On This Day 28th February

 

Arthur Conan Doyle, Ship’s Surgeon

On this date in 1880, Arthur Conan Doyle, aged twenty and still a medical student, set sail from Peterhead aboard the Hope, a whaling ship bound for seven months in the Arctic. He was the ship’s surgeon, taking the place of a classmate who couldn’t go at the last minute. The ship left port with a great send-off from friends and family, he wrote in the journal he kept ofthe adventure, the crowd including a young woman he had barely met. He doffed his hat to her although, he admitted, “I don’t know her from Eve.” On that first day, the seas were rough, with the falling barometer promising stormy weather. He stayed on the deck as much as posSible to avoid getting seasick. Some forty years later, in his autobiography, he remembered his time onboard the Hope as a remarkable adventure. His memories of the Arctic, though no doubt helped along by his journal, remained vivid and filled with awe. It was, he wrote, “a strange and fascinating chapter in my life.”