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Harpoon guns, the lost Greenland settlement, and penal colonies: George Manby's Arctic obsessions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

William Barr
William Barr
Affiliation:
Arctic Institute of North America, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive NW, Calgary AB T3G 1Y2, Canada
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Abstract

George William Manby (1766–1854) was an English inventor best known for his idea of firing a line from shore to a wrecked ship so that the crew might be saved by means of a breeches-buoy. Around 1819 he turned his attention to new typesof whaling harpoons, bothahand harpoon andagun harpoon. In 1821 he went on a voyage to the Greenland whaling grounds on board Baffin, Captain William Scoresby Jr, with the aim of trying out his inventions, but the experiments were foiled by the reluctance of the crew to cooperate. As a result of that voyage, Manby espoused three ideas that he pursued obsessively for the rest of his life: that there might still be Norse survivors in the so-called ‘Lost Colony’ in East Greenland; that Britain should claim the area of East Greenland north of the area claimed by Denmark; and that this area should be developed as a penal colony.

Type
Articles
Information
Polar Record , Volume 37 , Issue 203 , October 2001 , pp. 291 - 314
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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