is either pulled through the base of the skull or eaten after the face is cut off. The need by members of Franklin’s dying crew for a portable food supply was the reason for the only exceptions to this pattern.166

This gruesome image of humans eating each other for survival haunts our perceptions of this expedition to this day. It also led to the discovery of a possible cause of death for the majority of these men—a large quantity of lead in the skeletal remains.

These bones, as well as bones collected from three Inuit, were later given to the Alberta Soil and Feed Testing Laboratory for further testing. These tests showed an extremely high concentration of lead in the body of the sailor, ranging at around 228 parts per million compared to the Inuit had levels of 22 to 36 parts per million.167

What was the source of this potential lead poisoning?

Further exploration has pointed to the tin cans used to preserve food for the voyage. Preserving food in tin cans was a new technology in the mid-nineteenth century, and further investigation on tin artifacts that had been left on Beechey Island made Beattie realize that the side seams of some of the tins had been incomplete. This could have resulted in the possibility of extreme lead exposure.168 Beattie’s further research has led him to the conclusion that the rush to prepare for the expedition could have resulted in a more rushed canning process and the possibility that some cans could have had broken seals.169

Graves of seamen of John Franklin Expedition from 1845 on Beechey Island, 1997

The eerie image of this expedition of men getting sick from lead poisoning, starving, and having to eat their companions, became even more haunting after the discovery of preserved bodies on Beechey Island in 1984.

Beattie had recalled the graves on the Island and needed soft tissue to further prove his lead hypothesis. He hoped that if these three graves had bodies in them, they would be frozen enough to evaluate for lead and other possible causes. These were the graves of John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine, who had died during the expedition’s first winter.170 When Beattie and his crew dug up and opened the casket, they were greeted with a frightening image:

All stood, numb and silent. Nothing could have prepared them for the face of John Torrington, framed and cradled in his ice coffin. Despite all the intervening years, the young man’s life did not seem far away; in many ways it was as if Torrington had just died.171

They then opened the grave of Hartnell:

John Hartnell reflected the harsh realities of death and suffering in the Arctic: his was the face of a

The face of John Hartnell, one of the three Franklin expedition mummies exhumed during the 1986 mission to the Canadian Arctic, 1986.

sea-hardened nineteenth-century sailor. His right eye socket appeared empty and his lips were rigidly pursed, as if he were shouting his rage at dying so early in his adventure.172

Tests on the flesh, bone, and hair samples173 of all three bodies concluded that they did contain extremely high levels of lead, likely to have caused or impacted their deaths.174

This obsession with understanding what happened to Franklin’s crew was further enhanced with the discovery

of the Erebus by Canadian researchers in 2014, and the Terror in 2016.175 Whenever the conditions allow, Parks Canada has been investigating these well-preserved ships, looking for more artifacts and clues. Underwater archaeologist Ryan Harris said the Terror was so well preserved it looks like “a ship only recently deserted by its crew, seemingly forgotten by the passage of time.”176 With these discoveries, more relics and artifacts have been collected, offering more answers, but also creating even more questions.

Even though there have been an immense number of scientific and archaeological discoveries in the past 175+ years, there are still so many questions that remain unanswered. Not everyone agrees with the hypothesis of lead poisoning. Recent tests from bones, in comparison with other naval sailors at the time did not support the conclusion that lead played a role in the death of the

crew.177 There was also large speculation that scurvy,178 starvation, or other diseases might have led to the sailors’ deaths.179 Another hypothesis is that the men died from a disease called trichinosis from eating the meat of polar bears.180 There are many possibilities, and the mystery of not knowing what happened continues to captivate us.

This obsession with solving the mystery of this gruesome and haunting expedition has led to the search for more and more answers. The skeletons, mummies, cannibalism, poisoning, and disappearances that fill this story make it even more haunting. It is a story that intrigues us even today.

Tyler Burch

Bachelor Student at TWU Major: International Studies

The Recreation of the Arctic Empire Under King Christian IV

by Will Taylor

In the annals of exploration, few endeavors captivate the human imagination like the quest to rediscover lost civilizations. Among the pioneers of such expeditions stands Denmark, its ambitions reaching northward toward the icy expanse of Greenland in search of the fabled Nordic settlements of old.

Guided by the meticulous directives of King Christian IV, Denmark embarked on a journey shrouded in mystery and possibility.181 Preserved within the royal chancellery, Christian IV’s comprehensive instructions illuminate the kingdom’s unwavering determination to unravel the secrets hidden within the Northern Sea. Addressed to Captain Carsten Richardsøn and James Hall, letters contain directives offering a glimpse into Denmark’s multifaceted motivations. These letters instruct the mission to revive

contact and to explore ancient Nordic settlements with prospects of profitable trade.182

The genesis of Denmark’s Greenlandic expeditions can be traced to the tales of exploration that permeated European consciousness. In 1507, Martin Waldseemuller’s world map included Greenland, igniting imaginations with the promise of uncharted territories.183 Decades later, English explorer Martin Frobisher’s expeditions in 1576–78 reignited interest in Greenland.184 Yet, as history unfolded, Denmark’s pursuit of the lost Nordic settlements reveals a narrative of resilience and determination, tempered by the harsh realities of Arctic exploration.

Despite the challenges posed by Greenland’s icy waters, Denmark’s ambitions endured. Christian IV’s visions of rediscovery persisted, even as expeditions returned empty-handed.185 The elusiveness of the old settlement’s discovery did little to dampen Christian IV’s spirit; instead, it redirected focus towards new horizons. With the onset of new security concerns, as will be mentioned in the next section, and lack of financial resources, King Christian understood that an age-old claim to the Northern Sea could be the “hail Mary” that he sought.

