Arthur Conan Doyle’s Arctic Adventure.

Arthur Conan Doyle’s Arctic Adventure.

A whaling ship named the Hope left the Scottish port of Peterhead on 28 February, 1880. It was bound for the Arctic Ocean on a seven month long voyage. On board was a 20 year old medical student named Arthur Conan Doyle. He had been taken on as the ship’s surgeon, though as he wrote many years later; “I have often thought that it was as well that there was no very serious call upon my services.“

The crew numbered some 50 men. Half were Scottish, while the other half were Shetland islanders. They were under the command of the renowned whaler, Captain John Gray. Captain Gray was mentioned in Conan Doyle’s autobiography, Memories and Adventures: “…John Gray of the Hope was a really splendid man, a good seaman, and a serious-minded Scot.“

The voyage was certainly an eye-opener for the young Arthur Conan Doyle. On one occasion a crew member attacked the ship’s cook with a brass saucepan, as Conan Doyle recalled; “…he struck the man such a frightful blow that his head flew through the bottom and the sides of the pan were left dangling round his neck.“

Though he was officially the ship’s surgeon, Arthur Conan Doyle also took an active role in the whaling. He was in a small boat with some seamen when a whale, “…in its flurry raised its huge side-flapper and poised it over the boat. One flap would have sent us to the bottom of the sea.“

There were other dangers, too. In Memories and Adventures, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (as he then was) wrote about the line that was attached to the harpoon: “The line is very carefully coiled by a special man named the line-coiler, and it is warranted not to kink. If it should happen to do so, however, and if the loop catches the limbs of any one of the boat’s crew, that man goes to his death…”

But amongst the hardship and the danger there was the stark beauty of the Arctic itself. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle recalled this years later: “The perpetual light, the glare of the white ice, the deep blue of the water, these are the things which one remembers most clearly.“

Captain Gray was so impressed with Arthur Conan Doyle’s abilities that he offered to make him harpooner on the Hope, as well as ship’s surgeon, with double pay. But Conan Doyle declined, later noting that, “It is well that I refused, for the life is dangerously fascinating.“

On his return from the voyage, Arthur Conan Doyle gave fifty pounds from his whaling exploits to his mother. He also went on to pass his final examination in medicine. Conan Doyle became a Bachelor of Medicine, and a Master of Surgery.

The voyage had a considerable effect on Arthur Conan Doyle. He later claimed that he “came of age at 80 degrees north latitude.“ He also wrote that, “I went on board the whaler a big, straggling youth. I came off it a powerful, well-grown man.“

Arthur Conan Doyle kept a journal whilst on board the Hope. Titled The Log of the Hope, it recorded his observations of life on board the ship. Conan Doyle illustrated it with his own sketches.

The journal was retained by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle until his death. It was then left to his heirs and eventually put up for auction at Christie’s in 2004. Somewhat surprisingly it remained unsold. 

However, a facsimile edition was published in 2012 as “Dangerous Work“: Diary of an Arctic Adventure by Arthur Conan Doyle, (Edited by Jon Lellenberg and Daniel Stashower.) 

Arthur Conan Doyle’s experiences on board the Hope also provided the raw material for some future stories. Not least among these is The Captain of the ‘Pole-Star,‘ a classic ghost story that I hope to feature in a forthcoming blog. 

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