Even if the numerical results were not those predicted, Eddington could still have high hopes for the expeditions’ value for international science. For that, they needed publicity beyond reports in technical journals such as Nature. Eddington and Dyson were in contact with reporters from the Times at least by January 13, 1919, when it published its first article about the upcoming expeditions. In those days before press releases, it was common to talk directly to reporters or editors about important news. The historian Alistair Sponsel has documented the extensive efforts Eddington and Dyson made to get regular press coverage of the expeditions even before they found any results. Articles about the project appeared every couple of months. There was usually no author listed—we know some were written by Dyson, some by an assistant of his. A “devout reader” of the Times would have, over the course of 1919, become familiar with the expeditions, Einstein, and relativity. By summer they would have been eagerly awaiting the results—just as Eddington wanted.
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EINSTEIN DID NOT have a subscription to the Times. But after the armistice scientific publications from outside Germany were beginning to trickle in. Einstein’s friend Arnold Berliner, a fellow liberal who edited the journal Naturwissenschaften, managed to get his hands on an issue of Nature that contained a description of the eclipse expeditions. He wrote to Einstein excitedly, telling him about the British efforts to test relativity. If Einstein was interested, he would happily translate the rest of the article into German. In any case, Berliner would publish the entire report in the next issue of Naturwissenschaften. He was as pleased by its scientific merits as the opportunity to tweak the “Anglophagists” like Lenard and Stark who had so viciously tried to eliminate English science from Germany.
Berliner admitted that finally having access to foreign journals was “a mixed pleasure,” though. On one hand, he heard about exciting news like this. On the other, he could see an advertisement in Science in which a company declared, “Not one item in [our] catalog is made in Germany.” This was hailed as an opportunity to “free your laboratory of German products.” The upcoming expeditions were still an anomaly in the world of Allied science.
Planck was no doubt happy to hear about the British efforts to support his friend’s theory. He had been working hard to keep German science active even in this “wretched time.” He did not much care either for republics as a form of government or the actual new administration. By 1919, though, politics was barely a distraction. He was living in “gnawing pain” after wartime had devastated his family. His two daughters died in childbirth and his son Karl was killed at Verdun. His son Erwin was taken prisoner (many years later he would be executed by the Nazis for plotting against Hitler). Planck was not unusual for the tragedies that tore apart his family, only for the stoicism with which he bore them.
Some scientists wondered if this meant Planck could be lured away from Germany, perhaps to Switzerland. Einstein dispelled any such ideas. He said it was “totally inconceivable” that Planck would leave Germany. “He is rooted to his native land with every fiber, like no one else.” Einstein was certainly not but showed no inclination to leave. He grew more and more disgusted with the steady stream of political upheavals, though: “The country is like someone with a badly upset stomach who hasn’t yet thrown up enough.” Still, he made no move to depart.
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EDDINGTON, ON THE other hand, was in a serious hurry to get out of the country. All the preparations for the expeditions had happened at the “eleventh hour” because they had to wait for wartime restrictions to loosen—and the eclipse would not wait for them. At the beginning of March, Eddington rushed out the front door of the observatory and tossed his luggage into a waiting taxi. The expedition teams took a train to Liverpool, on which they were charged extra handling fees for the delicacy of the equipment. On March 8 they boarded the RMS Anselm, a decommissioned troop ship that was part of the Booth Line. Of Booth’s thirty ships, eleven had been requisitioned for war use and nine had been sunk by submarines. This was some of the first post-armistice commercial travel, though there were many reminders of the war—a held-over regulation meant that passengers were not allowed to know the boat’s location or course at any given time.
The Anselm was a roomy boat, and the teams stayed in first-class cabins. Scientists sat alongside tourists. Food on the boat was exempt from rationing and Eddington commented on how strange it was: “unlimited sugar, and large slices of meat, puddings with pre-war quantity of raisins & currants in them, new white rolls, and so on.” Crommelin and Cottingham were unable to enjoy that, though, as they spent most of the time seasick.
The ship stopped in Lisbon, where a local astronomer, Dr. Frederico Tomás Oom, took them on a tour by motorcar. Dr. Oom had been in contact with the JPEC helping to make arrangements in Principe, a Portuguese colony. He was instrumental in maneuvering through the political turbulence—Portugal had only become a republic in 1910, and just months before Eddington arrived the monarchy had been briefly reinstalled. That overthrow had momentarily halted all sailings to Lisbon, imperiling both expeditions.
After that brief stopover they landed on the island of Madeira on March 15. Arriving by sea was an unpleasant reminder of the war: “Three ships were torpedoed by submarine in Madeira harbour during the war, and one sees the masts of two of them sticking up out of the water. The town was also bombarded and there are a few traces visible.” From there Davidson and Crommelin caught a steamer for Brazil. Eddington and Cottingham had to wait for the next ship going to Principe. Contrary to the information on which they had planned the trip, the sailing schedules were completely undependable.
