A fact from 1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 June 2021 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Arctic, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Arctic on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ArcticWikipedia:WikiProject ArcticTemplate:WikiProject ArcticArctic articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a
list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the
full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
this nomination's talk page,
the article's talk page or
Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
ALT2:... that a story about
Horatio Nelson chasing a
polar bear(pictured) during the 1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole started circulating in 1800? Source: " It was not until 1800 that the first account of the ‘incident,’ as it is now known, was published in a sketch of Nelson’s life in the Naval Chronicle, when Skeffington Lutwidge provided a new version of events for that journal:", Lewis-Jones, Huw W.G. (October 2005), "Nelson and the bear: the making of an Arctic myth", Polar Record, 41 (4), pp. 335–353, doi:10.1017/S0032247405004675.
Various other image and hook possibilities here. For example, this is the expedition on which the
polar bear was given its scientific name. —
Kusma (
t·
c)
15:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Date, size, refs, hook, neutrality, copyvio spotcheck, etc. all GTG. QPQ done. Both hooks are nice, I find the first one funnier, but the second one has arguably a better image. Shrug, something for the closing admin to toss a coin for, I guess :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here07:05, 21 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Firstly, this is a delightful and fascinating article on a pioneering expedition. I guess it says a lot that we had nothing on this until last year. Secondly, the article is in very good shape, well-structured, coherently narrated, and tidily cited, so there is little for the reviewer to remark on.
Glad you like it! It isn't quite true that we had nothing,
HMS Racehorse (1757) had a bit of information.
Background
"its vice president" - this is the start of the narrative, and "its" has no defined referent. Perhaps "on the initiative of the vice president of the Royal Society, Daines Barrington, the Society's Secretary, Matthew Maty, sent..."
Fixed
Preparations
Why don't we gloss "bomb vessel" to explain that this was an exceptionally strongly-built warship designed to withstand the heavy recoil of a shore bombardment mortar, hence more likely to survive the Arctic ice than ordinary ships?
Explained a bit.
Much better.
"the hull doubled ... completed in only two days". If doubling the hull means doubling the thickness of the whole of the hull, this seems remarkable. Is the claim plausible, or is the meaning different? I see Goodwin spent several pages on the matter?
Goodwin p. 77: "The logbook shows that all the shipwright's work was finished within two days. While the process of doubling the external hull could be swiftly achieved using large gangs of men, the fact that the internal works were completed in this time is remarkable." Pages 78–80 are drawings instead of text.
Good, so why not say some of that; you could even quote Goodwin's opinion that the internal works were remarkable, and say that large gangs could have worked on the external hull – these give a sharp idea of the urgency that the task was given, a highly relevant fact for the expedition and the article.
Wrote very little, but I hope it helps.
The original plan,
File:HMS Carcass (1759).jpg, shows the robust construction of the hull, before doubling. Might be worth including the image, or a detail from it?
This version is much nicer:
File:'Carcass' (1759) RMG J1446.png. However, I'm not convinced that the image is PD in the United States, crazy as that is. There are some really nice images in the Savours article as well (1773 technical drawings of the post-conversion state) that I similarly can't argue to be PD in the US.
Well, they are certainly over 200 years old, and certainly 2-dimensional drawings, so they are {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}. That is a valid license for Commons. They were also created by the Royal Navy many years before 1923; all British Government documents over 100 years old, even the secret ones, are PD after that time. I see that File:'Carcass' (1759) RMG J1446.png is in fact already licensed as {{PD-Art|PD-old-100-1923}} so you need have no worries on that score.
I'll take your word for it. Image copyright for unpublished old things is annoying. I've moved other images around in response.
Journey
Why not gloss the Nore as (at the mouth of the Thames), or something similar.
Done.
What's Hakluyt's headland?
Northernmost point of Amsterdamøya, now mentioned.
"As the ice was impenetrable, Phipps turned east" - well, if it had really been impenetrable, he'd not have been able to turn? Perhaps "was becoming impenetrable" or near offer.
Just to the north, and it is Phipps' impression so I changed to "seemed".
Publications
First sentence is rather long and wandering, would best be split.
Done, and added a bit on a guess for the anonymous author.
Excellent.
"that were made from watercolours" - how about just ", from watercolours"?
changed to "based on".
based on Philippe d'Auvergne's sketches ... a French artist on board a British warship! - seems we need a bit of backstory there, definitely relevant.
