The Jenny was an alleged English schooner and the subject of an unproven legend. The story goes that the Jenny became frozen in an ice-barrier of the Drake Passage in 1823, only to be rediscovered in 1840 by a whaling ship, the bodies aboard being preserved by the Antarctic cold. The original report has been deemed unsubstantiated. [A]
The earliest known source for the story appears to be an article in the Wiener Zeitung published on 19 February 1841. [2] In the following weeks, the same text was printed in at least seven other newspapers. [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9]
On the occasion of the McClintock Arctic expedition, the story of the schooner Jenny was remembered again: for example, in an anonymous article in an 1862 edition of Globus, a popular German geographical magazine. [10] [11]
Account
The supposed account describes how the ship left its home port on the Isle of Wight in 1822. [11] The ship was discovered frozen in ice in the Drake Passage by a Captain Brighton of the whaler Hope in September 1840. [11] The log had been entered until 17 January 1823. [11] The last port of call had been Callao, near Lima, Peru. [11] Brighton took the logbook with him in order to return it to the shipowners. [11]
Influence
The Jenny is commemorated by the Jenny Buttress, a feature on King George Island near Melville Peak, named by the UK Antarctic Place-Names Committee in 1960. [12]
Australian poet Rosemary Dobson wrote about the story in her poem " The Ship of Ice" published in her book The Ship of Ice with other poems in 1948, which won the Sydney Morning Herald award for poetry that year. [13] Dobson's poem places the discovery of the Jenny in 1860, adding 20 years to the period of entrapment. [14] The poem speaks of her as a "ship caught in a bottle / [....] / Becalmed in Time and sealed with a cork of ice". [14] According to Dobson, her source was the anonymous report The Drift of the Jenny, 1823–1840. [14]
References
Notes
Citations
- ^ Headland, Robert K. (1989). Chronological list of Antarctic expeditions and related historical events. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. p. 129. ISBN 0521309034.
- ^ Vermischte Nachrichten. In: Wiener Zeitung, 19 February 1841, p. 4 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Das Schiff im Eise. In: Der Bote von Tyrol, 1 March 1841, p. 4 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Vermischte Nachrichten. In: Laibacher Zeitung, 2 March 1841, p. 5 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Das Schiff im Eise. Eine wahre Begebenheit. In: Brünner Zeitung der k.k. priv. mährischen Lehenbank, 6 March 1841, p. 4 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Das Todtenschiff. In: Der Siebenbürger Bote, 12 March 1841, p. 2 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Ein Schiff im Eismeer. In: Didaskalia. Blätter für Geist, Gemüth und Publicität, 16 March 1841, p. 2 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Ein Schiff im Eismeer. In: Oesterreichischer Beobachter, 22 March 1841, p. 4 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Aus dem Seeleben. In: Gemeinnützige Blätter zur Belehrung und Unterhaltung, 22 April 1841, p. 3 (Online at ANNO)
- ^ Ein Schiff im Eise des südlichen Polarmeeres. Verlag vom Bibliographischen Institut. 1862. p. 61.
- ^ a b c d e f "The Drift of the Jenny 1823–40". The Polar Record. 12 (79): 411–412. 1965. doi: 10.1017/S0032247400054887. S2CID 251056231. (Translated from Globus, Bd 1, 1862, pp. 60 –61)
- ^ "Jenny Buttress". Antarctic Gazetteer. Australian Antarctic Data Centre. Archived from the original on 26 September 2007. Retrieved 31 March 2008.
- ^ "Papers of Rosemary Dobson". National Library of Australia. Retrieved 13 July 2007.
- ^ a b c Elizabeth Leane (2007). ""A Place of Ideals in Conflict": Images of Antarctica in Australian Literature". In C. A. Cranston, Robert Zeller (ed.). The Littoral Zone: Australian Contexts and Their Writers. Rodopi. ISBN 978-90-420-2218-8.
Further reading
- Peter D. Jeans (2004). Seafaring Lore and Legend: A Maritime Miscellany. McGraw-Hill Professional. ISBN 9780071435437.
- John Stewart (1990). Antarctica: An Encyclopedia. McFarland. ISBN 9780899505978.
- Dobson, Rosemary,(1948) The ship of ice : with other poems Angus & Robertson, Sydney.
External links