Emeric Essex Vidal

  Poco hay a mano de la historia de Emeric Essex Vidal: su fecha de nacimiento, su vida en la marina británica, sus viajes apenas delineados, sus pinturas americanas, su muerte. Pareciera ser un funcionario sin mayor trascendencia, a la sombra de la mejor carrera marina de su padre y sus hermanos. Es un curioso hecho el que su segundo apellido fuera Vidal, de un orígen indudablemente español: un autor sugiere que se trata de un tronco familiar originario de España o Francia, emigrado a Inglaterra dos siglos antes, o quizá, como en algunos estudios genealógicos se comenta, el orígen familiar esté ligado a épocas más antiguas, asociado a la hegemonía normanda sobre el país. Essex Vidal aparece como un opaco administrativo de la marina, (an accountant), destinado a Sudamérica dos veces, entre 1816 y 1817 primero, y entre  1828 y 1829 finalmente. Casualidad o no, ambos ciclos coinciden con acontecimientos de gran importancia en Argentina y el sur de América: en el primer período se declara formalmente la independencia en Tucumán, y el Ejército de Los Andes comienza su campaña a Chile; en el segundo, el año 28 se abre con la sublevación de Lavalle, fusilando a Dorrego, un militar con simpatías por la revolución norteamericana, y se cierra con la aparición de Rosas en la política de Buenos Aires. Aún más importante, el año 1828 es el de la aceptación de la independencia de la Banda Oriental, con el retiro del Imperio de Brasil, otro de los destinos de su barco en sus dos viajes. ¿Un contable, secretario del Almirante de la flota inglesa? ¿En el momento en que Inglaterra media desde el Imperio de Brasil, y facilita naves y dirigentes militares a los nuevos gobiernos? Haya sido o no un intrascendente burócrata,  se encuentra recorriendo las costas de Sudamérica, anclado en Buenos Aires, Montevideo y Río de Janeiro mientras sucedían  importantes acontecimientos mediados por Inglaterra. Emeric no gozó de la influencia social de otros oficiales navales de la flota, o al menos es lo que sugiere el hecho de que entre sus pinturas y apuntes no hay uno solo de interiores, o de vecinos de las ciudades donde estuvo: todas ellas son de escenas de la calle o del campo, o paisajes de la ciudad. Pero igualmente sus acuarelas y sus notas pasaron a formar parte de aquellos primeros mensajes al gran público inglés acerca de las lejanas, desiertas y ricas tierras sudamericanas. Y para la historia argentina, uno de los primeros testimonios visuales de su gente, sus ciudades y su tierra.
Un cartógrafo ( an Old Hydrographer) probablemente inglés, Geoffrey Haskins, ha dejado una pequeña historia familiar, valiosa porque se ha basado principalmente en testimonios directos de descendientes de la familia, y trae un poco de luz a su casi anónima historia personal:

Owen had been my home and work-place for nearly two years and I unexpectedly found myself appointed to Vidal; I jumped at the chance to serve in her. We had watched her being built over the years and now there she lay, having the finishing touches applied before undergoing acceptance trials. Like Owen, and many other ships of the surveying fleet, the name chosen was to honour another much respected nineteenth century hydrographic surveyor, Vice Admiral Alexander Thomas Emeric Vidal, who had also been involved in the long-drawn series of survey programmes of Africa’s coastline from 1823 to 1845.

Before the 20th century the term ‘hydrographer’ was generally applied to those who compiled and published nautical charts and sailing directions and there is evidence of a family interest in this respect among previous generations of Vidals in England and continental Europe. The name can be traced back to Spain and France whence, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, a part of the family migrated to England to escape religious persecution, eventually settling there in 1683. By the end of the 18th Century Emeric Vidal, Royal Navy (1751-1811) was married to Jane Essex; they were resident in Bracknell, Berkshire, and had three sons: Richard Emeric Vidal (1784 - 1865), Emeric Essex Vidal (1791-1861) and Alexander (1792-1863). Emeric Vidal Senior was a Purser and Admiral’s Secretary, he evidently also had skills in navigation and draughtsmanship; an ink and wash fair chart in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (ref DUF:6/17) showing depths and tidal stream information of Gibraltar bay dated 1780 is signed E Vidal delt. He was clearly well respected and with influence because his three boys managed to enter the Royal Navy and prospered thereafter in similar ways - all of them, like their Father, pursuing careers involving hydrography.

