Owen Stanley RN: Captain of the 'Rattle- Ariake' Adelaide Lubbock
(Heinemann 63s)
Surveying life
OLIVER WARNER
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, sir John Thomas Stanley was living at Alderley Park in Cheshire with his wife and family of eight daughters and twin sons. Sir John was a man of sensibility and intelli- gence, of liberal principles, with a taste for science. In his youth, at his own expense, he had fitted out and accompanied an ex- pedition to Iceland to observe the hot gey- sers, and other natural phenomena of the island.'
What an opening to a first chapter! 'Is it possible,' the reader may fairly speculate, we are close upon a new Jane Austen dis- covery?' Dismissing such hopes, partly on iinding that Sir John is marginal to the main character—a mere uncle, in fact—partly because Owen Stanley, who gives his name to the book and is at its core, was a boy of six when Jane Austen died, and the dates won't fit, the reader, soon finds substantial consolations. Mrs Lubbock, delving among a rich assortment of family papers, has resuscitated and warmed into vitality a naval officer remarkable for his travels, and for his associations. He spent much of his life surveying, and although not remarkable for the beauty of his disposition when he died, ,(aing, on Far Eastern business, he left at least one acutely sad feminine heart in London. Stanley breathed his last in the arms of Dr Thomas Henry Huxley; who was then surgeon in the ship he commanded.
Hitherto, Owen Stanley has seemed mem- orable but elusive. A huge range of moun- tains in New Guinea is named after him, familiar from campaigning in the Second world War. Owen saw the peaks only in the distance, and from HMS `Rattlesnake? When he was off the New Guinea coast he had every reason to believe that the natives were hostile, sometimes shockingly so. Young Huxley would have given much to land, though actually what he was study- ing were hydrozoa—tunicates and molluscs which float near the surface of the sea. They helped to make his name as a scient- ist, and he must, in his years of fame, have blessed the one long voyage he had in the navy.
He came to regard Stanley rather bleakly, described him, in fact, as being in a funk much of the time during the later part of what became, from heat, marine and shore perils, and deterioration in Stan- ley's mental and physical health, a trying commission. All the same, the 'Rattlesnake' and her captain had done much for Hux- ley, and for science generally. Huxley's studies had been so thorough and original that when he sent home learned reports and papers (some via Stanley's father, who became Bishop of Norwich) they made such an impression that he was made an FRS in 1851 at the age of twenty-six. and a year later received the Society's gold medal.
Indeed, the navy has some strange claims upon the gratitude of scientists, instanced notably in Darwin's voyage in the 'Beagle' with Captain Fitzroy, and Huxley's, not many years later. with Stan- ley. As for Stanley's own professional work, surveying. it was only the other day that a pundit expressed the view that the most lasting memorial of what once was the British Empire would prove to be hydrographic charts. If so. Owen Stanley, in spite of not appearing in the original Dictionary of National Biography (which may seem an odd omission, considering how many undistinguished naval officers have found a niche therein), will be upon the roll of honour.
It is typical of Stanley's life and fortune that although Mrs Lubbock has found out a great deal about him, all of it fresh, and is able to illustrate, in the reproductions included in her book. his virtues and limi- tations as a water-colour artist, she has come upon no formal portrait: a tomb, yes, in faraway Australia, but no authen- ticated likeness, for the pathetic little sketch of an officer on a quarterdeck, believed to be an attempt at a self-portrait, is not more than a curiosity. Stanley is, in fact, much reflected, but less often directly conveyed. One sees his impact on his en- chantingly described family, on his sailors, on Their Lordships of the Admiralty, but one knows little of the inside of his per- sonality, about which Mrs Lubbock is so detached as to be. at times, almost stern. Stanley was an egoist, but the way of life of a naval captain of his period, isolated for long stretches at a time, positively encouraged any tendencies this way which may have had root in a man's disposition.
Among other adventures. Stanley experi- enced something of Arctic exploration, having knowledge of such redoubtable fig- ures as Sir John Franklin and the two very different Ross pioneers, James and John. Through his background of a life at sea in many parts of the world, in a time of comparative peace, one may also gather details of, for instance, the extremely dif- ficult early conditions in Australia. and rea- lise afresh the tremendous achievements of James Cook in the Pacific—Cook being first in regions such as the Great Barrier Reef, where Stanley and others were to follow. One may also experience some of the tedium, frustration and excitements of life in the navy of George IV, William IV and the young Victoria. Mrs Lubbock slips
when she makes George IV the madman rather than his father. George IV had odd notions, but not quite so wild as some of those of George HI or even of Sailor Billy.
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