Security Concerns and Rivalry with European Powers

Denmark consists of 1,419 islands and had always had a powerful navy. The navy played an integral role in the kingdom since its establishment. Ships were used for communication, and transport across the span of the Danish islands. Having a large navy also allowed Denmark to impose tolls on nations whose ships crossed the sound in the Baltic Sea, elevating the prestige of the kingdom.186 Denmark’s ability to project itself as a formidable, prestigious European

Map of Greenland and Hudson Bay, 1625. Based on old accounts. the map tries to reconstruct the location of the old Norse senttlements and churches. Note the term “NOVA DANIA” for present Canada! The colored drawing measures 49 x 127cm. (Photo courtesy of The Royal Libraty in Copenhagen).

section of

This

the map shows the Eastern Settlement with farms and churches scattered around Eriksfjord and Einarsfjord. Intriguingly, a forest (silva) is indicated next to the cathedral (domkirke).

Abraham Ortelius’s 1570 map of Denmark including parts on the Scandinavian peninsula.

power was especially important after the fall of the Kalmar Union 1523. The Kalmar Union, once consisting of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, had collapsed; a few years later Denmark would rule over Norway. The collapse of the Kalmar Union pushed the Scandinavian region into a period of uncertainty, leading to a power vacuum and Sweden and Denmark battling each other into submission. This was essentially how the next few centuries unfolded for Scandinavia—Denmark and Sweden both used force to grapple for power.187

For example, during the Nordic Seven Years War (1563–1570), Sweden crushed the navies of Denmark, Poland, and Lubeck in several battles, however a civil war and unsuccessful land campaigns allowed Denmark to leave the negotiating table without giving much up.188 After this war, Sweden had some troubles with Russia, providing Frederick II of Denmark the capability to rebuild his fleet and be ready for the next conflict. This also allowed Frederick to build a castle between the West and East Baltic Sea, which provided a steady income through the use of tolls.189

The latter period of Frederick’s rule was a period that paved the way for Christian IV’s rule and looked very positive for Denmark. The kingdom-controlled Bornholm, Gotland, and Osel between Sweden and the Continent, rendering Denmark the master of the Baltic Sea. This was reinforced during the Kalmar War where Russia, PolandLithuania, and Denmark-Norway were able to defeat Sweden.190 However, the rule of Christian IV would prove to be laboriously difficult, and sent Denmark searching for other frontiers to keep the kingdom’s head afloat within the European power struggle.

The first struggle King Christian faced was a new alliance between Sweden, the Netherlands, and the Baltic nations. This was a response to the toll that Denmark had been imposing on boats passing through the Denmark

Sound.191 This toll had been critically important to Denmark financially, especially since the monarchical structure in Denmark sent the revenue from this toll directly into the pockets of Christian IV. Denmark followed “Adelsvalden,” which is translated as “noble rule.” Danish nobility was unusually powerful. Although the nobility was only one fifth of the population, they controlled half of all arable land in Denmark-Norway.192 Denmark’s monarchical structure can best be described as a dyarchy. The king and upper aristocracy was represented by the Council of the Realm, which shared power in roughly equal proportions.193 However, the king held much executive authority, but the Council advised and corrected matters of the state, such as declarations of war, and it acted as a big brother when it came to relations with Sweden.194 Indeed, the Council held a lot of power, including that of “extraordinary taxation,” well into the seventeenth century. The king was expected to “live on his own,” which included revenues from the royal domain and the proceeds of commercial tolls.195

Because tolls were one of the main sources Christian IV’s incomes, it is understandable that he sought to protect the revenue source when an alliance of European powers aligned against it. Money and joint stewardship of power caused many issues for the kingdom of Denmark during this era, and much of Denmark’s troubles can be traced to these circumstances.196 One of the examples of this was when Sweden encroached on Danish territory, the pacifist council still prevented any sort of defensive action.197 Throughout the twentieth century, many believed that King Christian had been a poor ruler, but new research suggests that the Council needs to assume much of the blame for the fall of Danish prestige.198

Over the course of Christian IV’s reign, the Kingdom of Denmark was in gradual, and steep decline. Notable battles and treaties depleted the once great Baltic power.

These included the Battle of Fermen Belt,199 the Treaty of Bomsebro, and the Treaty of Christianopel, which allowed Sweden to sail through the sound without paying dues. The final treaty also enabled the Dutch, French, and English to pay 1% of the total Denmark Sound toll.200 When Christian IV became king of Denmark, the Danes were in a position of power within the Scandinavian region, but by the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years War, Denmark was encircled by Sweden and had lost all prominence on continental Europe.201

Geopolitical and Economic Imperatives

With little hope of enacting any way out from the hole that the Council had dug itself, Denmark had few capabilities for strengthening their continental power. When England

began searching for the Northwest Passage, this excited Danish interests in establishing Greenland as a base of operations for extracing tolls.202 Denmark had always viewed the Greenland region as its region of influence. Denmark claimed that Norway and Greenland were connected, and that the North Sea was one large bay. This had been disproven, but that did not prevent Denmark from making the claim.203 As far as Danes were concerned, Denmark had found a solution to its financial issues in the North Sea, a solution unavailable to them in the Baltic Sea. The challenge the Danes faced, however, was that their historical claim was only legitimate to the Danish. The rest of Europe was skeptical about the Danish claim. England, the Netherlands, and France were very active in this region; none of them agreed that the Danes had a claim. Numerous European powers such as England,

The oldest depiction of Greenland is part of the so called Clavus map (h. 43.5 cm; w. 39 cm). The Dane Claudius Clavus worked as cartographer in northern Italy in the 1420s, and three maps of Scandinavia are known by him. This fine copy from 1466 is based on his second map, which includes Greenland. Clavus’ knowledge of Greenland was probably based on contemporary accounts at a time when the connections with the Nordic senttlements were still preserved. The map comes from an edition of Ptolemy’s World Atlas. which is now in the collections of the Biblioceca Medicea in Florence, Italy. Photo courtesy of Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze.

