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"Saw a comet star ablazing..."
Log of the New Bedford whaling ship Washington, March 6, 1843

By Les Ottinger

The comet that James G. Coffin, captain of the Washington, took note of in the ship's log was the Great March Comet of 1843. It proved to be the most spectacular comet of the nineteenth century. Its only possible rival was the Great August Comet of 1881, but though this later comet was of similar magnitude, its appearance was compromised by a short tail.

The Washington had sailed from New Bedford in 1842 and was then in the Indian Ocean, 1, 200 miles south of Madagascar. Captain Coffin was an experienced mariner, and this was his third cruise as master of a Nantucket or New Bedford whaling ship. He had no doubt previously seen comets, but certainly nothing to equal this one, which may account for his choice of "ablaze" to describe the appearance.

"Great" as applied to a comet is not a specific term, but has been used to denote comets clearly visible to the unaided eye. Comets originate within the outer solar system and their incidence is, except for a few like Halley's Comet, unpredictable. A comet is not visible until its orbit loops near the sun where part of its mass becomes vapor and dust. The resulting envelope and tail become luminous and cause it to be visible. The apparent brightness of a comet, as of other celestial bodies, is expressed as its magnitude. The scale for magnitude was devised by Hipparchus, the great observational astronomer and mathematician of the second century b.c., who compiled a catalogue of 850 stars. The brightest stars were assigned a magnitude of 1, and the faintest stars detected by his unaided eye a value of 6. Increasing numbers signified diminishing apparent brightness. In modern times astronomers have calibrated the scale. The numbers vary by a factor of 2.5. Thus a star with a magnitude of 4.0 is 2.5 times brighter than a star of magnitude 5.0. Negative numbers describe still brighter objects. For example, Venus presently has a magnitude of -3.0. Mars, during its recent close transit of the earth, reached a magnitude of -2.8, and then rather quickly faded to its more usual -1.0. The Great March Comet had a magnitude of less than -3.0. For a time it was, excepting our moon and the sun itself, the brightest object in the sky. Two recent great comets are Hyakutake in 1996, with a magnitude of 1.0 to 2.0, and Hale-Bopp in 1997, with a magnitude of -0.7. Thus, the comet reported by Captain Coffin was more than twenty times brighter than either of those. It must, indeed, have presented a most remarkable sight.

The March Comet of 1843 was first sighted sometime in mid-February. It was most visible in the hour or so after sunset, low in the southwest, and was also visible to some observers during the day, always very near the sun. The comet was brightest in the first three weeks of March.

From Nantucket, a series of observations of the comet is recorded in the diary that George H. Gardner kept between January 1, 1841, and March 3, 1844. These are the entries:

March 7: A Phanomenon [sic] seen this eve in the
SW being a comet. Commenced showing
about 7. Lasted one hour.

March 8: Comet seen again in the SW.

March 9: Comet seen this evening in SW.

March 10: The Comet was not seen this eve on
account of the weather being thick.

March 11: Comet seen this eve at ‡ past 6.

March 19: Comet seen very plain until 9 pm.

Another report by a Nantucket resident was written by Joseph C. Starbuck. This is in the form of a letter, actually a short journal, that he wrote to his brother in 1846. In it was a description of his experiences as an officer on the brig Cayuga. The Cayuga was trading cargo between Mexico, Peru, Chile, Hawaii, China, and Hong Kong. He reported that in March of
1843:

At 4pm passes out of the Ladrone channel into the China Sea with a fresh breeze. The next night we saw a comet to the South with a very bright tail. At 8 it set below the horizon. It was visible 7 nights in succession and then disappeared.

