BAR’s Bicentennial Salute—The United States Navy Explores the Holy Land

009

In 1847 Lieutenant William F. Lynch of the United States Navy had completed his tour of duty in the recent Mexican War. He was restless and 46 years old. For 20 years he had had a dream. The time had come to realize his dream.

In his own words, “On the 8th of May 1847, the town and castle of Vera Cruz having some time before surrendered and there being nothing left for the navy to perform, I preferred an application to the Hon. John Y. Mason, the head of the department, for permission to circumnavigate and thoroughly explore the Lake Aspaltites or Dead Sea.”

On July 31, Lynch was informed that his application had been favorably acted upon, and on October 2, he was ordered to take command of the United States storeship, The Supply.

He carefully selected a crew of “young, muscular, native-born Americans, of sober habits, from each of whom I exacted a pledge to abstain from all intoxicating drinks.” The original crew numbered fourteen, including two additional officers.

The ship itself carried two metal boats, one of copper and the other of galvanized iron, made in sections, so that they might be taken apart for overland trips when necessary. Lynch also stowed aboard two wagon frames or low trucks on which the boats could be set and pulled by draft animals.

In addition, Lynch took aboard some arms and ammunition, scientific instruments, tents, many flags, spare sails, oars, preserved meats, and a few cooking utensils.

On November 20, 1847, The Supply waited impatiently to slip out of the Brooklyn Navy Yard and begin its voyage to the Holy Land. Others had ventured to the Holy Land before, but no one had ever penetrated the dreadful Dead Sea and lived to tell of it. At last, on November 26, a breeze caught the sails and The Supply sailed into the Atlantic Ocean.

Lynch’s official orders were to proceed to Smyrna (modern Izmir) on the Turkish coast, leave his ship there, and take a steamer to Constantinople, where Dabney S. Carr, the United States Resident Minister, would help him obtain the necessary firman or permit to pass through what was then Syria into Palestine. If the firman were granted, Lynch would return to The Supply at Smyrna, proceed with his ship to the Syrian coast at Acre, and take his metal boats, named the Fanny Mason and the Fanny Skinner, overland to the Sea of Galilee. From there he was to explore the Sea of Galilee, the Jordan River, and the Dead Sea.

Many expeditions like this, funded by the federal government through the Army and Navy, explored unknown territories during the first half of the nineteenth century. The Lewis and Clark expedition was the father 010of them all, followed by Fremont, Wilkes, and others.¹ Military in nature, but scientific in outlook, these expeditions advanced American commercial and maritime interests. Lynch’s expedition to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea, though mainly a scientific enterprise, was part of this movement.

On his return, Lynch wrote a fascinating account of his adventures entitled Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (Philadelphia, 1849).² The book proved so popular that it went through nine editions.³ From the 508 page Narrative, Lynch emerges as a cultured gentleman, with a deep knowledge of Biblical lore, literature, and history, and a strong and abiding faith in Christianity. Although not a Biblical scholar, Lynch could and did quote widely from Scripture. For him, there was no conflict between religion and science. His expedition, as one historian put it, was launched “in the simultaneous pursuit of Christian and scientific truth”.⁴

A stubborn, kind, and loyal man, Lynch was immensely proud of being an American. He felt a sympathetic understanding for his fellow man, regardless of color, origin, or religious beliefs. The shocking sight of a public execution in Smyrna sickened his Christian sense of decency; at the same time he admired the religious piety of the “benighted” Turks as he observed them in prayer five times a day. He decried the corruption of Turkish officials and naively opined, “Could Christianity but shed its benign influence over this misguided people, their national existence might be prolonged … ”⁵ He sympathized with Turkish women, kept in a state of domestic servitude, and “deplorably debased”.

In Constantinople, the American minister arranged an audience for Lynch with the Sultan, Abdul Medjid. Lynch was admonished to lay aside his sword before entering the divine presence, but he stubbornly refused—because his sword was part of his American uniform. Lieutenant Lynch was perhaps the first visitor to the Court of the Sublime Porte who was permitted to enter the Sultan’s presence wearing his sword.

Lynch meticulously kept to the plan contained in his official orders. After obtaining the firman from the Sultan, he returned to Smyrna where he had left The Supply. From there, he sailed to Acre. He had set forth from the United States on November 26, 1847. He arrived in Acre on March 29, 1848.

