While today's photographs are available with just the tap of a phone, Norman Luxton went to great lengths to document his ocean travels over a century ago, despite sensitive gear and precarious conditions. Brittany Staddon illustrates these remarkable feats through his recently digitized photographs.
By Brittany Staddon, Digital Imaging Technician Intern
When looking at photographs in an archive, I often take a moment to appreciate the photographer’s skills, foresight, and the inconveniences overcome to create them. Beyond the images’ content, the objects themselves lend us insight into their history.
This summer, I had the pleasure of completing my summer internship at the Whyte Museum archives as a student from Toronto Metropolitan University’s Photography Preservation and Collections Management graduate program. With an interest in the preservation of early 20th-century photographic mediums, digitizing Norman Luxton’s 1901 Tilikum voyage from Vancouver Island to Fiji gave me a new appreciation of the practice of photography at the turn of the century.
Inspired By a Single-Mast Sailboat
The origin of Norman Luxton and Captain John Voss’s ambitious voyage was, in part, a response to Captain Slocum’s solo round-the-world trip in a sloop, a single-mast sailboat, called the Spray. Slocum returned home to America with much fanfare and publicity, giving lectures, showing lantern slide shows, and having several books published. Norman Luxton and Captain John Voss’ challenge was to circumnavigate the globe on a smaller vessel than the Spray. The fame Slocum received on the completion of circumnavigating the world and the inclusion of photographs to share his journey may have inspired Luxton to document their trip through photographs. While Luxton couldn’t complete the circumnavigation of the globe on account of an injury he sustained when thrown from the boat into coral, he spent five months aboard the Tilikum, photographing the journey.
Sailing With Turn of the Century Camera Gear
The first challenge Norman would have faced was the undertaking of transporting the camera and negatives in a dugout retrofitted Nuu-chah-nulth canoe measuring 38’ in length and 5’6” in width at its broadest point, where space was a luxury (Figure 1). Captain Voss states in his memoir that one camera was onboard.[1] While emulsions were sensitive enough at this time to allow for handheld snapshots, photographs in the series with longer exposures, flash images, and self-portraits indicate a tripod may have also been onboard.
The Luxton family fonds contains 174 gelatin dry plate negatives taken by Norman on the Tilikum voyage – for reference that is approximately two shoeboxes of breakable glass plates, and it is likely more were taken and did not survive the journey. These glass plates were previously light-sensitized and must remain in complete darkness before and after exposure before development. Simply transporting 174 negatives and photographic apparatus across the Pacific Ocean, onto various islands, and back again on the return trip to Canada is a feat in itself! The difficult storage conditions may account for broken glass supports (Figure 2), gouge marks through the emulsion (Figure 3) and dirt embedded in their emulsion prior to development, as indicated by the dark shadow-like streaks (Figures 4, 5).
![Figure 3: Unidentified [Captain John Voss?], 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/as/a/NG-51](https://static.wixstatic.com/media/cd2968_359bb488ab0c4d5e9f00cee884ba704b~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_980,h_784,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/cd2968_359bb488ab0c4d5e9f00cee884ba704b~mv2.jpg)
Surviving the Elements
The bulk and the fragility of the glass negatives were just some of the complicating factors Luxton would have faced. The light-sensitive emulsion on the glass plates is made of gelatin, a material highly susceptible to swelling and contracting in response to changing temperature and humidity, two conditions which inconveniently promote mould growth. These less-than-ideal conditions perfectly align with a cramped boat crossing the equator. Voss wrote of the mid-journey condition: "It finally got so hot that it was next to an impossibility to sleep in the cabin. As soon as we lay down, the sweat would just run out of us.”[1] In addition, most supplies were likely exposed to hot, damp conditions, further degraded by the exposure to salt water.[2] For a medium that is recommended to be stored at a temperature no higher than 20°C, and never exceeding 50% relative humidity, while definitely avoiding fluctuations in both conditions, it almost seems a wonder Luxton managed 174 legible images at all! The small selection of images had pockmark-like indentations, likely due to the gelatin swelling and temporarily adhering to nearby negatives, giving a jigsaw-like appearance (Figures 6, 7); others showed signs of mould growth (Figure 8).
The final factor was the poor development of the negatives. While I could find no record indicating where Luxton’s negatives were developed, in Voss's accounts, he shares of displaying photographs they took on the South Sea islands when he stopped in Australia, so it is possible the negatives were developed before Luxton’s return to Canada.[1] In the developer’s haste, some negatives show signs of reticulation, a honeycomb-like separation suggesting a sudden temperature change when developing (Figures 9, 10). Others had fingerprint marks (perhaps from when the photograph was taken or developed) (Figure 11) and a solvent that ran along the negative, creating a cascading effect (Figure 12).
Norman Luxton’s Tilikum glass negatives travelled across the world and back again 120 years ago. While the images they show are extraordinary, I am fascinated by the deterioration that speaks to their remarkable journey.
The glass slides featured in this article, as well as other materials related to the Tilikum voyage and the Luxton family, can be accessed through the Whyte Museum’s online database or by appointment by contacting archives@whyte.org. More information about Norman and other members of the Luxton family can be found on the Eleanor Luxton Historical Foundation’s website.
Images
Figure 1: Norman Luxton and John Voss inside the Tilikum, 1901. Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds. LUX/I/B1/12/b/NG-27
Figure 2: Unidentified men pearl diving, 1901. The modern diving suit was used by Captains George Dexter and Joe Winchester on the schooner Tamari Tahiti (Children of Tahiti), Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-9
Figure 3: Unidentified [Captain John Voss?], 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/as/a/NG-51
Figure 4: Six unidentified men on unidentified schooner, 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-52
Figure 5: Dirt embedded in glass negative. Image produced by Brittany Staddon.
Figure 6: The trading post of Mr. McKenzie at Dodger Cove in Barkley Sound, 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-43
Figure 7: Close-up view of indents in emulsion. Image produced by Brittany Staddon.
Figure 8: Unidentified location photographed during Tilikum voyage, 1901. Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-25
Figure 9: Schooner Excelisor, one of two boats the Tilikum met in the North Pacific, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-63
Figure 10: Close-up view of textured emulsion on glass negative. Image produced by Brittany Staddon.
Figure 11: Unidentified women fishing near the village of Alberni. The Tilikum is featured on the left, 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-27
Figure 12: Aboard the Tilikum, off of Cape Flattery, 1901, Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Luxton family fonds, LUX/I/B1/12/a/NG-10
Endnotes
[1] John Claus Voss, The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss (London: Martin Hopkinson & Co., 1934), 49, https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/voss-venturesomevoyages/voss-venturesomevoyages-00-h-dir/voss-venturesomevoyages-00-h.html.
[2] Voss, 70.
[3] John M. MacFarlane and Lynn J. Salmon, Around the World in a Dugout Canoe: The Untold Story of Captain John Voss and the Tilikum (Madeira Park, BC: Harbour Publishing, 2019), 62, 82.
[4] Voss, The Venturesome Voyages of Captain Voss, 117.
Interested in learning more about Canadian Rockies history? Book a research appointment at the Whyte Museum Archives and Special Collections Library.
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