An interesting person, but Jersey-born and definitely a loyal British subject.
Aha!
Legacy
"the first scientific description" - perhaps plural, as there are two
Species descriptions; and that might be a worthy link target for "scientific description".
Changed.
Might be worth glossing "Sjuøyane" as (The Seven Islands), to match the map. Probably need to cite the sentence, too.
Modified.
Maybe say how old Nelson was at the time? Seems he was about 15, on his first voyage, and he served as a coxswain, according to the article "
Horatio Nelson"; there's a source there. I guess one could be both a coxswain as a trade and have the rank of midshipman?
It's up at first mention.
Not impossible ... when was the next attempt made, or wasn't there one? Mention the
Northwest Passage (an article remarkably light on citations, however)? Scope for some wikilinking and a sentence or two here in the Legacy?
Well, the next attempt at the Northwest Passage is easy: Cook's third voyage. I'll have to check what else the Royal Navy did.
Images
Lead image is a bit small and very yellow; we could adjust its colour balance a little, maybe? Happy to help.
Tried a different one.
On that image, it would be nice to say where it came from and when it was made (is the source not indeed the anonymous narrative of 1774 mentioned in Publications?). There are bibliographic details on Commons.
Added.
Irving's distilling apparatus is rather small amidst much blank yellow space. Maybe crop image on Commons, and colour-balance it too.
Found a cropped image.
The Chart of the courses is important and here I think it will be justifiable to make it much larger, and again colour-balanced; it was certainly not yellow when first printed. Again, happy to help.
Found a slightly less yellow one. Probably the article should have better maps (superimposing the Phipps journey on a modern map), but that's a bit much to do right now.
Still a bit to go (other than the obvious "expand everything", we could do with background on Israel Lyons and later controversies, the involvement of Joseph Banks, various experiments, botany and zoology), but I'll try my best. Thank you for the helpful review! —
Kusma (
talk)
15:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)reply
A fact from 1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole appeared on Wikipedia's
Main Page in the Did you know column on 3 June 2021 (
check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
This article is within the scope of WikiProject Arctic, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of
Arctic on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join
the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ArcticWikipedia:WikiProject ArcticTemplate:WikiProject ArcticArctic articles
This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a
list of open tasks. To use this banner, please see the
full instructions.Military historyWikipedia:WikiProject Military historyTemplate:WikiProject Military historymilitary history articles
The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as
this nomination's talk page,
the article's talk page or
Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.
ALT2:... that a story about
Horatio Nelson chasing a
polar bear(pictured) during the 1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole started circulating in 1800? Source: " It was not until 1800 that the first account of the ‘incident,’ as it is now known, was published in a sketch of Nelson’s life in the Naval Chronicle, when Skeffington Lutwidge provided a new version of events for that journal:", Lewis-Jones, Huw W.G. (October 2005), "Nelson and the bear: the making of an Arctic myth", Polar Record, 41 (4), pp. 335–353, doi:10.1017/S0032247405004675.
Various other image and hook possibilities here. For example, this is the expedition on which the
polar bear was given its scientific name. —
Kusma (
t·
c)
15:10, 19 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Date, size, refs, hook, neutrality, copyvio spotcheck, etc. all GTG. QPQ done. Both hooks are nice, I find the first one funnier, but the second one has arguably a better image. Shrug, something for the closing admin to toss a coin for, I guess :) --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus|
reply here07:05, 21 May 2021 (UTC)reply
Firstly, this is a delightful and fascinating article on a pioneering expedition. I guess it says a lot that we had nothing on this until last year. Secondly, the article is in very good shape, well-structured, coherently narrated, and tidily cited, so there is little for the reviewer to remark on.
Glad you like it! It isn't quite true that we had nothing,
HMS Racehorse (1757) had a bit of information.
Background
"its vice president" - this is the start of the narrative, and "its" has no defined referent. Perhaps "on the initiative of the vice president of the Royal Society, Daines Barrington, the Society's Secretary, Matthew Maty, sent..."
Fixed
Preparations
Why don't we gloss "bomb vessel" to explain that this was an exceptionally strongly-built warship designed to withstand the heavy recoil of a shore bombardment mortar, hence more likely to survive the Arctic ice than ordinary ships?
Explained a bit.
Much better.
