J. C. Palmer’s life

J. C. Palmer was the son of Edward Palmer, a merchant and bankruptcy commissioner, and Catherine Croxall, of Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Dickinson College in 1829, obtained his doctor of medicine degree from the University of Maryland in 1834, opted for a military career, and was commissioned as Assistant Surgeon in the Navy. After several tours of service, he married Juliet Helena Gittings of Baltimore County in 1837. Their daughter, also named Juliet, married career diplomat Charles Fox Frederick Adam, of relevance to the descent of the proof copies of Antarctic Mariner’s Song, as they remained in the Adam family until recently, when they were sold at auction and thus came to public attention for the first time.

Palmer was aboard the Peacock from late February to mid-April 1839 during the first of two Antarctic seasons. His experiences became the subject of Thulia. After the loss of the Peacock at the mouth of the Columbia River in July 1841, Palmer commanded the ship’s party ashore at Astoria, Oregon Territory, and was promoted to Surgeon in 1842. After the expedition, he served in numerous capacities in a highly distinguished naval career. In 1866, he contracted malaria in Florida, but despite ill health, took charge of the naval hospital at Brooklyn from 1866 to 1869, during which time he revisited, revised, and expanded Thulia for renewed publication (Palmer, Reference Palmer1868). He was later commissioned as a medical director and then named Surgeon General of the United States Navy in 1872. He retired from active duty the following year and died in Washington, D.C. in 1883. According to the Dictionary of American Biography, “His contemporaries regarded him as an attractive and scholarly man, of notable gifts as a writer, skilled in his profession, and faithful to every obligation during nearly fifty years in the naval service.” (Lenz, Reference Lenz1995, p. 56). He was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery; his remains were reinterred at Arlington National Cemetery on 20 November 1942 (section 3, site 1740) (Dickinson College Archives & Special Collections, 2013; Find a Grave, 2025).

Pertinent aspects of the United States exploring expedition (1838–1842)

The U.S. Ex. Ex.’s fleet of six ships was delayed heading south and only arrived at Orange Harbor in Tierra del Fuego in February 1839, assuring that departures for the Antarctic were going to be very late. Four of the ships would risk the dangerous winds and seas of Cape Horn and the Drake Passage, and the ice and uncharted coasts farther south. Wilkes and Lt. Robert E. Johnson, respective commanders of the Porpoise and Sea Gull, departed on 25 February and had to revert north after only nine days.

On the same day, the Peacock under Capt. William Hudson and the Flying-Fish under Lt. William M. Walker composed a separate party that headed for the region far west of the Antarctic Peninsula, where the men would attempt to better James Cook’s 71º10’ S achieved in the same area in 1774. The Peacock, of 507 Mg (tonnes) and 35 m long (Mitchener, Reference Mitchener2015), was a three-masted sloop of war, built in 1814 at the New York Navy Yard and rebuilt there in 1827–1828 to prepare it for a lengthy voyage of exploration. The rebuilt ship had hard service before the U.S. Ex. Ex. set sail a decade later. At the outset, Hudson was worried over the state of the Peacock’s timbers and fastenings. His concerns were prescient as the ship sustained damage at sea and in difficult ice conditions. The ship ultimately shared the fate of other vessels of the era when it was wrecked on a shallow bar at the outflow of the Columbia River. The relatively tiny Flying-Fish, of 87 Mg and 26 m in length (Mitchener, Reference Mitchener2015), was the smaller of two New York pilot boats purchased for the expedition, the other being the ill-fated Sea Gull. These were two-masted schooners with strongly inclined masts typical of fast pilot boats. Wilkes had the masts shortened to make the ships less vulnerable in high winds off Cape Horn, but that was not enough to save the Sea Gull. Like the Peacock, the Flying-Fish sustained serious damage during its encounters with turbulent seas and ice. The ship was sold in Singapore in 1842, historian Nathaniel Philbrick commenting in Sea of Glory, his comprehensive work on the U.S. Ex. Ex., that thereupon “the Expedition lost one of its most trusted and stalwart members.” (Philbrick, Reference Philbrick2003, p. 293).

Hudson and Walker proceeded southwest despite their misgivings, powered by sail alone. Walker’s friends at Orange Harbor, appreciating the dangers he and his men would face in the Flying-Fish, “took leave of him, with the ominous congratulation, that ‘she would at least make him an honourable coffin’.” (Palmer, Reference Palmer1843, p. 65). A gale caused the two ships to separate the day after departure, now unable to relieve each other; they were only reunited 27 days later on 25 March, and then by mere chance.