Shortly after The Supply anchored in the Acre harbor, Lynch loaded the two Fannies onto the carriages for the trip to the Sea of Galilee. The two carriages were then hitched to horses, but the horses could not budge the carriages. A brilliant idea occurred to Lynch—he would try camels. So he rented six camels from a local camel dealer. The camels were hitched to the carriages and slowly the wheels began to turn. On April 4, 1848, Lynch and his men began the long and arduous journey to the Sea of Galilee, a distance of about 30 miles over rough, hilly terrain (see illustration). At that time there were no roads in Palestine, only mule-tracks. When the men came to a down slope, the camels were unhitched and the sailors let the carriages down the grade with ropes. On the afternoon of April 6th, they sighted the Sea of Galilee from a mountain above the lake. Lynch’s own words best describe the trip down the mountain on April 8:

“Took all hands up the mountain to bring the boats down. Many times we thought that, like the herd of swine, they would rush precipitately into the sea. Everyone did his best, and at length success crowned our efforts. With their flags flying, we carried them triumphantly beyond the walls [of Tiberias] uninjured and amid a crowd of spectators, launched them upon the blue waters of the Sea of Galilee.”

In Tiberias, Lynch bought an old wooden boat to relieve the other boats and to carry the expedition’s tents. Lynch named the third boat “Uncle Sam.”

Lynch divided his party into two groups. One, under Lieutenant J. B. Dale, travelled on camels along the shore, making scientific observations of the land, its fauna and flora. This group also carried the baggage, served as lookouts and made camp for the night. The second group, under Lynch in the Fanny Mason, travelled by sea, taking scientific measurements of the water.

The three boats entered the Ghor or depression of the Jordan River on April 10, 0111848. Lynch noted that the Ghor was “about three-quarters of a mile in breadth,” and its waters were tame rather than savage. The depth at this point was ten feet. Further down the river, the current increased rapidly, until it was “one foaming rapid”. The boats could not descend these rapids, so the men got out to guide the boats as they shot over the swift waters. It was an exhausting experience. At times the men had to take everything out of the boats and even clear the river bed of stones. At one point the river descended “at an angle of thirty degrees, at the rate of twelve knots … (and) … very circuitous”. As the river raced toward the Dead Sea, it became narrow, shallow, and filled with more rapids. One cascade was eleven feet high; at its end was a threatening rock, right in the path of the boats. With expert maneuvering, Lynch steered around the rock and avoided a catastrophe.

The two metallic boats survived the harrowing trip to the Dead Sea, but the wooden “Uncle Sam” did not. “The thumps … shattered her” and she simply sank. “We now had conclusive proof of the superior quality of metallic boats for such service,” Lynch observed.

Lynch had carefully noted “every turn in the course, the depth, the velocity, and temperature of the river; the islands and tributary streams; [and] the nature of its banks … ”⁶ Nothing escaped his eye on this “sacred river”. At every encampment, Lynch “ … determined its astronomical position, and its relative level with the Mediterranean”.⁷ Lynch found that for a distance of 60 miles of latitude and four or five miles of longitude, the Jordan traversed at least 200 miles. In that distance it fell about 600 feet. Lynch’s measurements proved to be remarkably accurate.

On April 18, 1848, Lynch and his party entered the Dead Sea. It measured 47 miles in length and 10 miles in width at the widest point. Lynch observed that the surface of the Dead Sea was approximately 1300 feet below the level of the Mediterranean Sea, and its greatest depth was also approximately 1300 feet, which makes the full depth below sea level more than 2600 feet, or about a half a mile. Lynch found the waters of the Sea “a nauseous compound of bitters and salts.” The northern shore was an extensive mud-flat; the eastern shore was “a rugged line of mountains, bare of all vegetation.”

Lynch came ashore at Ein Feshkha to 012meet the land party. Gazing upon the sea, Lynch exclaimed, “At times it seemed as if the Dread Almighty frowned upon our efforts to navigate a sea, the creation of his wrath. There is a tradition among the Arabs that no one can venture upon this sea and live.”

The mountains loomed above them, but “we did not despair: awe-struck, but not terrified; fearing the worst, yet hoping for the best, we prepared to spend a dreary night upon the dreariest waste we had ever seen.” The whole landscape was one of unmixed desolation and barrenness. The soundings at this point (Ein Feshkha) “gave 116 fathoms, or 696 feet, as the greatest depth.”⁸ Specimens of lava were found on the east shore and brought back to the camp. More soundings were made. “It was a tedious operation,” wrote Lynch. “The sun shone with midsummer fierceness, and the water, greasy to the touch, made the men’s hands smart and burn severely.”

They travelled down the western shore of the Dead Sea to Ain Jidy (Ein Gedi). There Lynch made his permanent camp, which he called “Camp Washington”, “in honor of the greatest man the world has yet produced.”