France, and the Netherlands went as far as setting up their own whaling stations to reinforce their claim.204

Although it was heavily contested, England agreed to pay an annual fishing licence and a transport fee for moving ships through the area, largely for their trade with Russia.205

Denmark’s dreams of establishing complete tolling to the Northwest and Northeast passages remained a dream, yet the yearly tolls paid by the English allowed Denmark to view their claim as legitimate.206 This is evident in King Christian’s note to the 1618 policing of the North Arctic Sea: “On the way always ensure that no one, whatever their nationality, carries any illegal fishing or trade on Norway’s coast and rivers in any way, without a pass.”207 Indeed, Denmark was making its best attempt to keep the North Arctic as their own, including establishing the Greenland and Iceland companies to exploit the whaling and fishing industries; the Icelandic company was also granted a monopoly in fishing and whaling in the region, and later would become the principal importer of fish into Denmark.208

For several reasons, Denmark’s plan for the promised land of the North Arctic Sea was not realized. Changes in weather, limits on Danish expertise, requiring reliance on imported Dutch technology, and the vastness of the area meant that Denmark was unable to police these regions and enforce its claims.209

Carta Marina was published for lhe first lime in Venjce 1539. It was made by the Swede Olaus Magnus, and later printed as part of his book History of the Nordic People (Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus. Rome 1555. In a corner of the map is depicted a tiny part of Greenland even though all contact with the land had ceased almost a century earlier.

Drawing by unknown artist showi11g the whalers’ dangerous job.

Exploration, Colonization, and Maritime Power

The colonization of Greenland technically started with the famed Erik the Red in 950AD. When Erik established the colony, most of the settlers moved to Greenland from Iceland.210 Later, both Greenland and Iceland were forgotten in European memory, and it would take the Europeans over six hundred years to come back to these islands. Denmark’s motivations for empire led it to colonize Greenland and Iceland. The first expeditions from Denmark took place under Frederick II who sent

two unsuccessful expeditions to Greenland in 1579, and 1581.211 Expeditions increased rapidly under King Christian IV, and James I of England; these two kingdoms were able to have some level of cooperation due to the marriage of James I to one of Christian’s sisters.212 Yet, King Christian was determined to be the one to explore the Arctic, and perhaps even find the Northwest passage itself. King Christian could not live with the fact that England was exploring the Arctic, and Denmark was sitting around, letting their claims go.213 While the exploration and colonization of Greenland and Iceland

Map showing southern Greenland made 1735 by Hans Egede © The Royal Library Copenhagen

had large financial and security implications, it also had psychological implications. If Denmark was unable to be the regional power in the Arctic, it would lose its historical ties to the region. King Christian went as far as trying to revive contact with these ancient Nordic settlements. In fact, the king did not doubt that the lost colonies would understand some level of Icelandic or Norwegian,214 which is the scene that was described in the introduction. Obviously, these expeditions came up short-handed.

Conclusion

The exploration and colonization of Greenland by Denmark under the reign of King Christian IV are part of a larger narrative within the northern Atlantic story, reflecting the intricate interplay of economic, geopolitical, and historical factors shaping early modern European expansionism in the region. Denmark’s endeavors in Greenland were driven by a convergence of motivations, including the pursuit of financial stability amidst the challenges of the Baltic Sea, the assertion of regional power amidst geopolitical rivalries, and the preservation of historical ties to the Arctic. However,

these aspirations also resonate within the broader context of Atlantic exploration and colonization. By situating Denmark’s actions within the larger Atlantic narrative, we gain a deeper understanding of the interconnectedness of European powers and their engagements with the northern reaches of the Atlantic Ocean. Denmark’s efforts in Greenland intersect with England’s search for the Northwest Passage, France’s whaling ventures, and the Netherlands’ maritime trade networks, illustrating the complex web of interests at play in the northern Atlantic region. In this light, Denmark’s exploration and colonization of Greenland represent not only a chapter in its own history but also a significant contribution to the larger story of Atlantic expansion and interaction. As Denmark navigated the challenges of the Arctic, it became enmeshed in a broader tapestry of Atlantic exploration, shaping and being shaped by the evolving dynamics of this vast and interconnected maritime world.

ENDNOTES

Will Taylor Bachelor Student at TWU Major: History

Castaways, Mystery, Treasure: Shipwrecks of the Atlantic World

by Meghan McCausland

“Had I been any god of power, I would have sunk the sea within the earth or ere it should the good ship so have swallowed, and the fraughting souls within her.”215 So Shakespeare eloquently describes his character’s lament of a fictional shipwreck in his famous play The Tempest. When faced with the destruction and sorrow of a shipwreck, Miranda grieves by wishing the sea would be put to rest by sinking deep into the earth. This quote reveals the emotion of those impacted by the tragedy.

Ever since ships have been set to sail, there have been shipwrecks. Ever since there have been shipwrecks, stories have been told about them, like the one in this famous Shakespearian play. While they are considered calamities, stories about shipwrecks have captured the attention of curious Western audiences who want to solve mysteries about the powerful sea. During the

Atlantic era (about 1500 to 1850), mysteries about shipwrecks in the “New World” developed into myths that continue to be promulgated in modern popular culture. Popular myths surrounding Atlantic shipwrecks focus on what happened to the survivors of the wrecks, what caused these disasters, and the treasures left buried under the sea. How do these myths impact the way we interpret Atlantic history? By comparing the historical and archeological evidence to myths about surviving castaways, mysterious disappearances of ships, and buried treasure of Atlantic shipwrecks, the power of myth in inviting discovery about the world of the past and our understanding of the present becomes evident.

