Showing posts with label John Walter Nichol. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Walter Nichol. Show all posts

Thursday 3 December 2020

Skulferatu #8 - Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh

 

I do like a good wander round an old graveyard, and not just because I’m an ageing Goth.  They are great places for quiet contemplation and for getting one’s life into perspective.  As you walk round tomb after tomb of the great and the good, the self-important and the lowly it really does show you that life is just so fleeting.  That death not only comes to us all, but is also a great leveller.  Yes, some will have monuments towering up above them, but beneath they are just bones, clay or dust.  One day that is all any of us will be.  So, on that happy note, my latest walk was to and around Warriston Cemetery in Edinburgh.  This is one of my favourite of Edinburgh’s old cemeteries, as it is quiet and relatively peaceful, or was until Covid came along and everyone was looking for new places to discover and walk around.


Bridge leading into part of Warriston Cemetery

Gravestones covered in ivy
 

The cemetery is full of the graves of many of Edinburgh’s Victorian elite.  There are artists, poets, mathematicians and scientists lying in their damp graves alongside the merchants and lawyers of the city.  With the wonders of Google, you can look up lots of them and find out bits and pieces about their lives.


Gravestones in Warriston Cemetery
 

On this visit I came across the grave of the Nichol family.  I was intrigued by the few lines written about John Walter Nichol – ‘Assistant Astronomer in the Government “Venus” Expedition to Honolulu in 1874.  So, I had to look this up to see what it was all about.


Grave of John Walter Nichol at Warriston Cemetery by Kevin Nosferatu
Gravestone for Nichol Family

John Walter Nichol FRAS Assistant Astronomer in the Government Venus Expedition to Honolulu in 1874. Who died at Teignmouth on 4th November 1878, aged 35 years
Inscription for John Walter Nichol
 

In 1874 a group of British scientists travelled to Hawaii to observe the transit of Venus.  This is when the planet Venus passes directly between the sun and a ‘superior planet.’   When this happens Venus can be seen from Earth as a small, black dot moving across the sun.  The purpose of the expedition to Hawaii was to obtain an accurate estimate of the distance from the Earth to the sun.  


It would seem that the tropical climate and the insects of Hawaii did not agree with the British scientists and Nichol is mentioned in a letter by  one of his colleagues who writes that – ‘…When it became necessary to commence the computing we found the mosquitos so troublesome it was almost impossible to do anything.  Nichol presented a mass of sores over his face and hands and Ramsden couldn’t sit at the table five minutes.’  (Michael E Chauvin - The Hawaiian Journal of History – Page 199).  The scientists were also disturbed from their work on numerous occasions by King Kalakaua of Hawaii and the locals, who all took a keen interest in what they were doing.  However, despite all of this the scientists carried out their observations and detailed and noted their calculations.

 

A collection of the documents, photographs and sketches from this expedition were digitised and are available from the Cambridge Digital Library.  Many of the sketches depict Nichol and other members of the team, as do the photographs. These can be accessed at -


https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/collections/tov/1

 

By coincidence, while Googling for info on John Walter Nichol I found that there was a talk by Dr Rebekah Higgitt that evening about him and the expedition to Hawaii.  For anyone interested in details of the expedition and Nichol’s life and career, this talk is now available on the Astronomical Society of Edinburgh’s website.  From this I learnt that Nichol was known as Walter, rather than John and seemed to be a popular member of the group who went out to Hawaii.  That before joining this expedition he had been a shipping clerk at Leith, before going on to work as the second Assistant at the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh.  After the expedition to Hawaii he returned to Britain with the other members of the team and they all wrote up their findings at Greenwich.  He then went to Leipzig where he studied under Professor Karl Bruhns.

 

On his return to Britain he died suddenly of a pulmonary infection on 4 November 1878.

 

I left Nichol and his family a Skulferatu.


Skulferatu # 8 at Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh by Kevin Nosferatu
Skulferatu #8

Skulferatu #8 at Nichol family gravestone, Warriston Cemetery, Edinburgh by Kevin Nosferatu
Skulferatu #8 by the Nichol's gravestone
 

As I then walked around the graveyard, I found that on another old grave someone had left a small, handmade ceramic cat. Maybe someone else leaving little mementos?


Google Map showing location of Skulferatu
 

The coordinates for the location of the Skulferatu are: Latitude 55.968509 Longitude -3.196384.