Talk:1773 Phipps expedition towards the North Pole/GA1

GA Review

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Reviewer: Chiswick Chap (talk · contribs) 16:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

I'll have a go at this one. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:24, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Comments

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.

  I've had a play with it, infilling the land-masses. Might be better.

  Good idea, I think that's a good compromise for now. Thank you!

Summary

• Thank you very much for the review and suggestions! Let me know what you think. —Kusma (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
  • Coming along nicely, almost there now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 09:50, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
    • @Chiswick Chap: Please see new responses and edits. —Kusma (talk) 11:59, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
      • Super, it's a fine GA. I expect I'll see her sailing the seven seas to TFA soon! Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:37, 17 January 2022 (UTC)
        • 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)