Dr. John Lyell (Perth Museum and Art Gallery) |
In view of all the previous horror stories, it would seem
obvious that captains’ wives on South Seamen—the London whaleships that
ventured through the southern Indian Ocean to the Timor Straits and the East
Indies—should have been envied by their American counterparts, because British
whalers were required by law to carry a surgeon. Journals by the wives who sailed on South
Seamen are very rare—but there is one in the State Library of New South Wales,
kept by Eliza Underwood, wife of Captain Michael Underwood of the London South
Seaman Kingsdown, who sailed in the East Indies and tropical Pacific
from 1829 to 1832. To my satisfaction, I
found that she described the ship’s doctor. To my amazement, I found she
regarded him with deep contempt.
Eliza Underwood did not even call him by name, simply
referring to him as “doctor,” without even the courtesy of a capital letter,
and preferred to minister to her husband herself when Underwood was crippled
with gout, dosing him with a dangerous patent nostrum called “Reynold’s
specific” (probably a tincture of autumn crocus), even though she anticipated
that it would lead to “several days of suffering.” The reaction to the drug was worse than
expected, Underwood being “unable to move himself or bear others to lift
him.” His skin was so tender he could
not endure the slightest touch, but still she did not consult with the surgeon.
It was impossible not to feel curious about this despised
doctor. Surely he had been unusually
unfortunate, I thought, and wondered whether any of his colleagues had had
similarly strange experiences. So I set
out to find journals that had been kept by whaling surgeons on South Seamen in the
same seas at about the same time.
I found nine:
Thomas Beale, Kent and Sarah
& Elizabeth, 1830-1833
Frederick Debell Bennett, Tuscan,
1833-1836
James Brown, Japan, 1832-1836
John Coulter, Stratford,
1832-1836
William Dalton, Phoenix
1823-1825, and Harriet, 1826-1829
Eldred E. Fysh, Coronet, 1837-1839
John Lyell, Ranger, 1829-1832
Robert Smith Owen, Warrens,
1837-1840
John Wilson, Gipsy, 1839-1843
And I wrote about there fascinating adventures in Rough Medicine (the book)
But were there really no American whaling surgeons at all?
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