PART 1
tayatitja (pronounced tie-yah-tee-tchah) are the smaller cousins of lutaralipina, the giant freshwater crayfish or “lobster”. tayatitja live in the rivers and creeks of southern and eastern Tasmania and have been eaten by Tasmanians for thousands of years. These days, it’s a protected species. But I’ve been told by reliable sources it’s very tasty.
I’ve often wondered about the origin of tayatitja’s scientific name Astacopsis franklinii. The connection to Van Diemen’s Land’s vice-regal couple from 1837-1843, Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin, is obvious. And I’ve read the 1845 scientific publication in which the name was bestowed by John Edward Gray from the British Museum. But Gray didn’t explain why he gave it that name nor did he identify the collector who sent him specimens of the “Van Diemen’s Land Cray-fish”. I feel certain the collector suggested the name “franklinii”, as Gray wasn’t closely associated with the Franklins.
There are two strong candidates for Gray’s collector. Both are such interesting historical characters that each is worthy of their own Lobster Tale. Here’s the first instalment.
In the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery hangs a painting by celebrated convict artist Thomas Bock depicting the Rossbank Observatory in Hobart’s Queens Domain. The 15x5m wooden observatory on sandstone foundations was constructed in August 1840 by a team of 200 convicts in just nine days. Another astonishing fact is it was built with “not the use of the smallest particle of metal of any kind”. Because the observatory wasn’t built to house a telescope, but sensitive instruments for measuring the Earth’s magnetic field.
The precise mapping of how the Earth’s magnetic field varied was critical to maritime navigation in the 19th century. Hobart’s Rossbank Observatory was just one in a world-wide network established by the British Admiralty.
In the centre of Bock’s painting, three naval officers stand in conversation. They are Sir John Franklin, Captain Francis Crozier and Captain James Clark Ross. All were British heroes of polar exploration who achieved fame in the search for the elusive Northwest Passage – a sea route linking the Atlantic and Pacific via the Arctic.
From 1819-1827, Ross and Crozier served in Arctic expeditions led by Sir William Edward Parry. Ross also served on expeditions under his uncle Sir John Ross. On the second expedition with his uncle, Ross led the party that first reached the North Magnetic Pole on June 1, 1831. In 1835, Crozier was Ross’s second-in-command on another Arctic expedition, this time in search of a flotilla of lost British whaling ships. Ironically, in 1848, Ross led an unsuccessful search for Franklin and Crozier who had perished along with their crews on yet another attempt to find the Northwest Passage.
In 1801-1803, Franklin was a teenage midshipman aboard the HMS Investigator under Matthew Flinders during the first circumnavigation of Australia. Franklin credited this experience with kindling his lifelong passion for exploration.
In 1819, Franklin led an ill-fated overland expedition to map the north coast of Canada. Eleven of Franklin’s 20 men died of starvation and exhaustion, while the rest only survived by eating lichen. Some even attempted to eat their leather boots. Franklin was thereafter known as “the man who ate his boots”.
But Franklin put this behind him and returned to the Arctic in 1825 in a more successful overland expedition conducted in conjunction with Parry’s explorations by sea. This time, Franklin came home a hero and received a knighthood and other honours, including the governorship of Van Diemen’s Land, taking over from Sir George Arthur in 1837.
During the late 1830s, British attention shifted south. Two ships left England in September 1839 on a four-year voyage of discovery to Antarctica. Ross led this expedition. He commanded the HMS Erebus while his good friend Crozier captained the HMS Terror.
The Erebus and Terror re-provisioned in Hobart in mid-August 1840. Here, Crozier and Ross renewed their acquaintance with Franklin. Sir John and Lady Jane Franklin were keen patrons of the arts and sciences and had readied the materials and workforce to build the magnetic observatory. Within a day of arrival, Ross chose the site and the convicts set to work. Ross expressed his admiration for “the cheerful enthusiasm which the convicts employed in the building, displayed throughout the work”. I guess even the convicts were star-struck.
Bock’s painting commemorates the auspicious visit of the Erebus and Terror to Hobart and the construction of the Rossbank Observatory. But in addition to Franklin, Crozier and Ross, there is another blue-coated naval officer off to the left, walking towards the polar heroes. Is it someone who served with them and admired them enormously? Is it the Erebus’s first mate, Alexander Smith, and is he Gray’s “mystery” collector?