The men’s determination and perseverance constituted one of the most heroic seafaring undertakings in Antarctic history. Both parties struggled against defective vessels, cold and darkness with rare sunshine, wind and wave, fog and poor visibility among icebergs, snow and sleet, rime encrusting the ships, water leaks swamping the living quarters, and bodily injuries, some of them incapacitating (Palmer, 1843; Boothe, Reference Boothe2011). On 22 March, the Flying-Fish reached its farthest south of 70º14’ S at about 90º to 105º W. (Palmer, Reference Palmer1843). Palmer described the men’s particularly dreadful circumstance aboard the Flying-Fish on 24 March: “as the breeze died away into a murmur, a low crepitation, like the clicking of a death-watch, announced that the sea was freezing. Never did fond ear strain for the sigh of love, more anxiously than those devoted men listened to each gasp of the wind, whose breath was now their life.” (Palmer, Reference Palmer1843, p. 71). Freed, the Flying-Fish turned north and had its chance rendezvous with the Peacock the following day at 68º08’ S, as far south as the Peacock was to go. The little Flying-Fish had achieved the highest latitude by any ship during the entire course of the U.S. Ex. Ex. Because the expedition papers were collected on board the Peacock and lost when it was wrecked, Thulia became, as Palmer calmly put it, “the sole remaining history of a highly interesting adventure.” (Palmer, Reference Palmer1843, p. 9). The Flying-Fish had come within about 200 km of Thurston Island on the Eights Coast of Ellsworth Land that remained undiscovered until seen in 1940 by members of the U.S. Antarctic Service: in fitting honour, Thurston Island’s western tip was named Cape Flying Fish, the spine of the island’s interior is the Walker Mountains, and the sea separating the island from the coast is Peacock Sound (Alberts, Reference Alberts1995).

Palmer and his two books

Surprisingly, Palmer is scarcely mentioned in any of the expedition’s primary and secondary literature. Wilkes’s 5-volume narrative mentioned Palmer only in the roster of 680 individuals associated with the expedition, with no index entry at all. Similarly, Wilkes referred to him barely twice in his 930-page autobiography (Wilkes, Reference Wilkes, Morgan, Tyler, Leonhart and Loughlin1978). (That may mean Wilkes held Palmer in no disdain!) Palmer pulled himself out from obscurity, however, by his substantial contributions of Thulia and Antarctic Mariner’s Song.

Thulia was published in 1843 by Samuel Colman of New York as Thulia: A Tale of the Antarctic and dedicated to Walker. Antarctic Mariner’s Song was published by D. van Nostrand of New York and dated 1868. Walker died in 1866, and Palmer left the book undedicated. The gilt image of the Flying-Fish on the front cover of Antarctic Mariner’s Song (Fig. 2) may have been derived from a contemporary print that it almost exactly resembles in the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts (Bryan, Reference Bryan2011). Bibliographical details of both books are given elsewhere (Rosove, Reference Rosove2001).

Figure 2.

Close-up of the front book cover of Antarctic Mariner’s Song with the Flying-Fish.

The illustrations in Thulia were prepared by Alfred Thomas Agate (Agate, 2025), one of two expedition artists, whose work was rescued from the Peacock (Philbrick, Reference Philbrick2003). He is acknowledged on the page listing the illustrations. He was a painter and miniaturist and used a “camera lucida” that projected a scene onto a piece of paper he could trace for accuracy. He contributed about half the sketches and paintings for Wilkes’s 5-volume narrative. Agate died from “consumption” in 1846, perhaps explaining why he is not acknowledged in the 1868 edition.

Thulia was greeted by the public with praise upon publication (Lenz, Reference Lenz1995), particularly as readers were eager for accounts of the voyage. Wilkes’s narrative was not yet published, and other than journal articles, Wilkes’s Synopsis of the Cruise of the U.S. Exploring Expedition (1842) was thus far the only book concerning the expedition in print, and only in minuscule quantity for official governmental use.

Antarctic Mariner’s Song is a substantially scarcer book than Thulia (Rosove, Reference Rosove2001), although no precise figures as to the size of the print or binding runs are available (Lenz, Reference Lenz1995). Contributing factors to the relative rarity are likely the span of 25 years between the two editions with a declining popular interest in the U.S. Ex. Ex.; Palmer’s admission that he made no effort to promote the 1868 edition (see Palmer’s annotation on the half-title leaf); and an apparent lack of contemporary book reviews (Lenz, Reference Lenz1995).

