[ Ackerman / Repository of Arts, Literature, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics ]
This monthly journal, commonly known in its day as Ackerman's Repository or, more simply, Ackerman's after its owner and publisher Rudolph Ackerman, was an illustrated British periodical published from 1809 to 1829. It was quite popular in its time.
The issue for March 1813 includes a brief anecdote involving a Newfoundland, part of a collection of miscellaneous cultural and scientific observations.
The well-known attachment of the Newfoundland dog to the human race, in cases of drowning, was displayed alongside the Fantome sloop of war in Hamoaze lately, in a most singular manner. Eleven sailors, a woman, and the waterman, had reached the sloop in a shore-boat, when, in consequence of one of the sailors stooping rather violently over the side of the boat to reach his hat, which had fallen into the sea, the boat upset, and all in it were plunged into the water. A Newfoundland dog, on the quarter-deck of the Fantome, surveying the accident, instantly leaped amongst the unfortunate persons, and seizing one man by the collar of his coat, he supported his head above water until a boat hastened to the spot, and saved all but the poor waterman, whose name was Kelly. After delivering his burthen in safety, the noble animal made a wide circuit round the ship, in search of another, but finding nothing except an oar, he took possession of it, and was deservedly welcomed on board by the acclamations of the admiring crew.
The above incident was first reported in The Times (London) in their November 11, 1812, issue, and a very nearly verbatim copy appeared in the November, 1812, issue of Sporting Magazine (p. 87), identical to the above. This same incident will also be recounted later, in a somewhat edited version, in Edward Jesse's 1858 book Anecdotes of Dogs.
This issue of The Repository also includes one other reference to Newfoundlands, this one metaphoric. It occurs in a story in which a gentleman, who signs himself "Timothy Smoker," recounts the awkward experience of travelling in a coach with a stranger who reports he had been bitten by a dog believed to be rabid. The stranger exhibits some odd behavior, including the following:
he set up a barking just like our Newfoundland mastiff, Caesar . . . . (264)
As it turns out, the "rabid" passenger was an actor who, quickly growing tired of the gentleman's pipe smoke, feigned madness in order to get the gentleman to abandon the coach at the first opportunity, which he did.