The party reached the ruins of Masada on April 25, 1848. Lynch described it as “a perpendicular cliff, 1200 to 1500 feet high, with a deep ravine breaking down on each side, so as to leave it isolated … This fortilace, constructed by Herod, and successfully beleaguered by Silva, had a commanding but dreary prospect, overlooking the deep chasm of this mysterious sea.”⁹

At Usdum (Jebel Usdum), the Mount of Sodom, Lynch saw “a lofty, round pillar, standing apparently detached from the general mass, at the head of a deep, narrow, and abrupt chasm.” Lynch “found the pillar to be of solid salt, capped with carbonate of lime, cylindrical in front and pyramidal behind. The upper or rounded part is about 40 feet high, resting on a kind of oval pedestal … It slightly decreases in size upwards, crumbles at the top, and is one entire mass of crystallization … Its peculiar shape is doubtless attributable to the action of the winter rains.”¹⁰

No Westerner had ever been there before and lived to tell of it. Magnetic bearings were taken in every direction, and geological specimens were collected. The air temperature was 95 degrees F.; the water temperature stood at 88 degrees F.

014Lynch found it “a scene of unmitigated desolation. On one side, rugged and worn, was the salt mountain of Usdum, with its conspicuous pillar … ; on the other were the lofty and barren cliffs of Moab … ; to the south was an extensive flat intersected by sluggish drains … ; and to the north was the calm and motionless sea, curtained with a purple mist, while many fathoms deep in the slimy mud beneath it lay embedded the ruins of the ill-fated cities of Sodom and Gomorrah … ”¹¹

Lynch firmly believed that “Everything favors the supposition that the guilty cities (i.e. Sodom and Gomorrah), stood on the southern plain, between Usdum (Pillar of Salt) and the mountains of Moab.” According to Lynch, “The inference from the Bible, that this entire chasm was a plain sunk and ‘overwhelmed’ by the wrath of God, seems to be sustained by the extraordinary character of the soundings.” The proof of this was his observation that the “bottom of this sea consists of two submerged plains, an elevated and a depressed one; the last averaging thirteen, the former about thirteen hundred feet below the surface.” Furthermore, Lynch believed that “the whole Ghor has sunk from some extraordinary convulsion; preceded most probably, by an eruption of fire, and a general conflagration of bitumen which abounded in the plain.” Lynch was convinced of the truth of the Scriptural account of the destruction of the “cities of the plain”. As a good Fundamentalist, he wrote, “I record with diffidence the conclusions we have reached, simply as a protest against the shallow deductions of would-be believers.”

We now know that the level of the Dead Sea has been steadily rising, at an annual rate of about 2½ to 3½ inches. Today, over one hundred years after Lynch’s expedition, the Sea has pushed its southern shore line about two miles below the southern end of Jebel Usdum.¹²

At the Lisan peninsula, which projects into the Dead Sea from the east, Lynch stopped to pay tribute to two explorers who tried to navigate the Jordan and the Dead Sea and died in the attempt. In 1835, Christopher Costigan died of fever and heat exhaustion after an arduous crossing of the Dead Sea. In 1847, Lt. Thomas Molyneux, an English naval officer, reached the Dead Sea only to die of fever three weeks later. Lynch named the northern extremity of the Lisan peninsula “Point Costigan”, and the southern one “Point Molyneaux”, in tribute “to the memories of the two gallant Englishmen who lost their lives in attempting to explore this sea.”

The hardships suffered by Lynch and his men in the southern part of the Dead Sea seemed beyond human endurance. Temperatures hovered around 100 degrees F. as they drifted on a sea nearly 1300 feet below sea level. Their work was interrupted by a hot, blistering hurricane, then a sandstorm. The buttons on their coats and their weapons burned at the touch. The men found two pools of fresh water where they washed and bathed, but as soon as they got out, “the moisture on the surface evaporated, and left the skin dry, parched, and stiff.” “Our last waking thought was water”, Lynch wrote. “The mosquitoes … tormented us almost to madness.” It seemed to Lynch that “Everything said in the Bible about the sea and the Jordan [was] fully verified by our observations.”¹³

On May 1, Lynch visited the ruins of Zoar, on the eastern side of the Dead Sea, in the plain of Siddim. There he saw “many large heaps of stones in regular rows, as if they had once formed houses … There were many minute fragments of pottery scattered about on the soil; and among the rubbish, I found an old hand mortar, very much worn, which I brought away.” This was the site known in Arabic as es-Safi, and it may have been one of the Biblical “cities of the plain” mentioned in Genesis 14. Lynch certainly thought so at the time. The whole region, along the southeast shore of the Dead Sea, has been under investigation by the American Schools of Oriental Research since 1973.¹⁴