One of the most pressing questions in modern stories of shipwrecks is that of survival. Is it possible to survive being buried under a crashing wave and flailing debris? Being cast away was something that happened comparatively frequently during “the age of sail.”216 If a person was cast away on a main trade route, this person had a chance of being picked up by a passing ship.217 Those not on main trade routes, however, were at risk of waiting a very long time for rescue.218 Stories of Atlantic shipwrecks and the possibility of survival made for exciting reading in the early modern era. These tales that highlighted self-discipline, hope, and endurance became bestsellers when they were published. Such was the case with Daniel Defoe’s pioneering 1719 novel, The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe. As soon as it was released, it became an immediate bestseller in England, selling out the first printing.219

Defoe’s story recounts the tale of a merchant trader named Robinson Crusoe who was shipwrecked in a violent storm in September 1659 and found himself on “The Island of Despair.”220 Crusoe learned how to survive alone, hunting and building shelter until he was “exceedingly surprised with the print of a man’s naked foot on the shore.” There

were people already there whom he could engage with, learn from, and minister to. The scope of this novel’s influence has been tremendous. It has been cited by Karl Marx in Das Kapital, it inspired stories like Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens, and it has been adapted numerous times over the past three centuries, continuing today as is evident in the Pirates of the Caribbean 221 How much of this age-old story is true? The first page of Defoe’s novel claims that the book was “written by himself,” and many readers believed it was an autobiography of a real man.222 Was it a real story? Does it represent the reality of Atlantic shipwrecks? Is it reliable if the author was later accused of being a “consummate liar” and guilty of embezzlement?”223

Although the Crusoe story contains mythic qualities that could be misunderstood by a modern audience, Defoe did base his novel on historical accounts of castaways. The man credited as the “real life Crusoe” was a Scottish privateer named Alexander Selkirk whose story made him a celebrity in eighteenth-century London.224 In 1704, Selkirk became stranded on the Juan Fernandez Islands off the coast of modern-day Chile.225 He survived by killing goats, eating local wild turnips, learning how to make fire, and fish.226 He survived despite his loneliness.

One of the myths about shipwreck survivors perpetuated by popular stories like Robinson Crusoe and The Tempest is that survivors can easily dedicate their strength and energy to survival. It is unrealistic to assume that, like Crusoe, people can simply walk away from these events relatively unharmed. As described by Defoe, Crusoe got to the island after being tossed by the waves and “walked about on shore.”227 But Selkirk was marooned, not shipwrecked, after he complained to his captain that their ship, the Cinque Ports, was structurally unsound due to timbers weakened by worm infestation and sails that had been nicked by the French.228 He urged the crew

and captain to go ashore and wait for a ship to rescue them.229 When no one joined him, Selkirk’s captain left him, stranded on an island.230 The marooned Selkirk was correct: a few weeks later the Cinque Ports broke and sank, leaving only the captain and seven of sixty-three crewmembers alive, though captured by the Spanish.231

The reality of a shipwreck in the treacherous Atlantic is much more dangerous and intense than stories of shipwrecked survivors portray. The account of an unknown woman describes the night of November 17, 1795, when a ship called the Catherine was wrecked in a storm near Weymouth, England.232 The unnamed woman was the only survivor of the wreck. She describes the moment when “the wreck continued to strike so violently and the ruins to close so much more around me, that I now expected to be crushed to death.”233 She was so battered, bruised and flung about by the sea, that at the point of her rescue, she was unrecognizable. She remembers a French woman referring to her as “a negro” because of her bruised and “disfigured condition.”234

It seems that the popular myth about being cast away after surviving a shipwreck scratches the itch of those yearning to hear a story of survival against all odds. While these mythic stories do exist, they do not consider the dominating power of the sea. Realistically, few made it out of shipwrecks alive; those that did survive a sinking ship and roaring storm are unlikely to be as untraumatized as is portrayed in Robinson Crusoe and similar modern stories.

Another source of popular Atlantic shipwreck myths is the cause of these wrecks. Most wrecks could be attributed to the realities of storms, war, or navigational miscalculations. In recent years, people have begun attributing famous Atlantic shipwrecks to unexplainable causes such as the mysterious Bermuda Triangle. The Bermuda Triangle is the region of the North Atlantic Ocean between the southeastern coast of the United States, Bermuda, and the islands of the Greater Antilles. 235 It is not formally recognized on any maps, and even the title, “Bermuda Triangle,” was not used until 1964. In an Argosy article called the “Deadly Bermuda Triangle,”

Vincent Gaddis claimed that ships and planes unusually vanished in this area, for no reason, inviting readers to believe in a mystery.236 In reality, Argosy is a pulp magazine whose purpose is to entertain a young audience with fictional stories. Later in 1974, Charles Berlitz popularized this myth through his bestselling book, The Bermuda Triangle. In this book, he relates the disappearances of ships and shipwrecks in this area to theories surrounding UFO sightings and the Lost City of Atlantis, suggesting that either of these fantastical realities could contribute to the recorded disasters in this area.237 While this book provides a fun experience for the reader, it promotes theories about Atlantic shipwrecks that are not supported by evidence or data. Instead, they demand the attention of modern conspiracy theorists. There is no historical or archeological evidence for UFOs being the cause of shipwrecks, but extreme weather conditions and unknown obstacles have helped people to better understand the sea in which they travel and to ensure safety and reliability of international sea travel to this day.

While the Bermuda Triangle was unknown to sailors in the Atlantic era, they were aware of the Graveyard of the Atlantic, another deadly area that challenged even veteran sailors. The graveyard extends along the North Carolina coast where the Gulf Stream and currents coming down from the Arctic run into each other.238 This created Diamond Shoals, an area with shifting sandbars pushing towards the sea.239 Beginning with European arrival in the western Atlantic, people continued to sail through these dangerous waters, mostly because they had no choice due to the economic pressures of cross-Atlantic trade.240 The markets of North Carolina were a significant source of revenue for traders who could sell coffee, sugar, salt, spice, logwood, and phosphate in North Carolina ports. Many commodities headed for North Carolina ports ended up in the depths of the Cape Point Lookout and

Diamond Shoals. Ships from all over the world have been discovered in the Graveyard, including Spanish ships that were on route from Central America to Europe. Spanish sailors who tried to save time by traveling up the Gulf Stream current often lost their cargo and their ships when they encountered the Carolina outer banks with their “shoal-infested bights and capes and inlets” set out like traps.241 The shifting sandbars off the coast of North Carolina were a mysterious and terrifying reality for hundreds of sailing vessels during the Atlantic era. The shipwrecks in this area now define the life of the coast – many residents can trace their ancestry to those shipwrecked there, and many structures and houses are made with wood found in the wrecks.242

Storms, especially hurricanes, were a destructive reality in the western Atlantic. 1780 was a particularly bad year for hurricanes in the Caribbean. This season wrecked huge numbers of French and British naval ships; it is estimated that 22,000 men, women, and children died because of hurricanes in this single year.243 Slave communities were hit hard with periods of famine and death because of this destruction.244 The most significant hurricane that year was called the Great Hurricane. It first hit Barbados, and Major General Cunningham, governor of Barbados,

wrote that the storm was so violent that a cannon that could fire a twelve-pound ball was carried thirty yards away.245 It then carried on to St. Lucia and the Castries harbour where it destroyed multiple ships, including British and French naval ships and Dutch merchant ships.246 Though attributing shipwrecks to certain ocean areas could bolster myths, it is more accurate to associate a year’s high shipwreck levels with uncommon weather patterns in the sea.

