Theatre Royal Covent Garden [...] Robert's Moving Diorama of the Polar Expedition. Being a series of Views representing the progress of His Majesty's Ships the Hecla and Fury, in their endeavour to di

£1,750 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A rare broadside advertising a dynamic dramatisation of Sir William Parry’s 1824-25 expedition to the Arctic in HMS Hecla and Fury . Whilst the left-hand side of the playbill comprises a running order of the evening’s entertainments, opening with “Otway’s Tragedy of Venice Preserved” and followed by a “new grand comic pantomime, called Harlequin, and Cock Robin: or Vulcan Venus”, the right-hand column offers a detailed explanation of the headline event: Roberts’ Moving Diorama. The thirteen-point description opens at Deptford, with a gratuitous inclusion of the prison ship Discovery (previously used by George Vancouver), via Greenwich and Gravesend to the Nore. The next scene sees the the Hecla and Fury off Cape Farewell, then in the Hudson’s Bay, where the attraction features “Esquimaux Indians with their sledges”. After Baffin Bay the ships are “surrounded by Ice-Bergs off Melville Island”, naturally followed by the “Total loss of the Fury”, when in July 1825 the ship was crushed against the Nunavut shore of Prince Regent Inlet, at a spot which became known as Fury Beach. The final point on the list sees the “arrival of the Hecla in the Bay of Jeddo, (Capital of the Japan Islands,) from the Terrace of the Emperor’s Palace.” Whilst the other scenes do hold true to the facts of the expedition, this stop in Japan is pure fantasy. It’s possible that from a theatrical standpoint, the temptation to insert a visually dynamic finale in the bay of Tokyo was simply too great. The art

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