In the NHA manuscript collection there are twenty-five logs and journals of whaling vessels that were at sea in March of 1843. Observations of the comet are recorded in eight, including that of the Washington with its note of "Saw a comet star ablazing." Most of the entries are brief: From the log of the Indian Chief, south of New Zealand, on March 7; "Saw a large comet in the NW"; from the Navigator on March 10, "At 8 saw a comet bearing WSW," from the Rose on March 7, "Saw a comet"; from the Walter Scott on March 4, "Saw the comet very plain last eve"; and from the Charles Carroll on March 2, just "Saw the comet." One log and one journal offer more detailed observations. The whaleship Nantucket had been towed over the bar on the camels and had sailed for the Pacific Ocean on June 15, 1841. Her master was George Washington Gardner Jr., and it was probably his hand that made the entries in early March of 1843:

March 4: Cruising on equator. Immediately after
sunset saw something to the West that
had the appearance of the tail of a Comet
extending from the horizon up about 18
degrees and the comet appeared to be
below the horizon but a short distance.

March 5: At dark saw the comet very plain-
a most beautiful one with a tail about 15
degrees long

With the March 4 entry, there is a little sketch of the tail of the comet streaming up from the horizon and beside it a sliver of moon, noted to be a three-day-old moon. The most elegant description of the comet is in the journal of Reuben Russell, master of the Nantucket whaleship Susan. The Susan had sailed on Dec. 12, 1841. Captain Russell wrote in 1843 while off the coast of
Rarotonga:

March 4: At half past 7 pm about 8 degrees above
the horizon we saw a remarkable bright
Comet bearing west of us the tail of which
extended about 30 degrees upward . . .
at 8 it disappeared in the western horizon.

March 5: We observed the Comet again last evening
at about 7 o'clock which showed very
brilliant . . . the star itself was about 10
degrees above the horizon the tail of which
extended about 20 degrees pointing
upwards from the sun . . . it bore west of us
and south from the moon about 20
degrees . . . they set about 8 pm

There followed several days of stormy weather. Then:

March 10: At 8 pm the Comet before mentioned
shone with great Brilliance . . . we mea-
sured the height of the tail with a quadrant
and made it 33 degrees bearing west of us.

At present, using powerful telescopes at least a dozen comets can be seen. Almost none become bright enough for observation with the unaided eye or even with binoculars. Actually, during the twentieth century no comet with a magnitude below -1.0 was recorded, and so none even approached the brilliance and appearance of the Great March Comet of 1843. Still, the arrival of comets is unpredictable. No doubt, in time, there will be another such great comet, but for the present, Captain Coffin's "comet star ablazing" remains the most spectacular of modern times.

Leslie W. Ottinger, a physician, retired to Nantucket in 1996. He has been a volunteer in the Research Library since 1999 and contributed "Goodbye Mary Mitchell Hard Luck Craft " for the fall 2003 issue of Historic Nantucket.

Sidebar:

"COMETS"

Today, the sight of a comet fills us with wonder. We know that the visitations of these heavenly bodies are rare so we seize every opportunity to see them and record every fact of their existence. We look up at the stars hoping for another chance to see the flashings of a comet. In days gone by, a comet was thought to be a sign that the end of the world was approaching.

In 1881 Maria Mitchell spotted a comet from her windows at Vassar College. Not wanting to miss a moment of the comet's visit, she had the night watchman cut down an apple tree that obscured her view. Below are drawings of the 1881 comet found in one of her journals. Also, bound in the journal is a lecture she had written titled "Comets." Following is an excerpt from that lecture. -Cecil Barron Jensen

It is not strange that in earlier & ruder times, a comet was the cause of terror to nations; that popes used bulls against them and common people prayed and fasted. Even now, the suddenness of a comet is startling. We are accustomed to fixedness in the appearance of the stars, from night to night. Orion's beams are shining as brilliant now as at the beginning of creation, the pole star has kept its place for ages, so far as the unassisted vision can say - the Great and the Little Bear have marched around and around . . . night after night & year after year presenting the same relative position. We change our country and the stars do not change - we may lose sight of some, but we never lose all and they look upon us with the same beaming light. The stars which peeped in at our window, when first in childhood we were left alone in the dark, and were ministering angels then are ministering angels now. Who ever heard of a child's being afraid of a star?

We involuntarily start when a stranger unannounced comes into our presence . . . but when, from regions of space, a blazing & fiery comet flashes upon us and for a short period runs a rare rivalry to the flashing meteor, it is not strange that a slight shudder comes to even an intelligent observer. For how much do we know of them?