What draws people today into the mystery of shipwrecks of the Atlantic world is the possibility of discovering goods, maps, documents, even treasure. Treasure hunting

is a tale that never dies. These stories have been popular since the release of Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1881 novel, Treasure Island, which popularized and romanticized pirates and the idea of sunken treasure. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, classic pirate fiction emerged with Arthur Sullivan’s Pirates of Penzance in 1879, James Barrie’s Peter Pan in 1928, and Howard Pyle’s The Book of Pirates in 1921.247 Although there is less frequent output of pirate media content today, modern audiences enjoy Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, which made $300 million after being released in 2003.248 Depictions of pirates in these fictionalized accounts

Waterspout over the Atlantic on 6 September 1814 reported by Captain Napier of Erne corvette

create myths about life in the Atlantic world and the kind of treasure that may exist. For example, many people think that “the discovery of a variety of silver and gold coins of differing national origin indicates a pirate ship.”249 Charles Ewen and Russell Skowronek note that this assumption is incorrect, and that it likely stems from Treasure Island, where a cave of treasure is filled with all kinds of money from all over the world.250 Pirate treasure was found on the wreck of the Whydah off Cape Cod. This ship belonged to pirate captain Samuel “Black Sam” Bellamy.251 On April 26, 1717, a violent gale caused the ship to sink.252 This English slave ship was captured by Bellamy as it sailed from Jamaica back to Africa.253 The ship was “outfitted with guns and the “treasure-laden-galley” and made its way up the Coast of North America.254 From 1978 to 1989, teams of archeologists tried to find the wreck of the Whydah When it was discovered in 1984, archeologists identified it by its bell inscribed “The + Whydah + Gally + 1716.” The site of the wreck held over 40,000 artifacts strewn over a 24,00 square foot area.255 Archeologists argued

that perhaps more important than these artifacts was the information they held about different stages of the wreck, that helped to later identify Blackbeard’s famous ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge 256 Once a slave ship referred to as La Concorde, Blackbeard captured it in November 1717 then used it to capture “prizes” in the Caribbean until he crashed it in 1718 off Beaufort Inlet.257 The ship’s excavation was controversial because archeologists found that North Carolina state was too quick to declare the ship to be Queen Anne’s Revenge 258 However, by comparing the Revenge to the Whydah, archeologists found similarities because they were both converted slave ships that operated in the same region at the same time.259 Artifacts such as navigation instruments and personal items showed similarities. They also both had their cannons loaded.260 Although these ships were not overflowing with the riches as described in popular culture’s renditions of pirates, the ships contained important historical and archeological information and artifacts that reveal more about aspects of the Atlantic world. For example, they showed that “piracy played an

important role in the dynamics of the world economic system as an expected hazard to shipping,” which was something that trading countries needed to anticipate and plan for.261 Although wrecks of pirate ships might not contain the expected money, these ships are rich with treasure and history and provide some of the strongest archeological evidence.262

Atlantic shipwrecks are shrouded in mystery. As long as modern culture keeps discussing them and writing stories about them, we will continue to be curious about their mysteries. Castaway tales, the causes of these

wrecks, and the treasure that may have been are the basis for myths about the Atlantic era. Although most of the myths surrounding these aspects of shipwrecks are not entirely true, they are valuable because they keep the stories of Atlantic history alive in popular imagination. These stories pique the ears of listeners, inviting them to explore the past.

Meghan McCausland

Bachelor Student at TWU

Major: General Studies

Endnotes

Interactions & Infections - by Michaela Wiens

1 Nathan Nunn and Nancy Qian, “The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas,” The Journal of Economic Perspectives 24, no. 2 (2010): 163-164.

2 M. Best, D. Neuhauser, and L. Slavin, “‘Cotton Mather, You Dog, Dam You! I’l Inoculate You with This; with a Pox to You’: Smallpox Inoculation, Boston, 1721,” Quality and Safety in Health Care 13, no.1 (2004): 82.

3 Henry F. Dobyns, Their Number Become Thinned: Native American Population Dynamics in Eastern North America (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press in cooperation with the Newberry Library Center for the History of the American Indian, 1983), 34.

4 James C. Riley, “Smallpox and American Indians Revisited,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 65, no. 4 (2010): 447.

5 Dauril Alden and Joseph C. Mille,. “Out of Africa: The Slave Trade and the Transmission of Smallpox to Brazil, 1560-1831,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 18, no. 2 (1987):198.

6 Massimo Livi-Bacci, “The Depopulation of Hispanic America after the Conquest,” Population and Development Review 32, no. 2 (2006): 201.

7 Alfred W. Crosby, “Infectious Disease and the Demography of the Atlantic Peoples,” Journal of World History 2, no. 2 (1991): 123.

8 Livi-Bacci. “The Depopulation of Hispanic America,” 200.

9 Linda Newman, “Pathogens, Places and Peoples,” in Technology, Disease and Colonial Conquests, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. George Raudzens (Boston: Brill, 2001), 167.

10 Bernardino De Sahagún, General History of the Things of New Spain: The Florentine Codex, 1579. https://faculty.humanities.uci.edu/bjbecker/PlaguesandPeople/week4g.html.

11 “16th Century Aztec Drawing of Smallpox Victims.” Wikimedia Commons. 1550. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aztec_smallpox_victims.jpg

12 James Carrick Moore, The History of the Small Pox (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1815), 225.

13 Nunn and Qian, “The Columbian Exchange,” 164.

14 Crosby, “Infectious Disease,” 125.

15 Sowande Mustakeem, “‘I Never Have Such a Sickly Ship Before’: Diet, Disease, and Mortality in 18th-Century Atlantic Slaving Voyages,” The Journal of African American History 93, no. 4 (2008): 479.

16 “Diagram of the slave ship Vigilante 1823” The New York Public Library Digital Collections, 1823 – 1830, . https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/ b1dd3bd3-ae20-dc5d-e040-e00a1806309d

17 “View of chained African slaves in cargo hold of slave ship, measuring three feet and three inches high” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1801 – 1900, https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/cd25e5e0-26580132-a7fd-58d385a7b928

18 Christopher M. Blakley, “Ship Fever, Confinement, and the Racialization of Disease,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 95 (2022): 96.

19 Joanne Chassot,“‘Voyage through Death/to Life Upon These Shores’: The Living Dead of the Middle Passage.” Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural, and Historical Perspectives 12, no. 1 (2015): 90.

20 Blakley, “Ship Fever,” 96.

21 Olaudah Equiano, The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African Written by Himself (London: Printed for and sold by the author, 1789), 71-79.

22 Manuel Barcia, The Yellow Demon of Fever: Fighting Disease in the Nineteenth-Century Transatlantic Slave Trade (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020), 31.

Indigenous-French Relations in North America - by Danny Jeans

23 Kilroy Abney, “Warrior Traders: A Comparative Study of Early Seventeenth century French and English North American Trade and Colonization” (PhD diss., Dalhousie University, 2012), 20.

24 Richard White, The Middle Ground: Indians, Empires, and Republics in the Great Lakes Region, 1650–1815, 20th anniversary edition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Susan Sleeper-Smith, Indigenous Prosperity and American conquest: Indian Women of the Ohio River Valley, 1690-1792 (Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2018); Robert Englebert

and Guillaume Teasdale, eds., French and Indians in the heart of North America, 1630-1815 (University of Manitoba Press, 2013).

25 Michael A, McDonnel, Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (New York: Hill and Wang, 2015), 25.

26 Ramsay Cook, ed., The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, trans. Henry Percival Biggar (University of Toronto Press, 2013), 10.

27 Abney, “Warrior Traders,” 92.

28 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 25.

29 Cook, The Voyages of Jacques Cartier, 21.

30 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 26.

31 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 26.

32 Ibid., 26.

33 Abney, “Warrior Traders,” 93.

34 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 26.

35 Bruce Trigger, Natives and Newcomers: Canada’s “Heroic Age” Reconsidered (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1985), 182.

36 White, The Middle Ground, 97.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 99.

39 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 17.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid.

42 Ibid., 27.

43 Ibid.

44 William Lawson Grant, Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 1604-1618; With a Map and Two Plans (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1907), 166.

45 Ibid., 168.

46 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 23.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

49 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 195.

50 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 33.

51 Ibid., 32.

52 Ibid.

53 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 7.

54 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 33.

55 Ibid.

56 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 7.

57 White, The Middle Ground, 95.

58 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 7.

59 Alison Games et. al., The Atlantic World: A History, 1400 - 1888 (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2007), 161.

60 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 33.

61 White, The Middle Ground, 100.

62 Gonthier Ursula Haskins, “Postcolonial Perspectives on Early Modern Canada: Champlain’s Voyages de La Nouvelle France 1632,” French Studies: A Quarterly Review 66, no. 2 (April 2012): 152.

63 Grant, Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, 186.

64 Ibid., 209.

65 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 194.

66 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 18.

67 Trigger, Natives and Newcomers, 195.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 196.

70 Haskins, “Postcolonial Perspectives on Early Modern Canada,” 158.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid., 160.

73 Abney, “Warrior Traders,” 20.

74 White, The Middle Ground, 95.

75 McDonell, Masters of Empire, 28.

Colonization and Resistance - by Hannah Kendon

76 Maximilian Dante Barone Bullerjahn, “Dual Colonialism and the Formation of the National State: The South African Case,” Revista Brasileira De Estudos Africanos / Brazilian Journal of African Studies 3, no. 5 (2018): 149, https://doi.org/10.22456/2448-3923.80820.

77 Julie Berger Hochstrasser, “A South African Mystery: Remarkable Studies of the Khoikhoi,” Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek (NKJ) / Netherlands Yearbook for History of Art 66 (2016): 198, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/44657330.

78 John Philip, “Condition of the Native Tribes,” in Researches in South Africa: Illustrating the Civil, Moral, and Religious Condition of the Native Tribes (London: James Duncan, Paternoster-Row, 1828), 6, https://repository.up.ac. za/handle/2263/16709.

79 Willa Boezak, “The Cultural Heritage of South Africa’s Khoisan,” in Indigenous Peoples’ Cultural Heritage: Rights, Debates, Challenges, eds Alexandra Xanthaki, Sanna Valkonen, Leena Heinämäki, and Piia Nuorgam (Leiden: Brill, 2017), 255, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1163/j.ctv2gjwsw2.15.

80 Philip, “Condition of the Native Tribes,” 6.

81 Ibid., 3.

82 Boezak, “The Cultural Heritage of South Africa’s Khoisan,” 254.

83 Hochstrasser, “A South African Mystery,” 201.

84 Ibid., 201-2.

85 Ibid., 202 & 204.

86 Ibid., 204.

87 Philip, “Condition of the Native Tribes,” 5.

88 Johann Jakob Merklein, “Johann Jakob Merklein,” in Cape Good Hope 1652-1702: The First Fifty Years of Dutch Colonization, trans. R. Raven-Hart (Cape Town: A. A. Balkema, 1971), 8, https://www.dbnl.org/tekst/rave028cape01_01/rave028cape01_01_0009.php.

