12/04/2024

Marryat and the Mighty HMS Minden, Hong Kong Hospital Ship

HMS Minden (center-left) during the bombardment of Algiers, 1816. (Source.)
HMS Minden (center-left) during the bombardment of Algiers, 1816. (Source.)

Frank Marryat’s first impressions of Hong Kong, of Britain’s brand-new colony, were far from positive. Marryat took issue with reports of crime, a swamp named Happy Valley, and the daily deaths of sailors as advertised by the flag flying at half mast aboard HMS Minden, which anchored in Hong Kong Harbor was serving as a hospital ship.

12/03/2024

Frank Marryat, First Impression of Early Hong Kong

When the British took possession of Hong Kong in 1840, their new colony consisted of just Hong Kong island, largely a baron rock except for a few fishing villages. It would be ten years (1856) before the British gained control of the adjacent Kowloon Peninsula and thus the north side of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor and fifty-seven years before they leased the badly needed water resources of the New Territories and Outer Islands.

12/01/2024

Frank Marryat Attempts to Sketch the World (1840–1850) from Hong Kong to California

 

Frank Marryat lithographs, Hong Kong and San Francisco.
Hong Kong and San Francisco (Library of Congress).


Frank Marryat (Samuel Francis ~; 1826–1855) was a traveler and writer, both of which were family professions. Marryat wrote two travelogues in the 1840s and 1850s featuring detailed lithograph and woodblock prints of places from Hong Kong to California. He sailed to both the long way.

7/23/2024


Enrique of Malacca
Enrique of Malacca was the first person to circumnavigate the globe linguistically—he traveled so far in one direction (west) that he came to a place where his own language was spoken. Enrique may have also circumnavigated the globe completely, a full circle of the earth beginning and ending in Malacca or somewhere in the Philippines. Enrique’s 10-year journey began in 1511 following the Portuguese invasion of Malacca and continued on Magellan’s Armada de Molucca. He toured the world at a time of seismic global change, witnessing key aspects of the newly emerging world along the way. Read more about Enrique of Malacca.

7/22/2024

Columbus and the Ruysch World Map: When the Vikings Reached Asia?

Johannes Ruysch world map
Johannes Ruysch world map.


If you plot Leif Erikson's voyage of discovery on Johannes Ruysch’s world map of 1508, the Viking explorer reaches not just Newfoundland but the easternmost point of the Asian continent, a land he labeled “Terra Nova” (New World).


Given the knowledge of the day—five years before Vasco Núñez de Balboa found the “South Sea”—Ruysch missed the existence of North America and the Pacific Ocean. In this way the map serves as a window into the worldview of Christopher Columbus, who believed to the end that Japan and China lay not far beyond Hispaniola. 

5/19/2024

Ptolemy World Map: Greco-Roman World View

Ptolemy world map, 1482.
Ptolemy world map created by Lord Nicolas the German in 1482.


It wasn’t Columbus or Magellan who proved the world was round. The flat Earth notion we hear about today was a medieval phenomenon. By 500 BCE the Greeks had established that the planet was a sphere, and in time estimated its size with surprising  accuracy.


Magellan Reaches Guam: Chamorro Outriggers Take On Spanish Carracks

Reception of the Manila galleon by the Chamorro at Guam, c. 1590.

Updated.

March 6, 1521: Ferdinand Magellan's fleet reached Guam after a deadly three-month crossing of the Pacific Ocean. In explaining the encounter, biographers typically highlight the sensational story of larcenous natives that met the fleet and how the Spanish thereby chose the name Ladroni Islands ("Thieves' Islands") for Guam and Rota.[1] Stories like that sell books. But the two eye-witness reports of the experience tell a second story, of the Chamorros' amazing boating skills and boats, and the only accounts we have of course offer only the Europeans' perspective. 

5/18/2024

The Gargantuan Feast of George Neville


Arms of George Neville
Arms of George Neville (c. 1432 – 8 June 1476),
Archbishop of York and Chancellor of England.

Research notes.

When George Neville[1] was installed as Archbishop of York in 1465, the event was celebrated with a feast that would have impressed the most gluttonous of kings. And as it was in much of Europe at the time, meat was the main feature, boiled, roasted, fried; flesh, fish, and game; and in greater variety than is available anywhere today.[2]

Some History on the Tomato and the Love Apple

Trout, Grouse, Tomatoes (Boston Public Library, (Source.)


A trite legend but accurate anecdote for the plant’s history, in the early 1800s people across America and Europe were terrified by an ornamental fruit that was pretty but highly poisonous, the love apple. According to the story, a man named Robert Gibbon Johnson announced to the community of Salem, New Jersey, that he was going to eat a basket of the deadly fruit in public. And as the townsfolk looked on in front of the courthouse, Johnson proceeded to openly consume a quantity of love apples and failed to keel over and die as expected, demonstrating that the tomato was, surprise, no danger at all.[1]


4/28/2024

Kingdom of Dacani, First Stop Cheul


Kingdom of Dacani, First Stop Cheul
Kingdom of Dacani, First Stop Cheul. (Source.)

Duarte Barbosa (Ramusio). 1515.

KINGDOM OF DACANI.

On coming out of this kingdom of Guzarat and Cambay, towards the south and the inner parts of India, is the kingdom of Dacani, which the Indians call Decani. The king is a Moor, and a large part of his people is Gentile. He is a great lord, and possesses many subjects and an extensive territory, which stretches far inland. It has very good seaports, of great trade in the goods used on the mainland, and they are the following places:

CHEUL.

Leaving the kingdom of Cambay, along the coast towards the south, at eight leagues distance, there is a fine large river, and on it is a place called Cheul, not very large, of handsome houses, which are all covered with thatch. 

This place is one of great commerce in merchandise, and in the months of December, January, February and March there are many ships from the Malabar country and all other parts, which arrive with cargoes. That is to say, those of Malabar laden with cocoa nuts, arecas, spices, drugs, palm sugar, emery, and there they make their sales for the continent and for the kingdom of Cambay; and the ships of Cambay come there to meet them laden with cotton stuffs, and many other goods which are available in Malabar, and these are bartered for the goods which have come from the Malabar country.