- Museum number
- 1859,0316.142
- Title
- Object: Landing the Treasures, or Results of the Polar Expedition!!!
- Description
-
A procession headed by John Ross extends from the coast (right), where Esquimaux dogs swim ashore from a boat, to the gate of the British Museum, part of which is on the extreme left. Sailors, all of whom have lost their noses (replaced by a triangular black patch) carry the scientific objects brought back from the expedition to Baffin's Bay. Ross, very stout, and wearing a large false nose, goose-steps pompously, ignoring a black fiddler with a wooden leg (Billy Waters) wearing a plumed cocked hat, who leans towards him, saying: "O, Captain he is come to Town, doodle doodle Dandy Ho / How you do Sir: hope see you well Sir?!!" After Ross marches his nephew, a dwarfish boy, in naval uniform, supporting the fore-paws of an enormous (dead) Polar Bear, carried on the shoulders of six sailors, the hind-legs resting on the shoulders of a seventh who says: "'tis a good thing I've lost my Nose." On the bear are stars in the form of the constellation of the Great Bear (as in No. 13289). Behind the bear walks a lean military officer, Capt. Sabine, who holds up his musket with a gull spiked on his bayonet labelled: '-? Sabini.' Two soldiers follow carrying a barrel slung from a pole and inscribed Red Snow for B M'. Beside them marches a naval officer holding in gloved hands the staff of a Union flag. The next pair carry between them a tree-stump labelled 'Esquimaux Wood for B M'. One of them looks round at a black sailor behind him to say: "I say Snowball, mind you don't tread on my heels [these are missing]." The black sailor walks on stumps and has also lost a hand. He answers: "No! No, Massa Billy! & mind you no tread on my toes!" He wears a smart short jacket and shirt-frill, showing that he is an officer's servant. He carries on his head a large canister inscribed 'Worms found in the Intestines of a Seal by a Volunteer—for Brit. Mu.' The next sailor carries a chest on his head inscribed 'Moluscæ for the British Museum' and points a fingerless hand to a large block of stone on the ground labelled 'Granite for BM', to which a pole is tied; he asks: "who the hell's to carry the big stone—?!!" The last sailor of the procession holds the leads of four fat and frightened Esquimaux dogs who have just landed; a small British dog expresses its contempt for them. Just stepping ashore is a grotesque Esquimaux, 'Jack Frost', with spiky hair and beard, wearing below the waist a muff-like garment of fur. He resembles a Stone Age man by E. T. Reed. He holds a tall spiralled pole labelled: 'Lance made of Horn of ye Sea Unicorn, used in common, as a walking stick'. Under his left arm is a portfolio. Three sailors are still in a boat; one leans over to send two dogs ashore; another with a boat-hook asks the third: "If they kill the Dogs & stuff 'em! what will they do with Jack Frost." The sailor answers: "Cut his throat & stuff him also, I supposes." In the background is Ross's ship, the 'Isabella', at anchor, with a broom at the masthead to show that she is for sale.
The procession is bordered by a cheering crowd, hats are frantically waved, In the foreground on the extreme left is a stout, disgruntled 'cit', who says: "I think as how we have Bears [speculators], Gulls, Savages, Chump wood. Stones & Puppies enough without going to the North Pole for them." In the background (left) are tiny spectators watching from the high wall of the British Museum: Sir Joseph Banks, grasping the top of a ladder, stands on the wall, waving his hat: "Huzza! they have got Eursa Major as I live! Huzza!!" Leach (1790-1836), the naturalist, leaps high, exclaiming: "I see it! I see it! the North Pole by Jupiter!! I'll cling to it like a leech Huzza! huzza!! Huzza." A man standing on the wall shouts: "I see Jack Frost!! Huzza! with the N Pole in his hand!! Huzza."
1819
Hand-coloured etching
- Production date
- 1819
- Dimensions
-
Height: 222 millimetres
-
Width: 553 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
-
- Curator's comments
- (Description and comment from M. Dorothy George, 'Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the British Museum', IX, 1949)
Commander John Ross (1777-1856) returned from a voyage to explore the North-West Passage in Nov. 1818, and in 1819 published a 'Voyage of Discovery . . .' He found hills of red snow, bringing some home, dissolved and bottled. 'Europ. Mag.' lxxv. 414-16. James Clark Ross (1800-62) accompanied his uncle in the 'Isabella'. Capt. Sabine (1788-1883) was astronomer to the expedition, and reported on the biological results: of twenty-four species of birds from Greenland, one was entirely new, the Larus Sabini. 'D.N.B.' For Sir Joseph Banks (1743-1820) see vols. v, vi, vii. See also Nos. 13195, 13247, 13289.
Reid, No. 868. Cohn, No. 1303.
(Supplementary information)
Extract from Jonathan King's catalogue entry in S. O'Connell (ed.), "Britain meets the World: 1714-1830" (Palace Museum, Beijing, 2007): The 1818 expedition of Sir John Ross was brief and unsuccesful. However, collections of Inuit (Eskimo) artefacts and natural history specimens, including Inuit dogs, polar bears' skins and narwhal tusks, were brought back and deposited in the British Museum. The caricatured savage on the right of this print represents the famous Greenlandic Inuit intrerpreter and artist Hans Zakæus. He had arrived in Scotland in 1816, and died shortly after the expedition's return.
................................................
The event portrayed by Cruikshank was recorded in 'The Times', 8 December 1818, p.2 column 4: "Yesterday morning, the curiosities, &c., brought from Baffins-bay, by Captain Ross, were landed at Whitehall-stairs, from the boats of the Isabella and Alexander discovery ships..... Among the curiosities was an amazingly large skin of white bear, about 7 feet in length: a sledge of bone, about 5 feet long and 2 high, with the whip, &c. used by the newly-discovered inhabitants; specimens of mineralogy and botany, and some very remarkable star-fish. The whole of the productions were conveyed to the British Museum, for the inspection of the public." For the sledge see Am 1818,1219.1.
- Location
- Not on display
- Exhibition history
-
2007 Mar-Jun, Beijing, Palace Museum, Britain meets the World
- Associated events
- Associated Event: Polar Expedition 1818
- Acquisition date
- 1859
- Department
- Prints and Drawings
- Registration number
- 1859,0316.142
