Since its establishment, the MBA recognised the importance of library facilities to support scientific research, which led to the development of one of the world’s largest marine reference libraries, the National Marine Biological Library (NMBL). In addition to our extensive library, we also house an archive that contains thousands of unique items. This archive preserves the rich history of the MBA, including scientific works and personal correspondences from well-known marine researchers.
Within the Archives of the Marine Biological Association, there is a very large and fragile leatherbound book which was once the property of Sir John Richardson (1781-1865). He was a Scottish naval surgeon and naturalist, and the editor of the 3rd edition of “A History of British Fishes” William Yarrell (1859), a copy of which the MBA holds in its Rare Books section of the Library.
How did this large volume find its way into the Archives at the MBA?
Like many of the items in the Archive, we can’t be truly certain of who gave or brought the book into the MBA Archive. There is an original small note dated 4.9.59 with the book signed by F.S.R. (Frederick S. Russell, Director of the MBA, 1945-1965) asking for the volume found in the Fisheries Store that August, to be moved to the Library Archive. The Aquarium at the MBA re-opened in 1959, and some areas of the building were re-organised, so it was probably thought best that the Library was a more suitable place for the book at that time.
The book was labelled in 1959 as “Sir John Richardson/Volume of Fish Illustrations -original drawings and also plates taken from books”. Looking through the book it certainly appears to have been used as a scrapbook for his Ichthyology research. Written on the spine in gold leaf is the word FISHES, and inside on the thick pages of the book there is a mixture of original watercolour and pencil drawings, pasted cuttings from numerous book plates and one single random letter from William Yarrell dated 1833.
Once you start delving into the MBA Archive and looking through the items in the collection, you are inevitably led onto further research. What really caught my eye in the book are two stunning watercolour paintings of fishes on a page titled 3rd Order Pharyngognaths Family Cychlolabrids. Both paintings of the fish are dated June 1839; one is noted Hobart town & Port Arthur, Tasmania and the other Port Arthur, and what I found most interesting is that one of the drawings is noted as being “Drawn by a Convict”. And so, with further research outside of the MBA Archive, I wanted to, if possible, be able to put a name to the convict or convicts who had drawn the fishes.
During the early to middle 1800’s, Sir John Richardson was in contact with many other explorers, naturalists and naval surgeons who would share their discoveries from H.M.S. voyages across the globe. For many years he was stationed at the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar, Gosport and in 1838 he became the curator of the museum within the hospital. The museum at that time was regarded as a scientific institution of national importance, and the museum held many specimens. It was here that Richardson received “an interesting collection of fish formed at Port Arthur in Van Diemen’s Land by T. J. Lempriere Esq.” (Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London’) Specimens of fish were regularly collected, preserved and sent back from these voyages, and due to the length of time at sea, many of the specimens would have perished and been ruined. Some of the colour of the fresh fish would also have faded in the preservative, so it was important to make a record whilst the fish were in situ in their natural environment. Detailed sketches, preferably in colour or colour coded, were made of these new discoveries, and Richardson would have been the receiver of many of these observational drawings.
The two drawings in the volume in the MBA Archive were reproduced as black and white plates in Richardson’s “The zoology of the voyage of the H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, during the years of 1839 to 1843”. Under the notes for Labrus laticlavius, Richardson, there is a paragraph dedicated to describing the colouration of the fish and he writes that “Mr Lempriere states, that when newly taken this fish exhibits all the colour of the rainbow”, and you can certainly see that from the original colour drawing. Whilst for Labrus fucicola, Richardson, he wrote that “The only traces of the original markings remaining in the specimens when received…” confirming how important to his research the coloured drawings would have been to him alongside the preserved specimen.
Who may have been the convict artist or artists of these drawings?
Within the same book Richardson confirms that the drawings were produced by convicts when he wrote “A drawing, made by a convict at Port Arthur, of this species…” and “A drawing of a wrasse, made at the port just named, by a convict under Dr Lhotsky’s inspection, and closely resembling this species…” . Dr Lhotsky was a naturalist in charge of convicts in Van Diemen’s Land, and he had several of them paint for him. We can’t say for definite who painted the fish in the Richardson’s volume, but one convict who was instructed to paint at this time was called William Buelow Gould. His Sketchbook of fishes (1832) was placed on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register, being noted as an historical document of world significance. It would be very exciting to say that these two drawings were by Gould, but the reverence for his drawings surely shows how important these drawings were and are, to both the naturalists of the 1800’s and to us in the here and now.
Article written by Nicola Jordaan, NMBL Volunteer.
Follow the National Marine Biological Library:
References
‘The zoology of the voyage of the H.M.S. Erebus & Terror, under the command of Captain Sir James Clark Ross, during the years 1839 to 1843. By authority of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty’, accessed on 14 January 2025 https://archive.org/details/zoologyofvoyageo02rich
‘Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London’, Account of a Collection of Fishes from Port Arthur, Van Diemen’s Land, accessed on 14 January 2025
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/30571338#page/625/mode/1up
MBA Archive, PRN1, Sir John Richardson, Volume of original illustrations and plates
NMBL, BL.65/Y, Yarrell, W, ‘A history of British fishes’. Edited by Sir John Richardson, 1859