"the hull doubled ... completed in only two days". If doubling the hull means doubling the thickness of the whole of the hull, this seems remarkable. Is the claim plausible, or is the meaning different? I see Goodwin spent several pages on the matter?
Goodwin p. 77: "The logbook shows that all the shipwright's work was finished within two days. While the process of doubling the external hull could be swiftly achieved using large gangs of men, the fact that the internal works were completed in this time is remarkable." Pages 78–80 are drawings instead of text.
Good, so why not say some of that; you could even quote Goodwin's opinion that the internal works were remarkable, and say that large gangs could have worked on the external hull – these give a sharp idea of the urgency that the task was given, a highly relevant fact for the expedition and the article.
Wrote very little, but I hope it helps.
The original plan,
File:HMS Carcass (1759).jpg, shows the robust construction of the hull, before doubling. Might be worth including the image, or a detail from it?
This version is much nicer:
File:'Carcass' (1759) RMG J1446.png. However, I'm not convinced that the image is PD in the United States, crazy as that is. There are some really nice images in the Savours article as well (1773 technical drawings of the post-conversion state) that I similarly can't argue to be PD in the US.
Well, they are certainly over 200 years old, and certainly 2-dimensional drawings, so they are {{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}. That is a valid license for Commons. They were also created by the Royal Navy many years before 1923; all British Government documents over 100 years old, even the secret ones, are PD after that time. I see that File:'Carcass' (1759) RMG J1446.png is in fact already licensed as {{PD-Art|PD-old-100-1923}} so you need have no worries on that score.
I'll take your word for it. Image copyright for unpublished old things is annoying. I've moved other images around in response.
Journey
Why not gloss the Nore as (at the mouth of the Thames), or something similar.
Done.
What's Hakluyt's headland?
Northernmost point of Amsterdamøya, now mentioned.
"As the ice was impenetrable, Phipps turned east" - well, if it had really been impenetrable, he'd not have been able to turn? Perhaps "was becoming impenetrable" or near offer.
Just to the north, and it is Phipps' impression so I changed to "seemed".
Publications
First sentence is rather long and wandering, would best be split.
Done, and added a bit on a guess for the anonymous author.
Excellent.
"that were made from watercolours" - how about just ", from watercolours"?
changed to "based on".
based on Philippe d'Auvergne's sketches ... a French artist on board a British warship! - seems we need a bit of backstory there, definitely relevant.
An interesting person, but Jersey-born and definitely a loyal British subject.
Aha!
Legacy
"the first scientific description" - perhaps plural, as there are two
Species descriptions; and that might be a worthy link target for "scientific description".
Changed.
Might be worth glossing "Sjuøyane" as (The Seven Islands), to match the map. Probably need to cite the sentence, too.
Modified.
Maybe say how old Nelson was at the time? Seems he was about 15, on his first voyage, and he served as a coxswain, according to the article "
Horatio Nelson"; there's a source there. I guess one could be both a coxswain as a trade and have the rank of midshipman?
It's up at first mention.
Not impossible ... when was the next attempt made, or wasn't there one? Mention the
Northwest Passage (an article remarkably light on citations, however)? Scope for some wikilinking and a sentence or two here in the Legacy?
Well, the next attempt at the Northwest Passage is easy: Cook's third voyage. I'll have to check what else the Royal Navy did.
Images
Lead image is a bit small and very yellow; we could adjust its colour balance a little, maybe? Happy to help.
Tried a different one.
On that image, it would be nice to say where it came from and when it was made (is the source not indeed the anonymous narrative of 1774 mentioned in Publications?). There are bibliographic details on Commons.
Added.
Irving's distilling apparatus is rather small amidst much blank yellow space. Maybe crop image on Commons, and colour-balance it too.
Found a cropped image.
The Chart of the courses is important and here I think it will be justifiable to make it much larger, and again colour-balanced; it was certainly not yellow when first printed. Again, happy to help.
Found a slightly less yellow one. Probably the article should have better maps (superimposing the Phipps journey on a modern map), but that's a bit much to do right now.
Still a bit to go (other than the obvious "expand everything", we could do with background on Israel Lyons and later controversies, the involvement of Joseph Banks, various experiments, botany and zoology), but I'll try my best. Thank you for the helpful review! —
Kusma (
talk)
15:28, 17 January 2022 (UTC)reply