The following day, Lynch marched to the ancient town of Kerak (Kir-hareseth), about twenty miles northeast of Zoar. The Wady Kerak was “the steepest and most difficult path, with the wildest and grandest scenery we had ever beheld.” After climbing through a steep precipice, the party was pummeled by a furious rain storm. Lynch exulted in the natural wonder of it all: “I rejoiced to witness this elemental strife amid these lofty mountains … I never beheld a scene in sublimity equal to the present one.” They finally reached the town, previously visited by only three explorers—John L. Burckhardt (in disguise) 015Charles L. Irby, and James Mangles, all in the 1810’s.¹⁵

Although his men were tired and demoralized, Lynch continued his travels up the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. He wanted to excavate one of the ancient tombs at Machaerus, mentioned in the itinerary of Irby and Mangles. But in the end he decided against it. “The increasing heat of the sun, and the lassitude of the party, warned me to lose no time.” Lynch spent the remainder of his efforts crisscrossing the Dead Sea, taking soundings. The deepest measured 218 fathoms, or 1308 feet below sea level.

On May 6, 1848, with the 9:00 A.M. temperature at 100 degrees F., the Fanny Mason was taken apart for the difficult ascent to Ain Turabeh. “The exploration of this sea was now complete.” The Fanny Skinner was sent out one last time and “moored a large float, with the American ensign flying, in eighty fathoms water … ”, a memento of the first successful exploration of the Dead Sea.

Before leaving the Sea, Lynch and his men bathed in its waters, with what results we are not told. They had spent a total of twenty-two days on the Sea, from April 18 to May 9, 1848, more time than any man or group had yet done. Lynch wrote, “We have carefully sounded this sea, determined its geographical position taken the exact topography of its shores, ascertained the temperature, width, depth, and velocity of its tributaries, collected specimens of every kind, and noted the winds, currents, changes of the weather, and all atmospheric phenomena. These … will give a correct idea of this wondrous body of water … ”¹⁶

On May 10, final preparations were made to evacuate the camp and the following day, Lynch sent off three camel loads of specimens and gear to Jerusalem.

When Lynch and his group reached Jerusalem, they spent several days visiting the holy places of the city and its environs (including Bethlehem). Of Jerusalem itself, Lynch wrote, “There is no other city in the world which can compare with it in position … Jerusalem sits enthroned, a queen in the midst of an empire of desolation.”

The party then made its weary way to Jaffa (Joppa) on the Mediterranean Sea. Here the two Fannies were placed in a small Arab brig which Lynch had chartered to take him, the boats, and most of his crew back to Acre. The remainder of the crew went by land to Acre, a dangerous trip because of hostile Arabs along the route. Both groups met safety at Acre; and on June 10, 1848, the search for the source of the Jordan 016River north of the Sea of Galilee began. On the way back to the Sea of Galilee, the party visited Nazareth, then a city of about 5000 inhabitants, the majority of them Christians: “In its secluded position, with a narrow valley before it, and mountains in every direction, we liked Nazareth better even than Bethlehem, and thought it the prettiest place we had seen in Palestine. The streets were perfectly quiet; there was an air of comfort about the houses, and the people were better dressed, and far more civil, than any we had encountered.”¹⁷

From Nazareth they travelled to the plain of Esdraelon, “the reputed spot where Deborah and Barak discomfited Sisera.” They climbed Mount Tabor and looked down on the magnificent Esdraelon plain below. They then descended to the Jordan River south of the Sea of Galilee and camped “beside the ruined bridge of Semakh,” where they bathed for the last time in the lower Jordan. Turning north, they proceeded along the western shore of the Sea of Galilee. At Emmaus they bathed in the hot springs—temperature 143 degrees F.

Finally, on June 13, they arrived at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee, at the ruins of Tell Hum. Lynch thought this site the most probable location of Capernaum. Later archaeological work proved his conjecture correct.

The party then followed the Jordan River north of the Sea of Galilee. They made camp “on the banks of the Golden Stream, a tributary of the river Banias, one of the former supposed sources of the Jordan.” Further north, at Tell el-Qadi (the site of ancient Dan) Lynch found a hollow where a fountain bubbled up. A short distance from the fountain, Lynch came upon many streams, which “gushed out so copiously from the hillside as, in an instant, to form a river; the water clear, sweet and cool.” This was supposed by some scholars at the time to have been the highest source of the Jordan, but Lynch was not satisfied.