Madeira was not a bad place to have to spend a few weeks, though. Eddington found the mountainous terrain perfect for hiking, and he sent home letters describing the vistas. Cottingham tried to join in but could not keep up. The precipitous slopes were a serious challenge—Eddington had to buy a walking stick. After climbing one mountain, Eddington descended via a four-mile toboggan run. He was disappointed to hear that swimming was out of the question—too many sharks. Food had been scarce during the war, except for locally grown sugar and fruit. Finally free of rationing, Eddington found himself eating a dozen bananas a day. Nipper, a dog at their hotel, often came along on his adventures. Eddington was typically excited to befriend local dogs during his travels, but he did not encourage Nipper at all, “as he was neither beautiful nor free from fleas.”
One of the main attractions on the island was the local casino. Eddington’s letters to his very conservative mother assured her that he went there only because that was the only place to get proper tea. In a letter to his sister, though, he confessed: “I expect Mother sends on my letters to some of our relatives, so I did not mention in them, that I played roulette, of course not seriously, but enough to get a good idea of it and experience the ups and downs of fortune.”
By the second week of April, Eddington and Cottingham were on board the Portugal on their way to Principe. The other passengers were mostly Portuguese, so conversation was often limited (he had been reading The Vicar of Wakefield in Portuguese to learn some). The language barrier still allowed for games of musical chairs and an egg-and-spoon race on Good Friday. He enjoyed trying the exotic cuisine, although since the milk on the ship was not good he had to take his tea black.
After a journey of nearly five thousand miles, Eddington arrived off the coast of Africa on April 26. Principe is about four miles wide by ten miles long, about one-seventh the size of its nearest neighbor, São Tomé. It is thickly wooded and dominated by a mountain in the center. This was the spot that Eddington had chosen as the crux for his campaign to restore the international world of science, to show the strength of peace in the face of war. But when the inhabitants of the island thought about Quakers, they probably did not think about pacifism but rather some tragic history.
Principe was covered in cocoa plantations, which provided the raw materials w
ith which the Cadbury family—a prominent Quaker clan—made their fortune. Quakers had been involved in the chocolate business for a long time (it was seen as a healthy alternative to alcohol). Many of those companies, and the Cadburys in particular, were known for advocating workers’ rights and improving living conditions. So William Cadbury was horrified to discover in 1901 that the cocoa workers were essentially slaves—brought from Angola, forbidden from leaving, and sold along with livestock and equipment. He launched a very public investigation that led to tensions between the British and Portuguese Empires, with Quaker commercial interests in the middle. The Principe authorities were pressured to radically improve conditions, and by 1916 the British Foreign Office reported that there had been marked progress. Workers were well paid and could return home at will. But those men—Eddington commented that there were virtually no women on the island—would certainly have remembered their earlier treatment. Whether they blamed the Quakers for that, we do not know.
Cadbury’s investigation was carried out by the young Joseph Burtt. Burtt, a gifted writer, described his first view of Principe, which would have been unchanged by 1919:
And as the light brightened the sea became sapphire blue over the rocks, and turquoise in the sandy shallows, while here and there beneath grey precipitous cliffs it lay in pools of deep translucent green that seemed too radiant for mortal eyes to look upon. Beyond this, and as white as silk, the tiny breakers foamed against the line of yellow sand where careless cocoa palms flung up their sloping stems and tossed their plumes in the fresh morning air. . . . Further still, and higher, the vast dome of Papagaio stood out against the pale blue sky, veiling one purple side in diaphanous clouds that rolled and rose like incense to the mountain gods.
Eddington and Burtt were both hopeful when they landed on the island. The former looked to repair the damage caused by four years of war. The latter sought to ameliorate the suffering caused by greed and empire. They each saw Principe as a pivot point, a place where singular effort could change the world. Burtt succeeded. Eddington’s test was yet to come.
DAVIDSON AND CROMMELIN’S arrival in Brazil went smoothly. The British Consulate helped speed their delicate instruments through customs (the British and Portuguese Empires could cooperate when it suited them). The astronomers had a leisurely trip up the Amazon, then a combination of trains and local steamers to get them to Sobral on April 30. They were met by both civil and religious authorities—Father Cortie had used his Jesuit connections to ensure their warm welcome.
The astronomers were given use of the house of Col. Vicente Saboya, the deputy of Sobral. In addition to comfortable quarters, the house provided a ready supply of cool water necessary for developing the photographs. They set up their two telescopes and the coelostats at a nearby racecourse. This was a very good place to observe the eclipse, with a large clear area near a shaded grandstand. Police patrolled to keep gawking locals from entering the racecourse, making it more like a controlled scientific laboratory and less like a sporting field.
Eddington and Cottingham, too, were greeted warmly by the establishment at their destination. Imagine the far-flung colonial outpost where the local dignitaries struggled mightily to re-create all the trappings of European civilization—that was Principe. Eddington had a letter of introduction from the colonial officials in Madeira that helped smooth his arrival. As Eddington put it, they were “in clover.” Crucial to their work were Mr. Wright and Mr. Lewis, two men from Sierra Leone who ran the local telegraph station. Their English was excellent and they often translated for the expedition. Most evenings the group sat on the local judge’s balcony overlooking the sea, listening to the governor’s record collection (grand opera, mainly).