Alexander John Smith was born into a naval family on December 20, 1812. Smith was educated in a kind of naval pre-apprenticeship and became a volunteer midshipman two days before his 14th birthday.
Smith’s first posting was the frigate HMS Thetis, protecting British interests in South America. He was aboard the Thetis for four years until a violent storm drove the ship onto rocks below the towering cliffs of Cabo Frio, east of Rio de Janeiro in December 1830. The Thetis sank carrying a king’s ransom in gold bullion and the wreck and salvage operations were big news. This was the first, but not the last time Smith was involved in events of great notoriety.
After serving on the HMS Harrier in the Indian Ocean, Smith returned to England in 1835, where he was promoted to mate sixth rate on the HMS Cove under Ross, the hero of the North Magnetic Pole. This was the rescue mission for the British whalers trapped in the Arctic ice. Despite the hardships, Smith revelled in this posting. He wrote to his mother that Ross was “without exception, the finest fellow I have ever met”. The admiration was mutual and in 1839, Ross personally selected Smith to be the Erebus’s first mate for its journey to Antarctica.
Aboard the Erebus, Smith befriended the expedition’s botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, who was trained by his father Sir William Jackson Hooker, director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew. Smith’s passion for science flourished aboard the Erebus. He became Ross’s trusted assistant in the magnetic measurements, and he avidly collected zoological specimens, in particular marine crustaceans, which he sent to the British Museum. It didn’t hurt that Smith was also the nephew of the British Museum’s keeper of zoology, John Edward Gray.
So, Smith has much to recommend him as Gray’s “mystery” collector of Astacopsis franklinii. He had the connection to Gray, a strong motive to memorialise a fellow polar explorer associated with the location of collection, and he had the means – he and the other naturalists aboard the Erebus and Terror collected animal and plant specimens during their two sojourns in Hobart during the Antarctic expedition.
Smith is not identified as the collector of the “Van Diemen’s Land Cray-fish” in the original 1845 paper nor in the List of the Specimens of Crustacea in the Collection of the British Museum published in 1847. But in the introduction to the list, Smith is credited with sending his uncle crustaceans from Van Diemen’s Land. But what did he send?
Gray meticulously noted where every specimen in the museum’s collection came from, but was less careful in acknowledging his collectors. Within the list, Smith is identified as the collector of two species of shore crab and five species of marine isopod from his time aboard the Erebus, collected in the Atlantic, Sydney, New Zealand and Antarctica. So, by deductive logic, Smith must have also sent his uncle at least one of the crustaceans without a collector but listed as coming from Van Diemen’s Land. Five species fit this bill: two freshwater crayfish (tayatitja and a burrowing crayfish), one marine isopod and two species of crab.
If I had to choose the most likely specimens Smith sent his uncle from Van Diemen’s Land, it would be the isopod and crabs. It’s not impossible Smith also collected the two freshwater crayfishes, but it seems less likely. Smith also returned to Tasmania as soon as he could after Ross’s expedition reached England in September 1843. This was probably too late to get specimens to his uncle by 1845, and he had other things on his mind.
While the Erebus was in Hobart, Smith fell in love with Miss Sarah Aubrey Read, daughter of Captain Frederick Read of New Town and his first wife Elizabeth Driver. Smith and Aubrey (as she was known) married on October 12, 1844, within weeks of Smith’s arrival back in Hobart from England. Smith had been promoted to lieutenant and accepted a position as one of the naval scientists at the Rossbank Observatory. Smith and Aubrey remained in Hobart until 1853, when they moved to Victoria, where Smith was appointed the Goldfields Commissioner for Castlemaine. Subsequently, Smith represented Castlemaine in the Victorian parliament. Smith died at the age of 59 on September 7, 1872. Aubrey lived until 1900, surrounded by their many children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.
Commander Alexander John Smith, RN, may or may not have been Gray’s “mysterious” collector, but I was very glad to have learned so much about his life, one full of high adventure and scientific accomplishment.
. . o O o . .
Terry Mulhern is a writer and academic. He has lived in Victoria for more than 20 years but, like a swift parrot, he migrates every summer across Bass Strait to north-west Tasmania.
