- 1811: 1st Explorer of Rockall
- British officer of the Royal Navy
Capt Basil Hall was born 31 December 1788 in Dunglass Castle, Dunglass, East Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom to James Hall (1761-1832) and Helen Hamilton Douglas (1762-1837) and died 11 September 1844 Royal Hospital Haslar, Gosport, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom of unspecified causes. He married Margaret Congalton Hunter (1790-1876) 7 March 1825 in Oldhamstocks, East Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom.
Biography
Basil Hall was an officer of the Royal Navy from Scotland, a traveller, and an author. He was the second son of Sir James Hall, 4th Baronet, an eminent man of science.
Although his family home was at Dunglass, Haddingtonshire (now East Lothian), Basil Hall was born in George Square, Edinburgh, at his aunt's house.[1] He was educated at the Royal High School and joined the Royal Navy in 1802, being commissioned a Lieutenant in 1808, and later rising to the rank of captain.
Hall served aboard many vessels involved in exploration and scientific and diplomatic missions. From the beginning of his naval career he had been encouraged by his father to keep a journal, which later became the source for a series of books and publications describing his travels.
While serving aboard HMS Endymion, Hall witnessed Sir John Moore being carried dying from the Battle of Corunna. It was also aboard the Endymion that Hall met William Howe De Lancey, who later married Hall's sister Magdalene. De Lancey was struck by a cannonball at the Battle of Waterloo, and it was for her brother that Magdalene wrote A Week at Waterloo in 1815, a poignant narrative describing how she nursed him in his final days.[2]
Rockall Expedition
An illustration depicting HMS Endymion's landing party in their small boat at Rockall in 1810, with Endymion in the background
Rockall is an uninhabitable granite islet in the North Atlantic Ocean. The United Kingdom claims that Rockall lies within its territorial sea and is part of its territory, but this claim is not recognised by Ireland. The nearest island is Soay, Scotland, some 102. miles to the east.
The earliest recorded date of landing on the island is often given as 8 July 1810, when a Royal Navy officer named Basil Hall led a small landing party from the frigate HMS Endymion to the summit. However, research by James Fisher (see below), in the log of Endymion and elsewhere, indicates that the actual date for this first landing was on Sunday 8 September 1811.
The landing party left Endymion for the rock by boat. Whilst there, Endymion, which was taking depth measurements around Rockall, lost visual contact with the rock as a haze descended. The ship drifted away, leaving the landing party stranded. The expedition made a brief attempt to return to the ship, but could not find the frigate in the haze, and soon gave up and returned to Rockall. After the haze became a fog, the lookout sent to the top of Rockall spotted the ship again, but it turned away from Rockall before the expedition in their boats reached it. Finally, just before sunset, the frigate was again spotted from the top of Rockall, and the expedition was able to get back on board. The crew of Endymion reported that they had been searching for five or six hours, firing their cannon every ten minutes. Hall related this experience and other adventures in a book entitled Fragment of Voyages and Travels Including Anecdotes of a Naval Life.His hazardous exploits in returning with this party were described in Fragments of Voyages and Travels.[3]
More Expeditions
Hall's map accompanying his geological notes (1813)
In 1813, Hall published along with Professor John Playfair a description of the granitic intrusions within the sedimentary sandstone structures that he saw in the Platteklip Gorge near the Table Mountain in the Cape of Good Hope. The phenomenon was re-examined at another location called as the Green Point Contact by Charles Darwin in 1836.[4]
Hall explored Java in 1813 and as a part of a diplomatic mission to China under Lord Amherst in 1816 undertook surveys of the west coast of Korea and the outlying Ryukyu Islands of Japan. This resulted in his book Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island in the Japan Sea (1818), which was one of the first descriptions of Korea by a European.
Hall's journals also provide one of the few accounts of the wreck of the Arniston in 1815, which gave its name to the seaside town of Arniston, South Africa. As a captain, he was very critical of the fact that this ship did not have a marine chronometer with which to calculate longitude, and attributed the great loss of life directly to this false economy.[5]
In 1817 he also took the opportunity to interview Napoleon (who had been an acquaintance of his father) on St. Helena.
Hall took command of HMS Conway in May 1820 and in August he sailed her to the west coast of South America. He returned to England in spring 1823 and Conway was paid off. His journals of this period became the book, Extracts from a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chile, Peru and Mexico (1823).
Later Expeditions
In 1826, when Sir Walter Scott was sunk in depression following his wife's death and financial ruin, it was Hall who organised a trip to Naples for Scott, managing to persuade the government to place a ship at his disposal. In 1828 he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Honorary Academician. Also that year, Hall and his wife embarked on a two-year tour of North America. In 1828, part of their route saw them travel over land from Charleston, South Carolina, then along the Savannah River by canoe from the ferry landing. They stayed at City Hotel in Savannah, Georgia, a city that Hall found "showy". He "liked the view of the city from the river, the plentiful trees, but did not approve of the wide streets that afforded so little shade".[6]
In 1829 Hall published Travels in North America, which caused some offence due to his criticisms of American society. His best-known work was The Fragments of Voyages and Travels (9 volumes, 1831–1840),[7] originally released as three yearly series of eight volumes each.[8] He also contributed to the Encyclopædia Britannica and wrote scientific papers on subjects as varied as trade winds, the geology of Table Mountain and a comet he observed in Chile.
In 1834, Hall apparently accepted an invitation from Jane Cranstoun, the Countess of Purgstall, to visit her estates in Styria, which she bequeathed two years later to the eminent historian and Orientalist, Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. The result was Schloss Hainfeld; or, a Winter in Lower Styria, a Gothic travel account, which may have inspired Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla.[9]
Final Years and Death
Suffering from mental illness, Hall was detained in the Royal Hospital Haslar in Portsmouth, where he died in 1844, aged 55.