The principal changes from Thulia to Antarctic Mariner’s Song are these: Palmer no longer referred to the Flying-Fish by the pseudonym Thulia and accordingly changed the epic poem’s name from “Thulia” to “Antarctic Mariner’s Song”. He reworked sections I–V, and “The Bridal Rose”, which was now incorporated as a new section IX. He added new sections VI–VIII and X–XI. He changed 10 of the 12 titles of illustrations in common (all but “Cape Horn” and “Albatross”), substituted 2 redrawn but thematically similar illustrations (“Cabin” on p. 51, and “Berth-deck” on p. 61), and added one new illustration (“Ice-islands” on p. 39). Whether the two redrawn illustrations were Agate’s that had been conserved is unknown. The endnotes were expanded as the lengthier poem required them. The music was deleted. Except for a few trivial edits, the concise prose narratives are identical, presented as appendices in both books.

The books raise some interesting questions. Why did Palmer choose to write an account from the viewpoint of the Flying-Fish rather than from the Peacock on which he was shipboard? And why in poetry? Palmer explained obliquely that the experiences of the men on both ships were similar, which was likely true. No doubt Palmer admired the pluck realised in Walker’s and his men’s farthest south in the diminutive Flying-Fish. Significantly, he dedicated Thulia to Walker rather than to Hudson, his own commander, who even had a higher naval rank. At the time, as Lenz pointed out, important national events were commonly expressed in poetry as well as prose. Poetry might better grasp the emotions, expressing and conveying experience better than narrative. Poetry constitutes most of both books. And in both, Palmer relegated his prose narrative to the status of an appendix, as if not quite essential. Palmer was a highly educated, capable writer, and his poetry conveys experience well, which is not to diminish his prose: consider how he described the men’s predicament on 24 March 1839. For those readers interested in the structure of the poetry, Lenz elaborated in great detail the organisation, metre, and other points.

Palmer’s proofs and annotations

There are two proofs of Antarctic Mariner’s Song, one “annotated,” the other “unannotated,” each believed to be unique. Both are in large-paper format, printed on rectos only. In the “annotated proof,” all illustrations are separately printed India-proofs—direct strikes from the original plates, well-defined and richly inked—glued to their appropriate places in the text. In the “unannotated proof,” images were stereotyped in-text with less definition and weaker inking, as they would similarly appear in the finished book. The “annotated” proof bears 32 annotations in Palmer’s hand, all but one written in magnetic, brown, iron gall ink; one is in black ink. Of these, 28 are of substantive content, and 4 are trivial. Following are the 28 important ones with location in the text, Palmer’s manuscript verbatim (in brown ink), and comment.

Title leaf. , (Medea.) — The addition follows “Seneca” as the source of the preceding Latin citation, “Audax nimium qui freta primus/Rate tam fragili perfida rupit.” Palmer used the same citation on the title leaf of Thulia, which translates as, “He was too bold, he who was the first to break through the treacherous waves in such a fragile ship.”

Half-title leaf. My own Copy: final proofs, on common, press-room paper; but the illustrations are India-proofs, taken for me by the eminent wood-engraver, Mr. Harley, before the blocks were stereotyped. As a fair critic surely, not conscious of self-conceit, and hypercritical only of my own attempts, I do not hesitate to avow, for any children’s heed, that I approve my little “Song,” and do not feel mortified that its circulation has been so limited; particularly, as I have taken no pains to bring it into public notice. J.C.P. — Palmer would likely have possessed the proofs prior to publication. He apparently added this lengthy annotation and likely the others later.

Preface leaf. In answer to many kindly inquiries as to my own share in this story, I may add that, although not aboard the Flying-fish, I was Surgeon of the Peacock, and we had experiences exactly like those of our consort, even to the awful scene of forcing through the ice-barrier; and my sole assistance was derived from the common log-book, two or three meager note-books, and desultory conversation. — The “ice-barrier” refers to densely packed sea ice, icebergs, and pieces of bergs encountered as the Flying-Fish reached its southernmost latitude, with details in the prose narrative.

p. 9. Orange Harbour, in Tierra del Fuego, is in Lat. 55º.30’.50”, S. Long. 68º.00’.34”, W. about 28 miles north of Cape Horn. — In the list of illustrations, the location is given as “Orange Bay”, the site referred to in the first line of the poem, “Deep in a far-off, desert bay,”. The two-masted ship depicted in the engraving on p. 9 is presumably the Flying-Fish rather than the Sea Gull, as the poem’s second and third stanzas promptly focus on the Flying-Fish, though not by name.

