Lynch, William (1806–1865)

William Francis Lynch was an officer of the U.S. Navy who, in 1848, led the first successful expedition to explore and map the Dead Sea and established, for the first time, the depth of its surface below sea level.

Curiosity about the Dead Sea can be traced back to our earliest written sources for the region. Stories to explain the landscape and its bizarre mineral features found their way into the Bible (Genesis 19) in the form of the story of the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, located in the valley that is now the Dead Sea. And while the many visitors to the Holy Land often showed great curiosity about this lake, the legend grew that one could not enter it and live. Indeed, as late as 1816, two British naval officers, Charles Irby and James Mangles, traveled around the lake but were unwilling to set out on it, plumb its depth, or seek explanations for its minerals and salts. It is against this background of uncritically accepted biblical history, growing geological curiosity, but persisting fearful legends that it was a place of death that we have to view the first recorded explorations of the lake. The first was in 1835 by an Irish citizen, Christopher Costigan, who died shortly after rowing round the lake, leaving no notes. The second was in 1837 by the Royal Navy's Thomas Molyneux. He plumbed the lake, made notes, but died only weeks later.

In contrast, both in equipment and labor power, Lynch's was a far more careful affair. He studied the Sea of Galilee, followed the Jordan River south, and then made a careful survey of the Dead Sea, producing the first modern map and the first chart. All the while noting the region's geology, flora and fauna, and agricultural capability, the whole account was interspersed with notes on the customs and activities of all he met. In memory of the two earlier explorers, whose route he consciously followed, he named the northern point of El-Lisan “Point Costigan” and the southern one “Point Molyneux”—the latter has disappeared with the reduction in the lake's area, but the former, renamed Cape Costigan, survives on Survey of Israel maps.

Lynch's orders were to explore and survey the Dead Sea with the object of promoting scientific knowledge of the area and advancing the reputation of the navy. However, while he fulfilled these orders admirably, his hidden agenda was his real driving force, as becomes clear from his publications. In the face of increasing concern over the Bible's historical accuracy and challenges to it from geology and the fossil record, Lynch believed that his work showed that, at least, geology could not undermine the scriptures and that, indeed, further investigation might yield the ruins of the destroyed cities of Genesis 19. His work must, therefore, be located not only within the history of geological exploration but also within the history of Bible versus science debates. On his return home, Lynch published two distinct accounts of his journey: Narrative of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (1849), which contains much of his theological thought, and the Official Report of the United States’ Expedition to the River Jordan and the Dead Sea (1852), which has the character of a logbook; they need to be read together to appreciate that remarkable journey.

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