Captain John Jay Heard

Who is Captain John Jay Heard?

Captain John Jay Heard was an American merchant sea captain who commanded the vessel Oriental on a voyage from Boston to Melbourne in 1853, traveling with his new wife, Fidelia, on what amounted to their honeymoon passage. On 25 November 1853, while sailing through the remote southern Indian Ocean, Heard sighted an unfamiliar mass on the horizon that he first took for an iceberg; as the ship drew closer he pronounced it to be land, a moment his wife recorded in her journal. Because the feature appeared on no chart available to him, Heard believed the two of them to be its discoverers. He named the island after himself and attempted to claim it for the United States, though the American government never formally endorsed the claim. The island has carried his name ever since, making it one of the few places on Earth named for an ordinary merchant captain rather than a national expedition or monarch. Heard's later life was troubled: he died on 13 October 1862 at the Boston Lunatic Asylum, his death record listing the cause as a four-year decline attributed to mania.

Sources: Australian Antarctic Program, 'Discovery' (Heard Island and McDonald Islands history pages) · Wikipedia, 'Fidelia Heard' (biographical summary of the Oriental voyage) · Eric Woehler, 'Heard Island: a history of exploration', Australian Antarctic Magazine, Issue 7, Spring 2004