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n If Sabine Baring-Gould wasnexceptional, it may well be that he was seeking to emulate his uncle EdwardnSabine (after whom he was named). Edward was born to Anglo-Irish parents atnDublin in 1788, and Sarah, his mother, died within a month of his birth. He wasneducated at Marlow and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and entered thenmilitary in 1803, at fifteen, as a second lieutenant. He fought, withndistinction, in the Anglo-American War of 1812-15, when he commanded thenbatteries at the Siege of Fort Erie (1814) and was twice mentioned favourablynin despatches.
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| Edward Sabine |
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nIn 1816, he returned to England and dedicated the rest of hisnlife to scientific researches. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society inn1818, and on the recommendation of the president and council he was appointednas astronomer on the Isabella, which sailed to the Arctic under commandnof Commander (later Sir) John Ross. The primary aim of the voyage was tondiscover a Northwest passage that would enable ships to sail over the north ofnthe Americas, thereby linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans (and thusnavoiding a voyage around the treacherous southern Cape Horn).
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| J Ross – Lancaster Sound – August 31 1818 |
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nThe voyage wasnconsidered to have been a failure when Ross returned early after findingnLancaster Sound blocked by sea ice, despite objections from the other officersn(including Sabine and William Parry, the second in command), and a public rownensued after their return.
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| Sabine’s Gull |
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nSabine recorded twenty-four species of birds atnGreenland, including the Fork Tailed Gull Larus sabini (named for him)nand his paper was well received by the Linnean Society in 1819.
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| Edward Sabine- A Memoir on the Birds of Greenland – 1818 |
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nA secondnvoyage, under the command of Parry, with Sabine and his elder brother, Joseph,naboard the Hecla and the Griper sailed in May 1819, and althoughnthis voyage also failed to find a Northwest passage, it did set a new ‘furthestnWest’ record which stood for decades. Sabine made numerous magneticnmeasurements and collected invaluable scientific data, for which he was awardednthe Copley Medal by the Royal Society in 1821.
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| E Sabine – Magnetical Log from 1st Ross expedition 1818 |
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nSabine undertook further work onnmagnetism, continuing experiments he had made on his first polar voyage, withnthe seconds pendulum (a pendulum which swings through its complete arc in twonseconds, one second in one direction, another second in the other), at standardngravity, with a length of 0.994 m (39.1 inches) – a length that was once thenstandard metre. The length of the pendulum varies at different latitudes and bynuse of extremely precise instrumentation, Sabine was able to ascertain the truenshape of the Earth (the planet is not a perfect sphere – it is an oblatenspheroid, flattened slightly at the poles). Sabine travelled half the Earth forneighteen months to take his measurements, onboard the Griper now undernthe command of Captain Clavering; Sabine later had an island off the east coastnof Greenland named after him, in honour of his work.
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| Sabine Island |
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nHe also worked on thenproblem of longitude, hoping to be able to calculate it by measuring the dip ofna compass needle, but the improved chronometers made available through the worknof John Harrison made the question largely irrelevant. In 1828, the Admiraltynabolished the Board of Longitude, but they retained three scientific advisers –nMichael Faraday, Thomas Young and Sabine; Charles Babbage objected in thenstrongest terms to Sabine’s appointment, largely because he refused to acceptnthe scientific credentials of the Royal Society. To his credit, Sabine remainednaloof and refused to be drawn into the controversy.
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nAlthough the Duke ofnWellington had exempted Sabine from military matters on condition that hencontinued to concentrate on his scientific endeavours, a crisis in Irelandncaused him to be recalled and sent to the land of his birth, where he managednto maintain his studies and in 1835, completed a systematic magnetic survey ofnIreland, followed by the same in 1836 of Scotland, and England the followingnyear. Sabine then approached the Government with a proposal to carry out ansimilar survey worldwide, establishing magnetic stations across the globe, asnpart of an investigation of why there were alterations in the Earth’s magneticnfield (a phenomena which caused variations in compass readings).
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| Terrestrial Magnetism |
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nThis ‘MagneticnCrusade’ opened observatories across the British Empire and other countriesnwere invited to participate, and Sabine was appointed as superintendent of thenproject, correlating the vast amounts of data and presenting the findings. Inn1840, he commenced publishing a series of Contributions to TerrestrialnMagnetism to the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,nwhich continued for the next thirty-six years, and resulted in the mostnaccurate magnetic survey of the planet possible at the time. It was, and is, anremarkable achievement.
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| Edward Sabine |
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nIn 1869, he was knighted and in 1877, he retired fromnthe army on full pay, with the rank of General. In 1826, he had marriednElizabeth Juliana Leeves, a remarkable woman in her own right, who, betweenn1849 and 1858, published a four-volume translation of Alexander von Humboldt’s Kosmos,na textbook on geophysics. She died in 1879 and General Sir Edward Sabine diednin 1883.
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| Edward Sabine |
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nIn addition to Sabine’s Gull and Sabine Insel, a tree Pinusnsabineana and a crater on the Moon are named after him. Sabine Crater liesnimmediately adjacent to the landing site of the first manned moon landing ofnApollo XI in July 1969.
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