Hall baronets, of Dunglass (1687)
Dunglass Castle c.1920 - rebuilt following the explosion of the Rough Wooing.
The Hall Baronetcy of Dunglass (in East Lothian formerly Haddingtonshire until 1975), was created in the Baronetage of Nova Scotia on 8 October 1687 for John Hall.
Dunglass Castle, East Lothian was built by the Pepdies of Dunglass in the 14th century. The original castle was destroyed in an explosion in 1640, and in 1687, John Hall (1650-1710) (1st Baronet) acquired and rebuilt this estate which would remain in the family for 232 years, when it was sold by Sir John Richard Hall, 9th Baronet in the year 1918.
- See also Hall in East Lothian.
Marriage and Family Life
Following his retirement from the navy in 1823, Hall was married on 1 March 1825 to Margaret Congalton (d. 1876), the youngest daughter of Sir John Hunter, Consul-General in Spain by his spouse Elizabeth Barbara, sister to Sir William Arbuthnot, 1st Baronet. Hall and Congalton had 3 children.
- Elizabeth Jane Hall (1826-1856) - daughter, Eliza, who married Rear-Admiral William Charles Chamberlain (1818-1878).
- Frances Emily Hall (1829-1905)
- Basil Sidmouth Hall (1833-1871)
Children
| Name | Birth | Death | Joined with |
| Elizabeth Jane Hall (1826-1856) | 24 February 1826 London East, Greater London, England, United Kingdom | 29 August 1856 England, United Kingdom | William Charles Chamberlain (1818-1878) |
| Frances Emily Hall (1829-1905) | |||
| Basil Sidmouth Hall (1833-1871) | |||
Siblings
| Name | Birth | Death | Joined with |
| Isabella Hall (1729-1804) | |||
| John Hall (1787-1860) | 16 September 1787 Edinburgh, Midlothian, Scotland, United Kingdom | 2 April 1860 Dunglass Castle, Dunglass, East Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom | Julia Walker (1798-1874) |
| Basil Hall (1788-1844) | 31 December 1788 Dunglass Castle, Dunglass, East Lothian, Scotland, United Kingdom | 11 September 1844 Royal Hospital Haslar, Gosport, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom | Margaret Congalton Hunter (1790-1876) |
| William Hall (1790-) | |||
| Helen Hall (1791-1817) | |||
| Magdalene Hall (1793-1822) | |||
| Elizabeth Primrose Hall (1797-1873) | |||
| Alexander Hall (1797-) | |||
| Catharine Mary Hall (1799-1872) | |||
| James Hall (1800-) | |||
| Frances Hall (1801-1829) | |||
Residences
See Also
- Basil Hall - disambiguation
- Hall family
- Hall in Haddingtonshire
- Hall in Hampshire
External Links
- wikipedia:en:Basil Hall
- Basil Hall at thePeerage
- Basil Hall, Geni.com, https://www.geni.com/people/Capt-Basil-Hall/6000000003891304817, retrieved 01 May 2023
- Account of a voyage of discovery to the west coast of Corea and the great Loo-Choo island by Captain Basil Hall, 1788-1844 and Herbert John Clifford. Illustrations and maps, published London, 1818.[1]
- Works by Basil Hall at Project Gutenberg
- Forty Etchings, from Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida, in North America... From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress
Works
- Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island in the Japan Sea (1818)
- Extracts from a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in the years 1820, 1821, 1822 (1824)
- Travels in North America in the Years 1827 and 1828 (1829)
- Fragments of Voyages and Travels (1831–1833)[10]
- Schloss Hainfeld; or, a Winter in Lower Styria (1836)
- Spain and the Seat of War in Spain (1837)
- Patchwork (3 vols., 1841)
- Travels in India, Ceylon and Borneo
References
- ^ Williamson's Edinburgh Directory 1785
- ^ A Week at Waterloo in 1815: Lady De Lancey's Narrative, ed. Major B. R. Ward (1906), available at the Internet Archive
- ^ Hall, Basil (1831). Fragments of Voyages and Travels. London: R. Cadell. https://archive.org/details/fragmentsvoyage01hallgoog.
- ^ Master, Sharad (2012). "Darwin as a geologist in Africa - dispelling the myths and unravelling a confused knot". South African Journal of Science 108 (9–10): 1–5. DOI:10.4102/sajs.v108i9/10.994.
- ^ Hall, Basil (1862). "Chapter XIV. Doubling the cape.". The Lieutenant and Commander. London: Bell and Daldy (via Gutenberg.org). OCLC 9305276. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/17032. Retrieved 2007-11-09. Chapter reprinted from his Fragments of Voyages and Travels. 3rd series. 1833.
- ^ Ease and Elegance, Madeira and Murder: The Social Life of Savannah's City Hotel, Malcolm Bell, Jr. (1992), p. 556
- ^ WorldCat (2007 online). "Editions of Fragments of voyages and travels". WorldCat.org.
- ^ "Captain Basil Hall". Significant and Famous Scots. ElectricScotland.com. Archived from the original on 2006-05-07. https://web.archive.org/web/20060507004609/http://www.electricscotland.com/history/other/hall_basil.htm.
- ^ Gibson, Matthew (2007), "Jane Anne Cranstoun, Countess Purgstall: a Possible Inspiration for Le Fanu's 'Carmilla'", Le Fanu Studies 2 (2), https://www.academia.edu/42722219
- ^ (April 1831) "Review of Fragments of Voyages and Travels, including Anecdotes of a Naval Life by Captain Basil Hall. 3 vols. 1831". The Quarterly Review 45: 145–167.