With his men nearly exhausted, Lynch stirred them on, over mountain ridges and 017valleys until they arrived at the town of Hasbeiya, situated “on the crest of a hill”. The men were too weary to visit the town itself. On June 16, 1848, in the company of a dignitary of the town, Lynch and his group went to what he believed to be the true source of the Jordan River. Lynch vividly described the scene: “We came suddenly to the source, a bold, perpendicular rock, from beneath which the river gushed copious, translucent, and cool, in two rectangular streams, one to the northeast, the other to the northwest. The scarp of the rock was about forty feet high, and the northeast branch, being mere back-water, extended only a few hundred yards … The northwest branch, at a distance of about a hundred yards, plunged over a dam, and went rushing through the arch of the bridge below.”¹⁸

“The hand of art could not have improved the scene”, he wrote. “The gigantic rock, all majesty, above; its banks enamelled with beauty and fragrance, all loveliness, beneath, render it a fitting fountain-head of a stream which was destined to lave the immaculate body of the Redeemer of the world.”

Lynch next led his party over the Anti-Lebanon range of mountains into the plain of Damascus. Nearing Damascus, Lynch was met by the American Vice-Consul who advised Lynch to furl his flag, “with the assurance that no foreign one had ever been tolerated within the walls; that the British Consul’s had been torn down on the first attempt to raise it, and that the appearance of ours would excite commotion, and perhaps lead to serious consequences. But we had carried it to every place we had visited, and, determining to take our chances with it, kept it flying. Many angry comments were, I believe, made by the populace, but as we did not understand what our toorgeman (i.e. guide) was too wary to interpret, we passed unmolested.”¹⁹

Damascus, said Lynch, “with its gardens, is a city in a grove; and conveys the idea of art seated in the lap of nature.”

On June 27, the party passed the famous ruins of Heliopolis at Baalbeck. The heat was oppressive, and some members of the party became ill. Lynch decided to make haste for Beirut. By June 29, two of his men were scarcely able to ride their horses (they were probably suffering from dysentery); but Lynch urged them on. On the night of June 29, Lieutenant Dale fell ill. The party finally reached Beirut, totally exhausted. Lynch sought immediate medical attention 018for his three sick companions. Dale was taken to a mountain village to regain his health, but his condition did not improve. He died on July 24, 1848, at Bhamdoun, in the home of the Reverend Eli Smith, who had accompanied Edward Robinson on his memorable exploration of Palestine ten years before. Lynch buried Dale in the French cemetery in Beirut, where his grave marker can still be seen. Overcome with grief at the death of his first officer and companion, Lynch mourned for “his young and helpless children … and could scarce repress the wish that I had been taken, and he be spared.” Dale was the only fatality of the expedition.

During July, the rest of the party recovered from their exhaustion and waited for The Supply, which was to have met them in Beirut. But The Supply never arrived. Finally, on July 30, Lynch chartered a French brig to take his party to Malta. The voyage to Malta lasted 38 days. Lynch’s party was weak, sick and suffered from lack of food and water. When they arrived in the Maltese harbor, the authorities refused to permit them to enter the town. Finally, on September 12, The Supply arrived in Malta. Lynch and his men boarded and immediately set sail for the United States. They reached its welcome shores early in December, 1848.

It had been a grueling experience, but the expedition accomplished what it set out to do. The Jordan River was surveyed and explored to its source. The Dead Sea was circumnavigated more thoroughly than by anyone before. For the first time, scientific information about these historic waters was available.

There is a growing feeling among historians and Biblical archaeologists that Lynch has not been given the credit he deserves. For example, Yehoshua Ben-Arieh, the noted geographer of the Holy Land, wrote in 1972, “The achievements of this expedition were considerable. Its measurements of depth in the Dead Sea served for the bathymetric mapping of the sea until after the establishment of the State of Israel, and they are still accepted today on the Jordanian side of the Dead Sea.”²⁰

The Holy Land has long held a fascination for American tourists, missionaries, and Biblical scholars. John L. Stephens left the practice of law in New York and travelled throughout the Near East from 1834 to 1836.²¹ Ten years before Lynch, in 1836, Edward Robinson, an American minister and Biblical scholar, travelled through Palestine with his friend Eli Smith where, in less than three months, they identified scores of Biblical sites which have served as reliable guides to later scholars.²²

Lieutenant Lynch’s almost forgotten naval expedition to the Jordan River and the Dead Sea follows in this train. In this bicentennial year, we may proudly salute his expedition as part of our American heritage in the Holy Land.

In 1847 Lieutenant William F. Lynch of the United States Navy had completed his tour of duty in the recent Mexican War. He was restless and 46 years old. For 20 years he had had a dream. The time had come to realize his dream.