After the Napoleonic wars. employment, let alone promotion, opportunities for officers of the Fleet were sparse, thus surveying or exploration expeditions presented an attractive option with a chance of fame and glory. Alexander’s eldest brother, Richard, served as Acting Master under Lieutenant W F Owen in HMS Seaflower surveying East Indies waters during 1803-1808. Later, in the rank Commander, he accompanied Captain Owen to Fernando Po in 1827. Eventually Richard was awarded a grant of land in Canada in return for his meritorious service when he finally retired from the Navy in 1834. Commander Richard Vidal is then recorded as settling on 200 acres in the town of Sarnia in Ontario where his family’s names can be seen on many of the city streets today. The middle brother, Emeric, a talented artist whose name appears on numerous Admiralty fair charts and views, followed his father and also became a Purser and Admiral’s Secretary; he used his spare time during naval service to draw and paint watercolours in the countries he visited; leaving a legacy of fine pictures. His achievements are much respected in South America where a collection of his work depicting scenes of early nineteenth century Buenos Aires and Montevideo, published in 1820 by Rudolf Akerman of London, is regarded as “the most valuable piece of Argentinean iconography”.
Alexander, having been ‘nominally’ entered into the Service on the books of Illustrious, 74-gun First Rate, (Captain William Shield) in 1803 as a First Class Volunteer, went on to attend the RN College, Portsmouth for two years before serving from 1809-1812 as a Midshipman in Lavinia, a very active 38-gun frigate. By 1815 he was in Canada, stationed in the Great Lakes in Niobe, a 38-gun frigate converted to a hospital and troop ship; there he was promoted to Lieutenant and became one of Captain William Fitzwilliam Owen’s team of hydrographic surveyors charting the waterways, which also employed his artistic elder brother Emeric as draughtsman (see Part 1 and ‘As it Was’ Vols. 1-6, p. 63). This encounter with Owen was the start of a close professional relationship that was to last many years.

In 1821, when Owen was appointed to command Leven a 20-gun Frigate, and charged by Thomas Hurd ‘the father of the Hydrographic Service’ with the great expedition to explore and survey the African coastline; he selected Lieutenant Alexander Vidal as an Assistant Surveyor for his team. Vidal then remained with Owen for the entire six-year period, surviving the ravages of malaria and cholera that continually swept through the little squadron. After three months on the coast, the Commander of the tender Barracouta, William Cutfield, succumbed "after working 14 days along the coast in an open boat" and Vidal was promoted Commander in his place. A chart of Table Bay shows Vidal as the surveyor in charge of the survey and his name also appears on most of the work produced during that time under Owen’s direction. On returning to England in 1825 Vidal was promoted to Post Captain and continued serving with distinction in command of surveying ships in home waters and in the Mediterranean. From 1835 - 1838 he was back on the West African coast in Aetna a former 6-gun ‘Bomb’, a class of ship very popular in those days for surveying work due to the strength of construction. During this time he met the daughter of the Consul in Madeira, Sarah Antoinette Veitch of Wood, Canada.

Vidal delayed embracing domesticity until he was 47 when he married Sarah in October 1839, the couple eventually settling in Lambton County, Ontario. They had two sons, and so admiring was Vidal of his mentors that one was named Owen and the other Beaufort (after Sir Francis Beaufort, then Hydrographer of the Navy). He was, however, still an active naval officer and undertook his most noteworthy and ambitious major survey expedition from 1841 to 1845: a comprehensive hydrographic survey of the Azores while in command of Styx a 180 ft. 1057 ton steam paddle sloop, resulting in six Admiralty charts being published. It is inferred that he retired from the Navy, having reached the rank of Vice Admiral, and his wife having tragically died in 1843, he eventually settled near his brother in Ontario in 1846. Both Richard and Alexander established a strong family line in Canada and the United States, one connecting link being Alexander, Richard’s son, a bank manager in Sarnia, who is listed as elected to the Canadian Senate in 1873 ten years after the death of his uncle.
Neither of these dedicated explorers and surveyors, William Owen nor Alexander Vidal, became Hydrographer of the Navy. That post was firmly held by Rear Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort from the time he took over from Captain E W Parry in 1829 until he relinquished it to Captain John Washington in 1855. No-one else ‘got a look-in’. In any case, life and estates in the New World were probably more than adequate compensation for the old surveyor-explorers.

This little study, and the two articles it has engendered, were fired by incidental information arising on a ‘chat-line’ indicating that Sarnia, today a thriving Canadian industrial city on the St Lawrence Seaway, was founded by a group of British naval officers who settled there, including one named Vidal. Since I had served as a young surveying officer in both HMS Owen (1952-53) and HMS Vidal (1953-55) a closer look at things was tempting; a wet afternoon ‘surfing the net’ to follow a rather haphazard line of research revealed surprising results about the sons and forebears of Mr Emeric Vidal, Royal Navy, of Berkshire and the extraordinary world of surveying coastal waters and harbours under sail and oars.

Finally, HMS Vidal, a very fine looking ship, rendered good service on hydrographic and oceanographic surveys in many parts of the world until she was paid off in 1971. Her prototype construction, engines, gear-boxes, auxiliary machinery and fittings led the way to improvements in future ship design. One notable task was when Admiral Sir Edmund Irving, the UK Hydrographer, sailed in Vidal to Leningrad in September 1964 for discussions with Admiral Anatoliy Rassokho, the USSR Hydrographer.

Y una pregunta final ¿por qué es conocido como Essex Vidal, y no como Vidal Essex, como correspondería y sucede con sus dos hermanos?