CAREERS
Ficus or Banyan Tree, by Alfred Agate, published in Charles Wilkes’s Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition, 1845.
Alfred Agate grew up studying art under the guidance of his older brother Frederick, who was an established portrait artist in New York. He was born in upstate New York in 1812, and by the 1830s was living in New York City and working as a portrait artist and miniaturist. Stepping out of his comfort zone of the studio, in 1838 he boarded a ship for the adventure of a lifetime, working as one of the two expedition artists on the first scientific voyage sponsored by the United States government, the United States Exploring Expedition (a.k.a. the “Ex-Ex”) under the command of Lt. Charles Wilkes. The artists were considered part of the scientific crew.
Agate was just 25 years old when the expedition got underway, and he would spend the next four years sailing around the globe, visiting Polynesia, Antarctic waters, South America (including a passage around Cape Horn), Australia, the Pacific Northwest of the United States, and beyond. One of the main goals of the expedition was to document the flora and fauna, physical geography, and peoples they would observe along the way, not only via written description, but in sketches and paintings by those who saw them firsthand. When the expedition returned, Lt. Wilkes proceeded to publish a multi-volume report of the voyage, which included hundreds of Agate’s illustrations.
When the expedition concluded, Agate moved to Washington, DC, and married Elizabeth Hill Kennedy in 1845. He was in poor health after his long time at sea and died from tuberculosis only a year after his wedding at the age of 33.
The shipboard artist has not been a position onboard scientific research vessels for more than a hundred years, not since photography was invented and became mainstream. Today, research vessels rarely carry crew onboard whose specific job is to photograph (or video) what they find. For example, remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) used to explore the seafloor are equipped with high-resolution cameras. Trained ROV pilots not only maneuver the vehicle, but operate its cameras, and can document undersea items that artists would not have been able to a century ago and before.
Tahitian Girl with Hau, by Alfred Agate, c. 1840.
Did You Know?
Today, nearly 42,000 men and women serve on active duty in the US Coast Guard.
The United States Coast Guard is the nation’s oldest maritime service and is really a combination of five different agencies that were brought together to make them run more efficiently—the Revenue Cutter Service, the Lighthouse Service, the Life-Saving Service, the Bureau of Navigation, and the Steamboat Inspection Service.
What do members of the Coast Guard do every day?