p. 10. [She was a N.Y. pilot-boat.] — Referring to the Flying-Fish, written under the line “O’er Hudson’s bosom bright and still;”. “Hudson” refers to the Hudson River, where the pilot boat by inference did service under its original name Independence, not to Capt. William Hudson of the Peacock.

p. 10. ‘mid the [gull]s, — Palmer scratched out the words “like a” and added an “s” after the printed “gull” to pluralise it. Thus his line now reads, “And, ‘mid the gulls, with folded wings,”. However, the “unannotated proof” and finished book retained the original, “And, like a gull with folded wings,”, suggesting Palmer’s change was an afterthought post-publication, or he changed his mind.

p. 11. [Far-fetched, both.] — Added beneath the last line mentioning “fleets” and “sparrows.” The last stanza implies that ships and sparrows alike survive under a watchful “eye divine”. With his annotation, Palmer admits having connected the two was fanciful.

p. 13. Promontory called “False Cape Horn”. [and] True Cape Horn. — The engraving is titled “Cape Horn” on the list of illustrations. Palmer’s “Promontory….” is next to the elevated land in the left part of the illustration, and his “True….” flanks the more distant land at the right. The image includes the Flying-Fish.

p. 13. (Koo-ah-ick! Koo-aick!) — Added under the line “The braying penguin sounds his horn:”. Obviously onomatopoeic. Given the location at Orange Harbor and the “braying” typical of the “jackass” penguin group, Palmer could only have been describing Magellanic penguins.

p. 14. *One of us made much fun by suddenly popping down through the green sward, which he was unconsciously walking over, without observing that it was nothing but the top of a clump of trees flattened down by constant gales. — Palmer added an asterisk at the end of line 2, “From stunted beech or blighted willow,” to append this anecdote.

p. 14. [it was a most lovely day.] — Added under the lines “And such a morning, o’er the face/Of wintry region, rarely smiled;” Palmer must have been especially moved by the beauty and peacefulness of the day he described.

p. 17. Parhelion, not seen in the stereotype. — Palmer wrote this next to the engraved image titled “Lying To” depicting the Flying-Fish in tumultuous seas. The parhelion and minimally visible sun are clear in this India-proof (Fig. 3) but cannot be discerned in either the stereotyped proof or the finished book.

Figure 3.

“Lying To.” The Flying-Fish with reefed sails. The parhelion can be seen in this India-proof.

p. 17. *This description is absolutely from nature. — Palmer wrote an asterisk next to the poem’s title “III.” His annotation at the bottom of the page emphasised that the engraving and this section’s poetry alike were starkly representative of the severe conditions at sea.

p. 18. (Cumuloni.) — Written under line 2, “In castled clouds piled vast and high,³”. Endnote 3 (p. 73) reads, “Captain Fitzroy, R.N., calls them Cumuloni; they rise before a South-west gale.” The description and endnote suggest cumulonimbus clouds.

p. 18. (As in the sketch at p. 33.) — The annotation follows lines 5–6, “Deep-down where combs the hollow wave,/Scared sea-birds swooping find a lee;”. In Thulia, Palmer had merely written, “The sea-bird swoops to find a lee;”, but now he has added an attribution of fear. This may be taken as anthropomorphic projection of the Flying-Fish’s own circumstances in the same stanza: “What refuge, puny bark, for thee?” Seabirds, after all, swoop fearlessly in their natural oceanic habitats.

p. 18. [Frightfully true:vivid!] — Written under line 11, “Anon, precipitously hurled,” describing the unequal match between gigantic seas and the diminutive Flying-Fish. This line is the same in Thulia (p. 22). The passage of 25 years had not diminished Palmer’s recollection of the dreadful dangers.

p. 19. (Porpoises.) — Added under line 7, “Loud-snorting herds of fishy swine⁴.” The endnote 4 reference (p. 73) reads, “Porpoises: porcus-piscis.” Porcus-piscis is Latin for “pig-fish,” from which the term “Porpoise” is derived.

p. 19. [True to the Life: p. 33.] — Written under line 13, “Serenely sweeps that stately bird,” refers to the engraving “Albatross” on p. 33 that depicts either a wandering or royal albatross banking down a tumultuous wave.

