Six Months in Ascension
An Unscientific Account of a Scientific Expedition

The fascinating Victorian memoir of Lady Gill, wife of famed scientist David Gill, of an astronomical expedition to Ascension Island.

Isobel Sarah Black Gill (Author), David Gill (Author)

9781108014281, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 June 2010

344 pages, 1 map
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.44 kg

Six Months in Ascension, first published in 1878, contains an account by Isobel Sarah B. Gill of the 1877 scientific expedition to the island of Ascension, in the South Atlantic, undertaken to measure the distance of the sun from the earth by observing the opposition of the planet Mars. The expedition, funded by the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by Isobel's husband, the astronomer David Gill, with a heliometer and other scientific instruments provided by Lord Lindsay. Isobel accompanied the expedition as her husband's companion. Her account offers personal details and stories omitted from the scientific reports on the expedition written by her husband and colleagues and it contains beautiful descriptions of the island of Ascension. The book offers a rare view of the personal, practical and behind-the-scenes side of a nineteenth-century scientific expedition and provides a fascinating insight into the gender roles of learned Victorian society.

Introduction David Gill
1. Why we went
2. The voyage
3. St. Helena
4. What Ascension looked like
5. Ascension past and present
6. Round about Garrison
7. A night on the Clinker
8. Change and check
9. Mars Bay
10. A Sunday scene
11. The opposition of Mars
12. The sea-shore and the rollers
13. Green Mountain
14. Sunday at the mountain
15. Why we had only a gallon of water
16. Trips from Garden Cottage
17. Mars Bay without a cook
18. Wide-awake fair
19. Last days at Mars Bay
20. Christmas in Garrison
21. About the Kroomen
22. Clinker Cemeteries
23. Christmas holidays
24. The Devil's riding school
25. Homeward bound.

Subject Areas: Solar system: the Sun & planets [PGS]