89 Philip, “Condition of the Native Tribes,” 16.

90 H.C. Bredekamp, “From Fragile Independence to Permanent Subservience” in An Illustrated History of South Africa, eds. T. Cameron and S. Spies (Southern Book Publishers 1986), 102.

91 Richard Elphick and Hermann Giliomee, The Shaping of South African Society, 1652–1840 (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2014), 186, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=847080&site=eds-live&scope=site.

92 Bullerjahn, “Dual Colonialism and the Formation of the National State,” 149.

93 Philip, “Condition of the Native Tribes,” 16.

94 Elphick and Giliomee, The Shaping of South African Society, 66.

95 Ibid., 12.

96 Ibid., 13.

97 Ibid., 13.

98 Ibid., 14.

99 Leonard Guelke, and Robert Shell, “Landscape of Conquest: Frontier Water Alienation and Khoikhoi Strategies of Survival, 1652-1780,” Journal of Southern African Studies 18, no. 4 (1992): 808, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2637105.

100 Ibid.

101 Ibid., 809.

102 C.W. de Kiewiet, A History of South Africa, Social and Economic (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), 20.

103 Elphick and Giliomee, The Shaping of South African Society, 3.

104 Guelke and Shell, “Landscape of Conquest,” 812.

105 J.G. Grevenbroek, “An Elegant and Accurate Account of the African Race Living Round the Cape of Good Hope, Commonly Called Hottentots,” in The Early Cape Hottentots, ed. 1. (Schapera: Cape Town, 1933), 271273.

106 Elphick and Giliomee, The Shaping of South African Society, 17.

107 Shula Marks, “Khoisan Resistance to the Dutch in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” The Journal of African History 13, no. 1 (1972): 70, http://www.jstor.org/stable/180967.

108 Ibid., 71.

109 Ibid., 70.

110 Elphick and Giliomee, The Shaping of South African Society, 226.

111 Ibid., 184.

112 Ibid., 18.

113 Ibid., 226.

114 Guelke and Shell, “Landscape of Conquest,” 820.

Discovering the Luso-African World by Rachel Nayaba Abou

Chaibou

115 José da Silva Horta, “Evidence for a Luso-African Identity in ‘Portuguese’ Accounts on ‘Guinea of Cape Verde’ (Sixteenth-Seventeenth Centuries),” History in Africa 27 (2000): 101.

116 Peter Mark, “The Evolution of ‘Portuguese’ Identity: Luso-Africans on the Upper Guinea Coast from the Sixteenth to the Early Nineteenth Century,” The Journal of African History 40, no. 2 (1999): 173.

117 Ibid, 173.

118 Ibid, 174.

119 Linda A. Newson, “Africans and Luso-Africans in the Portuguese Slave Trade on the Upper Guinea Coast in the Early Seventeenth Century,” The Journal of African History 53, no. 1 (2012): 4–5.

120 Ibid, 2.

121 Ibid, 3.

122 “Creole Portuguese: General,” Oceanic Linguistics Special Publications, no. 14 (1975): 75–76.

123 Mark, “The Evolution of ‘Portuguese’ Identity,” 173.

124 Ibid, 176.

125 John Ladhams, “In Search of West African Pidgin Portuguese,” Revista Internacional de Lingüística Iberoamericana 4, no. 1 (2006): 91.

126 Ibid, 93.

127 Ibid, 94.

128 Ibid, 177.

129 Joanna Mormul, “Portuguese colonial legacy in Luso African states – a factor leading to state dysfunctionality or favorable to development?” Politeja 56 (2018): 45–46.

130 Vanessa S. Oliveira, Slave Trade and Abolition: Gender, Commerce, and Economic Transition in Luanda (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 2021), 18.

131 Ibid, 18.

132 Mariana P. Candido, “Merchants and the Business of the Slave Trade at Benguela, 1750–1850,” African Economic History, no. 35 (2007): 3–4.

133 Ibid, 18.

134 Ibid, 19.

135 Joseph Calder Miller, “Casualties of Merchant Capital: The Luso-Africans in Angola,” in Way of Death: Merchant Capitalism and the Angolan Slave Trade, 1730–1830 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 254–237.

136 Mormul, “Portuguese colonial legacy in Luso African states,” 45.

Mysteries Hidden in Ice - by Tyler Burch

137 Anthony Dalton, Sir John Franklin: Expeditions to Destiny (Surrey, B.C.: Heritage House, 2012), 88, EBSCOhost.

138 Dalton, Sir John Franklin, 88-89.

139 Anthony Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 46.

140 Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 14, 37, 45.

141 Ibid, 32.

142 Ibid, 14, 20.

143 Owen Beattie and John Geiger, Frozen in Time: The Fate of the Franklin Expedition (Vancouver, B.C.: Western Producer Prairie Books, 2017), 36.

144 Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 7.

145 Dalton, Sir John Franklin, 85.

146 Beattie and Geiger, Frozen in Time, 42-43.

147 Ibid.

148 Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 304.

149 Ibid.

150 Dalton, Sir John Franklin, 95.

151 Ibid, 97.

152 Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 18.

153 Ibid, 307.

154 A.H. Beesly, Sir John Franklin (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1881), 196.

155 A rocky structure built by sailors which was the principle means of communication in the arctic. Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 332.

156 Brandt, The Man Who Ate His Boots, 331-332.

157 Ibid, 367.

158 Ibid, 368.

159 Ibid, 375.

160 Beattie and Geiger, Frozen In Time, 80.

161 F.L. M’Clinktock, “The Expedition in Search for Sir John Franklin,” Journal of the American Geographical and Statistical Society 1, no. 9 (November 1, 1859): 247.

162 Beattie and Geiger, Frozen In Time, 83.

163 Ibid, 106.

164 Ibid, 111.

165 Ibid, 112-114.

166 Ibid, 116.

167 Ibid, 140-141.

168 Ibid, 236.

169 Ibid, 238.

170 Ibid, 145.

171 Ibid, 170.

172 Ibid, 184.

173 Hair shows more recent results. The fact that lead was found in the hair samples indicated that the sailors had been poisoned by lead on the expedition. Beattie and Geiger, Frozen in Time, 240.