p. 20. [This passage has been criticised, as if all ghosts must be in white. See the one in Waverley. — Added under line 8, “Like guilty ghost in cerements dun.” Palmer underlined the word “dun.” “Waverley” refers to Walter Scott’s series of novels. The ghost is “Bodach Glas” (Gaelic for “Old Grey Man”), “a tall figure in a grey plaid” that foretells the observer’s death.

p. 20. *I was not aware, until long after writing this line, that it almost literally repeats one in [?] “Meditations”: “the _____ing winds have moaned themselves to sleep.” — Palmer placed an asterisk at line 14 and the addition at the bottom of the page, explaining an apparent coincidence. One word [?] is illegible.

p. 39. This sketch was made, on the spot, by Guillou, our apt & amiable assistant surgeon. The background is perfectly accurate, but the floe-ice far too regular: it was in shapeless masses, with no apparent water between; and, though the open sea was only ten miles off, we had to butt the ship through twice as many, to crack it. This, however, applies only to the woodcut: Dr. Guillou’s tinted drawing presents an almost unbroken ice-field without any trace of a canal, and far greater distance. — This exquisite engraving is titled “Ice-islands” (Fig. 4). It is dramatic: fractured floe ice, three men with rowboat and anchor in the foreground, three men and another rowboat more distant, and the three-masted Peacock beyond against a backdrop of massive icebergs. The illustration was not used in Thulia. The artist was Charles Guillou, well-liked but whom Wilkes repeatedly disparaged (by no means uniquely) in his autobiography. The wood engraver’s name, Harley, whom Palmer mentioned in his annotation on the half title, is present at the lower left; neither his name nor that of any other woodcut engraver appears on other illustrations in either of the two books.

Figure 4.

India-proof of “Ice-islands.” The Peacock amid the ice fields. With Palmer’s handwriting.

pp. 39–40. A dead calm with dense fog at sea is such a dismal scene that even Sharks and Boobies became companionable. I have often seen these big birds, (Sula Stolida) perched on the fore-yard arm, in a long row, the first came in alighting at the boom-iron, and crowded off it by another, then another, and another in succession, as if the rigging afforded no other perch till the original squatter was pushed up to the top-arm on lookout, who would stroke its grey plumage down, and open its wings out, with no more remonstrance than a hoarse croak. — Boobies are noted in the last line on p. 39 in an Antarctic locale, and “Sula” is the boobies’ genus. But boobies are not found in the Antarctic. Thus, Palmer’s description of them and the illustration heading poem VII are incongruous. The birds were probably cormorants, which may perch on ships; he may have mixed in his recollection of boobies from a lower latitude.

p. 41. *I plucked it, at Old Point Comfort, Va. the last time I went ashore there, and kept it, all the cruise, “for a relic”: the attachment a wide voyager gets for such tokens would make a Yacht-Commodore smile. — Palmer placed an asterisk at the end of the first line, “We gathered a twig from the live-oak tree,/For a relic of love and of home;”, and inserted his comment at the bottom of the page.

p. 42. *This break in the rhythm was intended to give a kind of forecastle “staccato” to the music. — Palmer placed an asterisk over an em dash in line 5 to explain its purpose. Endnote 9 (p. 75) makes clear that Palmer’s song “An Air from the Icebergs” was set to music and sung.

p. 42. (Taffrail &c. crushed in.) — Written under line 6 that reads, “Our pluck did not fail till we lost our tail;”.

p. 75. , as sung with great noise, on the forecastle of the U.S. Ship Peacock, by Jim Bobstay, Boatsmate. — This annotation refers to another song not in the book, but its title is given on p. 75, “The Old Peacock,/A Breeze/from the unpopular. Opera of the/Icebergs.”

p. 77. “O mores! Usq; adeone [and] [Persius: I.26.] — On p. 48, lines 9–10 read, “And now approaching haunts of men,/The “sciat alter” fires each mind:¹⁵”. Endnote 15 (p. 75) provides the entire line 27 from Persius, Satires, I, “Scire tuum nihil est, nisi te scire hoc sciat alter.”, and Palmer’s endnote adds, “Sailors call it ‘spinning yarns;” but we may translate the old phrase thus: For you to know is nothing, so nobody else knows that you know.” Palmer’s annotation is the lead-in from line 26 (“o mores, usque adeone” in the original), and below line 27 gives the original source in Perseus.

p. 86. (Par. Lost: Book II, l. 1049–50.) — In his prose narrative, Palmer did not give attribution for “With opal towers, and battlements adorned/Of living sapphire.” His annotation provides the source, John Milton’s Paradise Lost.