Sheshing Park

Regent’s Park is both a public London setting for a tense family picnic and part of the institutional landscape in which Ocean House takes shape. The park’s zoological gardens become the site of Washington Black’s hoped-for aquatic exhibition, a project that gives material form to his ideas while exposing the gap between creative contribution and public recognition.

Setting and Ocean House

The building assigned to Ocean House stood in a grove of black poplars on a slope in the zoological gardens. It was tall, narrow, and wooden, with uneven, ash-marked grounds; one wing had been destroyed in a nighttime fire about three years earlier and rebuilt, its newer timber still pale against the older boards. The building’s scar-like contrast preserves a visible trace of damage even as it is adapted for a new purpose.

From proposal to public institution

Before leaving for London, G. M. Goff presented the proposal for a permanent exhibition of aquatic life to the Zoological Committee. The city supplied land in the gardens and authorized the conversion of the old timber building. The proposal was received enthusiastically, and the group hoped to open the exhibition the following year. They named it Ocean House.

For Washington, the arrangement meant more than access to a building. He regarded Ocean House as the first creation that was truly his, unlike the Cloud-cutter, which he had worked on but understood as Titch’s vision. The planned exhibition translated his idea into a lasting public place where visitors could encounter aquatic life.

Washington’s contribution and its limits

The prospect of seeing Ocean House established filled Washington with pride, but that pride was shadowed by his awareness that his name would probably not be attached to it. He expected G. M. Goff, rather than himself, to be remembered as its founder. Goff was not simply taking credit for Washington’s discoveries as a matter of principle; Washington understood that Goff longed for a late-career public success. Yet Washington also recognized the structural obstacle: as an eighteen-year-old Black man without formal scientific training, he could scarcely approach the committee alone or expect to be treated as an equal.

The park therefore frames a contradiction at the heart of the project. Its gardens make space for Washington’s scientific vision to become public, while the likely account of who created that vision leaves him invisible. The building’s pale reconstructed wing offers a concrete image of damage carried into a renewed structure; Washington’s work, by contrast, is embedded throughout Ocean House even as its authorship risks disappearing from public memory.

The winter picnic

Regent’s Park is also where G. M. Goff calls for a winter picnic despite the group’s reluctance. Washington and Tanna arrive in the fading light after spending the day wandering London in silence. An impending hanging weighs on them: they have seen a name printed matter-of-factly on a page, and Washington is shaken by the prospect of sharing an ordinary meal while the execution approaches. Tanna does not want to disappoint her father, so they go.

They find Goff already stretched beside a simple picnic laid on a checked blanket before a pale stand of birches. The ordinary food and social ritual do not dissolve the dread the couple brings with them; instead, the scene places their private horror beside Goff’s wish for a familiar family gathering. Regent’s Park thus holds two contrasting aspects of Washington’s London life: the fragile beginnings of a public institution built from his ideas, and an intimate pause in which grief and impending death remain present beneath everyday gestures.