Eddington and Cottingham stayed in the port of Santo António for about a week as they scouted the island for the best observation sites. The locals’ intimate knowledge of the jungled, mountainous terrain was crucial. They finally decided on the Roça Sundy Plantation on the northwest corner of the island, away from the cloud-gathering mountains, on a plateau overlooking a bay five hundred feet below. This provided shelter from the winds but still allowed excellent views. There was also a luxurious plantation house conveniently nearby. The plantation owner, Sr. Carneiro, put his workers at the astronomers’ disposal to build the foundations and huts that would support and protect the observation equipment. They also carried that equipment by hand through the thick forest for about a kilometer. We will never know those workers’ names; they join the legion of anonymous laborers who have made science possible.
The astronomers had some chances to relax on Sundays, including monkey hunting (they didn’t catch any) and swimming (a plantation worker went with Eddington to keep him away from sharks). They took a trip to visit a particularly fruitful plantation where the trees bent under the weight of cocoa. As Eddington described it to his mother: “It was a very fine sight to see the large golden pods in such numbers—almost as though the forest had been hung with Chinese lanterns.”
On May 5, Eddington started writing a letter home to his sister. He commented that he had just received their mother’s letter dated March 14, and he had little idea what life was like at home: “Indeed I do not know what has been happening in the world in general—whether peace has been signed or any important events have occurred.” He was deeply isolated and cut off. He had no sense of the current state of science or politics; he could only continue with the expedition as had been planned. He could not help but contrast his experience of tropical plenty with that of wartime Britain:
I wonder if you are still rationed. It seemed funny on the boat at starting to see full sugar-basins, unlimited butter, and to eat in a day about as much meat as would have been a week’s ration. We have had no scarcity of anything since we started.
He asked after Punch, their dog, and wished the pooch a happy birthday.
By May 16 the telescope was set up under one of the waterproof huts the plantation workers had constructed. Eddington and Cottingham began taking the check photographs that would provide the references for measuring the Einstein deflection. These check plates also provided valuable practice developing the photographs in tropical conditions—no one at Kodak had expected their products to be used in the jungle.
The final days leading up to the May 29 eclipse were nerve-racking, as they often were on eclipse expeditions. Years of planning, months of journeying, weeks of physically and mentally grueling preparation, all without knowing whether the sky would be clear at the critical moment. The day before an eclipse Arthur Schuster, one of Eddington’s college professors, actually broke down crying.
Eddington, with his literary flair, pointed out that this methodical preparation made eclipse observations feel somewhat ritualistic. He suggested that this eclipse in particular had a bit of a divinatory aspect in its particularly fortunate circumstances. Years later he wrote:
In a superstitious age a natural philosopher wishing to perform an important experiment would consult an astrologer to ascertain an auspicious moment for the trial. With better reason, an astronomer to-day consulting the stars would announce that the most favourable day of the year for weighing light is May 29.
This was because on that day the eclipse would take place right in front of the Hyades, a handful of bright stars perfect for measuring the Einstein deflection. He wanted bright stars so they could be easily seen on the photograph. He wanted more than one so he could see how the deflection changed the farther away from the sun they were: a star right at the edge of the sun should show the 1.75 arc-second deflection; a star slightly farther away would show less; a star well away would show almost none. Einstein predicted not only a deflection but also a specific way the deflection would change with distance from the sun’s edge. Multiple stars meant this aspect of the prediction could be tested as well. A past or future astronomer might have to wait centuries or millennia for a background as auspicious as the Hyades.
&n
bsp; The Hyades are found in the constellation Taurus. They are the bull’s head, right by the blazing-red star Aldebaran. They were named after five nymphs, the daughters of Atlas. Weeping over the death of their brother, they were placed in the heavens just out of Orion’s lustful reach. Their tears made the constellation traditionally associated with the arrival of the rainy season. Eddington probably grew up calling them the “April Rainers” (perhaps not a propitious omen for the eclipse observations).
As one of the brightest clusters in the sky they are visible to the naked eye and have been watched since antiquity. They appear in the Iliad when Hephaestus crafts a shield for the hero Achilles. On the shield is depicted the entire world and cosmos, from sheepherders to wars to the imperishable stars. The Hyades are among the constellations placed on the shield, along with Orion and Ursa Major. They were part of the ancient links between the heavens and the Earth, carrying meaning from the celestial realm to the terrestrial. Eddington had no shield on which to catch these stars, only a telescope with which to look for their message.
To see if the light from those stars was bent, he had to point that telescope into the darkness of a total eclipse. The experience of a total eclipse is unlike anything else. A 99 percent eclipse seems to be a cloudy afternoon—100 percent plunges you into sudden, awful darkness. The temperature drops, birds stop singing, and (crucially for Einstein) the stars become visible. If one is not ready for it, the experience is disorienting and unsettling. George Airy, an Astronomer Royal from the nineteenth century, warned that during totality “the most perfect discipline will fail.” Astronomers since then had developed routines and rituals to keep their focus during an eclipse, to keep their attention on their observations and their science at a moment when the world seemed to have ended.
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