Situating ‘Books of Travel’: Intertextuality in Antarctic Whaling Narratives 1892-1896

• Main Author: Evans Rayward, Bronte
• Format: Master Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: Scott Polar Research Institute 2021
• Subjects: Antarctic; Antarctica; Expedition narratives; Whaling; 19th century; Intertextuality; Dundee; Murdoch; The Antarctic; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.78719; https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331272

$\textit{From Edinburgh to the Antarctic}$ by William Burn Murdoch and $\textit{The Cruise of the “Antarctic” to the South Polar Regions}$ by Henrik Bull are both travel narratives that detail the authors’ experiences on board Antarctic whaling vessels in the late nineteenth century. In Europe and Australia, the 1890s saw growing scientific and commercial interest in Antarctica. The period examined in this dissertation begins in 1892, when the whaling ship $\textit{Balaena}$ steamed from Dundee, and concludes with the publication of Bull’s narrative $\textit{The Cruise}$ in 1896. It examines how Burn Murdoch and Bull used intertextual references in their narratives to situate themselves on board their expeditions and within their wider respective expeditionary social networks. $\textit{From Edinburgh}$ and $\textit{The Cruise}$ show the contingencies of each expedition’s context and the ‘imperial forces’ that were significant to the development of Antarctic exploration in the late nineteenth century. The first study examines William Burn Murdoch’s account of the Dundee Sealing and Whaling Expedition titled $\textit{From Edinburgh to the Antarctic}$. I argue that Burn Murdoch represented himself in the narrative as a ‘man of science’ to demarcate his position on board the ship $\textit{Balaena}$. His narrative also speaks to the scientific community in Edinburgh that played roles in both securing his place on the expedition and educating him about Antarctica. The second case study analyses the relationship between $\textit{The Cruise of the “Antarctic”}$ and Sir James Clark Ross’s narrative of his expedition to Antarctica. It describes how Bull represented the temporal relationship between his own voyage to Antarctica and Ross’s. Bull’s flexible representation of the half a century of time that elapsed between Ross’s expedition and his own in $\textit{The Cruise}$ was fundamental to establishing the credibility of his narrative. I argue that this temporal representation also allowed him to justify his decision ...