Ritchie Joseph (1788 -1819)
George Francis Lyon (1795-1832)Ritchie, Joseph (1788–1819), African traveller, born at Otley in Yorkshire about 1788, was son of a medical practitioner in the town. Following his father's profession, he became hospital surgeon at York about 1811, and there made the acquaintance of Samuel Ireland [q. v.], the Shakespeare forger, of whom he has left a lively description in a letter to his schoolfellow and friend, the Rev. Richard Garnett [q. v.] In 1813 he became surgeon to the Lock Hospital in London, where his scientific and literary abilities speedily introduced him to excellent society. Visiting Paris in 1817 with strong introductions, he obtained the notice of Humboldt, and was recommended to the English government as qualified to undertake the exploration of the Nigritian Soudan by way of Tripoli and Fezzan. Ritchie enthusiastically accepted the offer to direct an expedition. On his return to London, while occupied with preparations, he made the acquaintance of Keats, through Haydon, and, possibly from some association of ‘Endymion’ with the Mountains of the Moon, promised to carry the poem with him to Africa, and fling it into the midst of the Sahara. Writing about this time to Garnett, he says: ‘If you have not seen the poems of J. Keats, a lad of about 20, they are well worth your reading. If I am not mistaken, he is to be the great poetical luminary of the age to come.’ In anticipation of his departure, he produced ‘A Farewell to England,’ a very beautiful poem in the Spenserian stanza, which was eventually published in Alaric Watts's ‘Poetical Album’ in 1829. No man, as his correspondence proves, could have entered upon a dangerous undertaking in a finer spirit, or with more ardent hopes of benefiting his country and the world; but these anticipations were doomed to disappointment. Arriving at Malta in September, he made the acquaintance of Captain George Francis Lyon [q. v.], who volunteered to accompany him in place of Captain Frederick Marryat [q. v.], who was to have been his associate, but had been prevented from joining. After long delays at Tripoli, and a short expedition to the Gharian mountains, Ritchie, Lyon, and their servant, Belford, transparently disguised as Moslems, quitted Tripoli for Murzuk, the capital of Fezzan, on 22 March 1819. The expedition was grievously mismanaged, not by the travellers, but by the home authorities, who supplied them inadequately with funds and burdened them with ill-selected merchandise, which proved unsaleable. After numerous attacks of illness, Ritchie, worn out and almost in want of the necessaries of life, expired at Murzuk, in the south of Fezzan, on 20 Nov. 1819; and Lyon, after visiting Tegerry, made his way back to the coast. Ritchie, trusting to the retentiveness of his memory, had left few observations in writing; but Lyon's quick perception, literary gift, and skill as a draughtsman rendered the account of this abortive expedition, which he published in 1821, one of the most entertaining books of African travel.
Ritchie was undoubtedly a man of superior character and ability, whose life was thrown away in an ill-conceived and ill-supported enterprise, for the mismanagement of which he was in no way responsible. His scientific attainments were considerable, and he wrote many elegant pieces of verse besides his ‘Farewell to England,’ which is entitled by power of expression and depth of feeling to a permanent place in literature.
[Lyon's Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa; Gerhard Rohlf's Reise, Leipzig, 1881; Keats's Poetry and Prose, ed. Forman, pp. 79, 114, 178; Haydon's Diary; private information.]
George Francis Lyon (1795–1832) was a rare combination of Arctic and African explorer. By all accounts a fun loving extrovert, he also managed to be a competent British Naval Officer, Commander, explorer, artist and socialite. While not having a particularly distinguished career, he is remembered for the entertaining journals he kept and for the watercolour paintings he completed in the Arctic.
He was, in 1818, sent with Joseph Ritchie by Sir John Barrow to find the course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu. The expedition was underfunded, lacked support and because the ideas of John Barrow departed from Tripoli and thus had to cross the Sahara as part of their journey[clarification needed]. A year later, due to much officialdom they had only got as far as Murzouk where they both fell ill. Ritchie never recovered and died there, but Lyon survived and travelled a little further around the region. Exactly a year to the day he left, he arrived back in Tripoli, the expedition being a complete failure.Having been promised a promotion on his return, he now set about trying to pester the Admiralty into fulfilling their promise. He irritated enough people that his reward was, in 1821, to be given the command of HMS Hecla under William Edward Parry on his second attempt at the Northwest Passage. The lieutenants included Francis Crozier, James Clark Ross, and Henry Parkyns Hoppner.[1]
An aspect of his personality rare at the time was his genuine interest in the "Natives" of the countries he visited. Wearing Arab/Muslim dress and learning fluent Arabic he managed to blend in with the inhabitants of North Africa; he was tattooed by the Inuit in the Arctic, using needle and sooty thread, and ate raw caribou and seal meat with them. The expedition achieved little, spending two years in the Arctic and getting only as far the Fury and Hecla Strait before being stopped by ice. But the information recorded about the Inuit tribes that he met proved valuable to later generations of anthropologists, such as Franz Boas and Knud Rasmussen, who relied on his journals as a reference point for their own observations[2].
Lyon received his promotion to Captain on his return, and in 1824 was given sole command of HMS Griper for another voyage to the Arctic. Unfortunately the Griper was badly built and Lyon also met with some of the worst weather yet seen in the Arctic. The expedition was a disaster, Lyon limping home after only 5 months.
While he was well known in society, this last failure effectively saw him blacklisted in the Royal Navy and he never had another command. He was elected in Nov 1827 a Fellow of the Royal Society [3]
He died on October 8, 1832,[4] en-route from South America to Britain to be treated for eye problems.
He married Lucy Louisa, elder daughter of the Irish revolutionary Lord Edward Fitzgerald, on 5 September 1825.[5] They had a daughter, Lucy Pamela Sophia Lyon, born in Sept. 1826.[6] Lucy Louisa Lyon died that same month, while her husband was away in Mexico. He did not find out about her death until he landed at Holyhead, having survived the wreck of the ship bringing him home.[5] His daughter went on to marry Rev. Thomas Ovens in 1849, had three children, and died in 1904.[6]
He published at least three books about his adventures:
A Narrative of Travels in Northern Africa in the Years 1818, 19, and 20..., London (1821)
The Private Journal of Captain G.F. Lyon, of H.M.S. Hecla, During the Recent Voyage of Discovery under Captain Parry (1824)
A Brief Narrative Of An Unsuccessful Attempt To Reach Repulse Bay In His Majesty's Ship Griper, In The Year MDCCCXXIV, London (1825)Note:
^ Brown, R.. "Sir William Edward Parry". ucalgary.ca. p. 104. http://pubs.aina.ucalgary.ca/arctic/Arctic12-2-98.pdf. Retrieved 2008-10-03.
^ Boas, Franz (1888). "The Central Eskimo". Annual reports (Bureau of American Ethnology)
^ "Library and Archive Catalog". Royal Society. http://www2.royalsociety.org/DServe/dserve.exe?dsqIni=Dserve.ini&dsqApp=Archive&dsqCmd=
Show.tcl&dsqDb=Persons&dsqPos=1&dsqSearch=%28Surname%3D%27lyon%27%29. Retrieved 8 November 2010.
^ Melville Henry Massue. The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal Being A Complete Table of All the Descendants Now Living of Edward III, King of England. London, England: T.C. & E. C. Jack, 1905-1911. Page 475.
^ a b Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Lyon, George Francis (1795–1832), naval officer and Arctic explorer), by Elizabeth Baigent
^ a b Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval, Melville Henry Massue. The Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal Being A Complete Table of All the Descendents Now Living of Edward III, King of England. London, England: T.C. & E. C. Jack, 1905-1911. Page 475
Cronologia Ornitologica
by Alberto Masi