Page 350 
THE VEL1GER 
Vol. 10; No. 4 
Itinerary of the Voyage of H. M. S. Blossom , 1825 to 1828 
BY 
JOSEPH ROSEWATER 
Division of Mollusks, United States National Museum Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C. 20560 
His Majesty’s ship Blossom under the command of 
Captain F. W. Beechey sailed to the Pacific and Arctic 
Oceans in the year 1825 and remained in that area until 
1828 to provide support for an expedition mounted by 
the British for the purpose of discovering a northwest 
passage. The ship was scheduled to meet the expedition 
north of Bering Strait some time during the months of 
July, August or September of the years 1826 or 1827, 
and she was ordered to explore, chart and to collect 
natural history specimens during the balance of the time. 
Upon her return to England the natural history speci- 
mens were distributed to various naturalists for study. 
The mollusks were entrusted to J. E. Gray and his report 
on them appeared after numerous delays (Gray, 1839; 
see also general introduction by F. W. Beechey, pp. vii, 
viii). In his introduction to the section on Mollusca, 
Gray remarked that a portion of the Blossom collections, 
mostly that collected by Captain Belcher and presented 
by him to the Zoological Society, was described by 
Broderip & Sowerby (1829). Gray mentioned that he 
was including in his report additional material collected 
by others from some of the same areas that had been 
visited by the Blossom, but since he seldom named a 
collector or a precise locality, there is little basis for 
considering material to be from a source other than that 
voyage. 
Unfortunately, naturalists of that day in many cases 
refrained from citing an exact locality for a species they 
were describing. Probably this was not entirely due to 
carelessness on their part, but often was the fault of 
collectors who neglected to label specimens properly. 
Today, this would be as inexcusable error, but at that 
time it probably seemed just not that important. 
While working with the report on the Blossom Mollus- 
ca, in an attempt to identify certain Indo-Pacific marine 
mollusks, I found the quality of the locality data to vary 
considerably. Over 100 new species of mollusks are de- 
scribed in the report and locality information ranges in 
precision from none at all to “Pacific” to relatively excel- 
lent data such as “Icy Cape.” It will be noted that the 
section completed by G. B. Sowerby (pp. 143 - 155) 
often contains considerably better locality information 
than that which precedes it written by Gray (pp. 103 to 
142). During a brief visit to the British Museum (N. H.) 
in 1963 I examined some of the types of species described 
by Gray in his report and found that the museum labels 
lacked additional locality data. 
In many groups of mollusks it is of considerable impor- 
tance to ascertain with fair precision the locality from 
which a particular species was described because similar • 
appearing but distinct species often live in widely sepa- 
rated regions. For this reason type localities are often 
designated in order to localize a taxon and to remove it 
from geographical limbo. To provide some basis for type 
locality designations in a similar case, Chamberlain 
(1960) prepared an itinerary of the voyage of the Venus. 
I have prepared the following itinerary of the voyage of 
the Blossorn, and I hope it will obviate the necessity for 
future workers to search the cruise narrative to discover 
appropriate type localities. 
Beechey (1831) prepared an elaborate narrative of 
the voyage of the Blossom containing rather complete 
and fascinating descriptions of the places and peoples 
visited. Events are related chronologically, but precise 
dates and places are buried in the text. In order to 
extract these for an itinerary it was necessary to read the 
narrative in some detail, a not unpleasant task. Where 
locality names differ appreciably from those recognized 
today, I have used cither the modern name or indicated 
it in parentheses. The dates of visitation associated with 
each locality are not always certain and in some cases 
had to be left blank. It is often difficult to be sure from 
the cruise narrative that the ship actually stopped at a 
locality or whether it merely observed the position of an 
island or port while sailing past. 
