Talk:Andrew Bloxam

This article is written in British English with Oxford spelling (colour, realize, organization, analyse; note that -ize is used instead of -ise) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.

A fact from Andrew Bloxam appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 12 December 2009 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:

Did you know... that although only an "amateur" at the time, Andrew Bloxam identified several new Hawaiian birds during the voyage of the HMS Blonde in 1825, including the Oʻahu ʻAkepa (pictured)?

A record of the entry may be seen at Wikipedia:Recent additions/2009/December.

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Work in progress

You may find some additional information which will later be added to this article at User:Peter_coxhead/Work/Andrew_Bloxam. Peter coxhead (talk) 14:10, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, thank you, this person seems notable enough to deserve his own bio. There might be some biology project he belongs to as well. I think there was some conflict between Bloxam and Macrae? Not sure if it had to do with a lingering issue with Americans from the War of 1812, or conflict between the Anglican Church and the Congreationalist, English vs. Scot, or what, but the forward of Macrae's book seems to attack Bloxam for some reason. Might be worth further research.

My prime interest is in his contribution to botany/natural history; I've got quite a bit more stuff I've researched, it's just a matter of time to put it online. However, I don't want to duplicate all the stuff at HMS Blonde (1819). I'll look at as many of the sources as I can find. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

One style nit is that ship names are usually in italics. There is a template, so for example {{HMS|Blonde|1819|6}} produces HMS Blonde as per convention. W Nowicki (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC) W Nowicki (talk) 18:54, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, I'll fix this – ships are definitely outside my area of expertise! One issue I've noticed is that some sources have The Blonde as the ship name, others just Blonde. Is this a style issue or what?? Peter coxhead (talk) 22:06, 1 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I am also a landlubber, but have done some Hawaii articles, thus my interest. I do know using the HMS template helps people know that it was a British warship, and if the style changes, someone just can change the template and all places that use it will get the new format. It can get confusing when ships are spelled differently (e.g. "Blond" vs. "Blonde") or are captured by one side and then renamed, etc. Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships/Guidelines is what describes their guidelines. It says "the" is not required but is not wrong, and use the HMS Blonde only the first time (note HMS is not ital) and then you can just say Blonde for example.

I do think the Macrae controversy is worth going into; often politics can affect how scientific work is supported or presented in surprising ways. Note there is no Macrae article yet; Macrae usually gets the credit for introducing Coffee for example to Hawaii, while Bloxam gets blamed for the loss of cultural artifacts. Was it odd to have a "war" ship that had both someone who claimed to be "naturalist" and one who claimed to be "botanist"? The crew of the Blonde (sorry, Blonde) held the first Christian memorial service for a King of Hawaii - might have been Roland Bloxam who presided? and of coruse if you have not yet, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography for guides on using the bio infobox etc. Aloha. W Nowicki (talk) 03:51, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would stress that for me the Blonde voyage is only one aspect of Bloxam's life, albeit clearly a significant one. Personally I'm more interested in what he did afterwards, i.e. for most of his life, which was to contribute to natural history, particularly botany, in England. Re the {{infobox scientist}} template, I've tried it, but with the only image I have so far it doesn't look quite right to me, because it's of two people – the title on the top being just Andrew Bloxam doesn't really work. I'll continue to look for another image of him alone before using the infobox. Peter coxhead (talk) 22:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, add as you see fit. The Blonde already has an article, but a sentence summary here would be nice. You can always add a biobox without a picture (just do not put in "|image=") and put the pic seperately, or just add a caption describing who is who. Many of the people I am working on have no pictures or paintings of them, for example, but I find the biobox still useful. You can also crop out a part of another picture, but this one probably would not work that way. See for example Boki (Hawaiian chief) who actually was the head of the Hawaii delegation on the Blonde. W Nowicki (talk) 00:42, 3 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Andrew Bloxam's mother

Sir Thomas Lawrence had two sisters, Lucy and Ann(e). One of them married Richard Rouse Bloxam and was the mother of Andrew Bloxam. But which one? The account put out by Sotheby's [1] says "Lucy". As the picture they are describing was sold by the Bloxam family and the account draws on unpublished family papers, it initially seemed to me that this might well be right. On the other hand, the National Dictionary of Biography entry for Sir Thomas Lawrence (not transcribed as of December 2010) has on page 284 "his sister Anne (Mrs Bloxam)". So I haven't reverted the change from "Lucy" to "Anne" (but have put "Ann(e)" because both spellings can be found). If anyone has any other evidence, it would be good to know! Peter coxhead (talk) 09:42, 3 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]