174 Ibid, 239.

175 Ken McGoogan, “Solving the Franklin Mystery,” Canada’s History 100, no. 4 (August 2020): 34.

176 McGoogan, “Solving the Franklin,” 36.

177 Treena Swanston et al., “Franklin Expedition Lead Exposure: New Insights from High Resolution Confocal X-Ray Fluorescence Imaging of Skeletal Microstructure.” PLoS ONE (August 2018): 17.

178 Sickness from the deficiency of vitamin C and the lack of proper vegetables and fruit.

179 Beattie and Geiger, Frozen in Time, 14-15.

180 McGoogan, “Solving the Franklin,” 41.

The Recreation of the Arctic Empire Under King Christian IVby Will Taylor

181 Vivian Etting, “The Rediscovery of Greenland during the Reign of Christian,” Journal of the North Atlantic (2009): 156. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/26686946

182 Etting, “The Rediscovery of Greenland,” 156.

183 Jørgen Taagholt, “The Early Exploration of Greenland.” Earth Sciences History 10, no. 2 (1991): 250. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24137839

184 Etting, “The Rediscovery of Greenland,” 151.

185 Ibid., 156.

186 Martin Bellamy, “Christian IV and His Navy: A Political and Administrative History of the Danish Navy 1596-1648,” in The Northern World (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 9.

187 Ibid., 10.

188 Ibid., 11.

189 Ibid.,12.

190 Ibid., 13.

191 Ibid., 17.

192 Douglas Paul, “Denmark and the Empire: A Reassessment of Danish Foreign Policy under King Christian IV,” Scandinavian Studies 64, no. 3 (1992): 393.

193 Ibid., 393.

194 Ibid., 394.

195 Ibid., 394.

196 Ibid., 395.

197 Ibid., 400.

198 Michael Bregnsbo, “Denmark and the Westphalian Peace,” Historische Zeitschrift 26 (1998): 363.

199 Bellamy, “Christian IV and His Navy,” 24.

200 Ibid., 25.

201 Ibid., 25.

202 Ibid., 27.

203 Ibid., 26.

204 Ibid., 28.

205 Ibid., 26.

206 Ibid., 27.

207 Ibid., 28.

208 Ibid., 29.

209 Ibid., 29.

210 Vilhjálmur, Stefansson. “The Icelandic Colony in Greenland,” American Anthropologist 8, no. 2 (1906): 262–70.

211 Bellamy, “Christian IV and His Navy,” 27.

212 Etting, “The Rediscovery of Greenland,” 153.

213 Taagholt, “The Early Exploration of Greenland,” 249.

214 Etting, “The Rediscovery of Greenland,” 153.

Castaways, Mystery, Treasure - by Meghan McCausland

215 William Shakespeare, The Tempest (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880), 4.

216 Mike Rendell, Crusoe, Castaways and Shipwrecks in the Perilous Age of Sail (Yorkshire, UK: Pen & Sword History, 2019), 141.

217 Ibid., 141.

218 Ibid., 141.

219 Ibid., 9.

220 Ibid., 10.

221 Ibid., 14.

222 Ibid., 9.

223 Ibid., 3-4.

224 Ibid., 16.

225 Ibid., 17.

226 Ibid., 20.

227 Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe, 43.

228 Rendell, Crusoe, Castaways and Shipwrecks,19.

229 Ibid.,19.

230 Ibid.,19.

231 Ibid.,18-19.

232 R. Thomas, An Authentic Account of the Most Remarkable Events: Containing the Lives of the Most Noted Pirates and Piracies. Also, the Most Remarkable Shipwrecks ... and ... Disasters on the Seas (New York: Ezra Strong, 1836), 230, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edshtl&AN=edshtl.103026935&site=eds-live&scope=site

233 Ibid., 233.

234 Ibid., 234.

235 “What Is Known (and Not Known) About the Bermuda Triangle,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed February 26, 2024, https://www.britannica.com/ story/what-is-known-and-not-known-about-the-bermuda-triangle

236 Ibid.

237 Charles Berlitz, The Bermuda Triangle (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company Inc, 1974), 98, 130.

238 David Stick, Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast (Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952), 3.

239 Ibid.

240 Ibid.

241 Ibid., 2.

242 Ibid., 3-4.

243 Rendell, Crusoe, Castaways and Shipwrecks, 74.

244 Ibid., 74.

245 Ibid., 75.

246 Ibid., 75.

247 Charles R. Ewen, and Russell K. Skowronek, Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2016), 196.

248 Ibid.

249 Ibid., 201.

250 Ibid., 202.

251 Ibid., 202.

252 Ibid., 202.

253 Ibid., 202.

254 Ibid., 202.

255 Ibid., 203.

256 Ibid., 203.

257 Ibid., 204.

258 Ibid., 204.

259 Ibid., 204.

260 Ibid., 204.

261 Ibid., 203.

262 Ibid., 205.

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Ewen, Charles R. and Russell K. Skowronek. Pieces of Eight: More Archaeology of Piracy. Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2016.

Gordon, Stewart. A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks. Lebanon, NH: ForeEdge, 2015.

Rendell, Mike. Crusoe, Castaways and Shipwrecks in the Perilous Age of Sail. Yorkshire: Pen & Sword History, 2019. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1880.

Stick, David. Graveyard of the Atlantic: Shipwrecks of the North Carolina Coast. Chapel Hill, N.C.: The University of North Carolina Press, 1952

Thomas, R. An Authentic Account of the Most Remarkable Events: Containing the Lives of the Most Noted Pirates and Piracies. Also, the Most Remarkable Shipwrecks ... and ... Disasters on the Seas. New York: Ezra Strong, 1836. https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edshtl&AN=edshtl.103026935&site =eds-live&scope=site.

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