McCLINTOCK

From 1872 to 1877, McClintock was admiral-superintendent of Portsmouth Dockyard. In the 1870s Markham had used these connections to make the case for a Royal Naval Arctic expedition. Prime minister Benjamin Disraeli consented. When the expedition was ready to sail, Markham was invited to accompany it as far as Greenland, on HMS Alert, one of the expedition's three ships. Markham accepted, and left with the convoy on 29th March 1875. He was gone for three months, remaining with Alert as far as Disko Island in Baffin Bay. In his retirement he wrote a biography of his friend McClintock. McClintock is talking about a type of whaling ship, “screw whalers”. The word “screw” refers to the propeller that was involved in certain kinds of steam ships of the nineteenth century. The first ship of this type was the SS Archimedes, named after the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, who is purported to have designed the Archimedes’ Screw, which is still used today to move water, such as for irrigation in less developed countries: