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Caxtons of the North: Mid-Nineteenth-Century Arctic Shipboard Printing

2001; Johns Hopkins University Press; Volume: 4; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/bh.2001.0009

1529-1499

Elaine Hoag,

Maritime and Coastal Archaeology

Shipboard printing enjoyed a brief heyday on British and French vessels during the Napoleonic and Revolutionary Wars. 1 In 1776, off the coast of New York, an engraving press on the British ship Phoenix manufactured counterfeit Continental currency in an attempt to disrupt the American economy. 2 Not long after, three French vessels sent to aid the colonists in their rebellion against Britain produced a handful of imprints while stationed in American waters. Between 1778 and 1782, the Languedoc, the Neptune, and the Triomphant printed two signal books, a pamphlet titled Étrennes américains and a declaration addressed to North America's French-speaking settlers. 3 Imprints are lacking from a fourth French vessel, the Ville de Paris, which was captured by the British Formidable in 1782. But it is conjectured that the Ville de Paris press, commandeered as booty by the Formidable, produced the first British shipboard imprint a few months later--a book of Italian poems titled Odi di Labindo. 4 The Napoleonic Wars precipitated a second spurt of shipboard printing. A heap of type recently discovered on the Mediterranean Sea floor testifies to the presence of a press on board Napoleon's flagship, the Orient, sunk in the Battle of the Nile in 1798. 5 The Orient's printing office was so active that, while stationed in Toulon between 1794 and 1797, it competed with the city's own presses, accepting commissions that had little to do with [End Page 81] naval affairs. 6 In addition, printing presses operated on board French warships Montagne, Justice, and Guillaume-Tell between 1793 and 1798. 7 In 1812 and 1813 the British ship Caledonia printed two works on a press that had been supplied by Admiral Pellew to amuse the crew during a tedious Mediterranean blockade: a journal that had been kept on board a Russian pirate ship and an English translation of Spanish speeches on the Inquisition and on literary freedom in Spain. 8 A year later, off the Florida coast, a broadside inviting native Indian warriors to join the British forces in the battle against the Americans was printed on board the Tonnant. 9 Peacetime shipboard printing began in the mid-nineteenth century. In 1849 Linville J. Hall constructed his own press on board the American vessel Henry Lee, printing an eighty-eight-page journal of the voyage from New York to San Francisco around Cape Horn. 10 In 1854, five official broadsides, four sheets of sailing directions, and two concert bills were printed on board Commodore Matthew C. Perry's Mississippi during his expedition to establish commercial ties between the United States and Japan. 11 Unfolding precisely between these two dates (1849 and 1854) was a third peacetime shipboard printing initiative. Organized by Great Britain, it would take place in the Arctic as part of the mission to rescue Sir John Franklin. And, like the rescue effort itself, it would be the largest venture of its kind organized by any country up to that time. More than one hundred imprints would be produced on six ships over a span of five years. Before 1850, British shipboard printing had been a haphazard affair that had produced a handful of quirky imprints. Unlike the French Navy, which had systematically supplied presses and professional printers 12 to Napoleon's battleships and to the fleet sent to support the Revolutionary War, allowing propaganda as well as administrative and tactical docu- ments to be printed on board, the British had followed no organized plan. The Formidable had obtained its press by chance plunder. The press on the Caledonia had been provided solely for entertainment. Even the propaganda broadside manufactured on the Tonnant was something of a joke. Sir Edward Codrington himself, captain of the fleet in its operations at the Chesapeake and New Orleans, commented in a letter written in December 1814: "We have at length got our printer on board [the Tonnant], and he is at work about a proclamation, or rather, an...