Annual General Meeting and Reception, 23 June 2010
The 2010 Annual General Meeting of the Hakluyt Society took place on Wednesday, 23 June 2010 at the House of the Royal Geographical Society, chaired by the President of the Society, Professor Will Ryan. The formal proceedings included the election of three new members of Council, Major Anthony Keeley, Jonathan King and Professor Charles Withers, who replace Susanna Fisher, Anthony Payne and Dr Joan-Pau Rubiés. The guest speaker this year was Ray Howgego (writer of this website) whose highly illustrated lecture 'Invented and Apocryphal Narratives of Travel; from Ancient Egypt to the Present Day' was very well received. A reception for members and their guests followed the lecture.
Hakluyt Society Series I and Series II Reprints
In a major new undertaking, one which many members will consider long overdue, the Society, in conjunction with its publisher Ashgate, has made available the Society's entire back catalogue from Series I, number 1 to Series II, number 190; in fact the entire collection of 290 volumes published between the years 1847 and 2000. These fine quality hardback facsimiles of the original works, hopefully far superior to anything already on offer, are available on a print-on-demand basis at a cost of £35 per item or £31.50 if ordered online. To order these books directly from Ashgate, please click on the following links: First Series reprints Second Series reprints
That Mighty and Vast Sea: Britain and the Indian Ocean World. An international conference at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Thursday & Friday, 8-9 July 2010.
This conference will explore the factors that shaped Britain’s involvement with the Indian Ocean. Themes include: patterns of commerce; subaltern experiences; the dynamics of empire; the scope and limitations of imperial power; the movement and circulation of goods, people and ideas; and the representation of the Indian Ocean and its peoples. It is anticipated that the Hakluyt Society's forthcoming publication, William Robert Broughton's Voyage of Discovery to the North Pacific, 1795-1798, will be launched at the reception to this conference. For further details please click here. E.G.R. Taylor Lecture, 14 October 2010
The E.G.R. Taylor Lecture for 2010 will be held at the House of the Royal Geographical Society on 14 October 2010. It is being organized by the Royal Institute of Navigation and will be delivered by Captain Hans Kok on 'Dutch Maritime Charts between 1550 and 1800'. Admission is free of charge and bookings are not required. Members of the Hakluyt Society and other sponsoring societies may book supper afterwards at the Royal Geographical Society by telephoning the Events Office, 0207 5913 100. The cost of £25 includes a two-course candle-lit meal and coffee with two glasses of wine or fruit juice.
The Journal of John Narbrough: an appeal to secure the manuscript for the British Library
The appeal to secure the Narbrough manuscript for the British Library has ended with a successful outcome. For full details please click here.
A new edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations A new project, under the general editorship of Dr. Daniel Carey of the National University of Ireland, Galway, and Professor Claire Jowitt of Nottingham Trent University (NTU), is underway to produce a critical, annotated edition of Richard Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation. The edition is under contract to Oxford University Press to appear in 14 volumes.
Call for information. The editors invite all scholars interested in this topic who may have new information to offer to click here.
New publications from the Hakluyt Society
The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger. Volume III. The Voyages of 1817, 1818 and 1820. Edited by C. Ian Jackson. With an Appendix by Fred M. Walker.
The third volume of Scoresby's journals, which completes this major publication event, contains the unpublished journals of Scoresby's voyages in the years 1817 to 1820. The voyage of 1817 was unsuccessful in whaling terms, but the relatively ice-free waters of the Greenland Sea provided the conditions for a renewed interest in Arctic exploration. In 1818 Scoresby broke with the Whitby shipowners and took command of the Fame in partnership with his father. This partnership lasted only briefly; Scoresby moved to Liverpool and spent the season of 1819 ashore, completing his Account of the Arctic Regions and overseeing the construction of a new ship, the Baffin. In 1820 he took the Baffin north and returned with a full ship of seventeen whales. Scoresby's journal includes detailed accounts of his landings on Jan Mayen in 1817, Spitsbergen in 1818, and the Langanes peninsula of Iceland in 1820. An appendix by Fred Walker provides a most interesting account of the design and construction of Arctic whalers. The 290-page book is illustrated with three route maps, three monochrome plates and six line drawings. A copious bibliography is provided, together with conversion tables and a glossary of nautical terms.
The Arctic Whaling Journals of William Scoresby the Younger. Volume II. The Voyages of 1814, 1815 and 1816. Edited by C. Ian Jackson. With an Appendix by George Huxtable.
This second volume of Scoresby's journals contains the unpublished accounts of his three voyages in the Esk in 1814-16, combining scientific records, social and religious comment, with detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling. The journals demonstrate the dangers inherent in what should have been routine annual sailings to the Greenland Sea - damage by ice, persistent fog and frequent gales, and an incident in 1814 when the Esk was caught in a tidal current and almost wrecked before she reached the Shetlands. The journal for 1815 also describes the destruction of the Hull whaler Clapham, one of the finest ships engaged in the whale trade. The volume includes an account of the 1814 voyage taken from the journal of a young supernumerary named Charles Steward, together with an appendix on Scoresby's navigation methods by George Huxtable. This 345-page book is illustrated with nine monochrome plates and a map of each of the three voyages. A Traveller in Thirteenth-Century Arabia: Ibn al-Mujawir's Tarikh al-Mustabsir. Translated and edited by G. Rex Smith.
This is the first English translation of the Tarikh al-Mustabsir, a fascinating account of the western and southern regions of the Arabian Peninsula written early in the thirteenth century CE. Its author, about whom relatively little is known, was probably a businessman from the east of the Islamic world who made the pilgrimage to Mecca and subsequently travelled through Yemen, Aden, and along the Arabian Sea coast before returning home via Iraq. A shrewd observer of all that he encountered, his book provides a rich and extraordinarily detailed account of the peoples of southern Arabia, their history, customs, administration and architecture. Written with a humour and wit unfamiliar to Islamic literature of the period, this important work is a unique source for the social and economic history of thirteenth-century Arabia. The editor's appendices include a substantial bibliography, a list of routes, and a glossary of Arabic words and their meanings. A comprehensive index of people and place names is provided. The text is illustrated with original plans of Mecca and other cities, together with a rare and curious map of the island of Socotra.
Four Travel Journals. The Americas, Antarctica and Africa, 1775-1874. Edited by Herbert K. Beals, R.J. Campbell, Ann Savours, Anita McConnell & Roy Bridges.
This splendid 400-page volume, with its four previously unpublished journals from various parts of the world, should have something for everyone. The book opens with a translation from the Spanish of the journal of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra, whose ship, the Sonora, participated in a Spanish expedition sent from Mexico in 1775 to explore the north-west coast of America. The journal describes the hardships and discoveries of the voyage, during which a landing party was attacked and killed, and the Sonora was almost capsized by a massive wave. Next comes the journal of Commander Pringle Stokes who served in command of HMS Beagle under Captain Phillip Parker King during the survey of the Strait of Magellan in 1827. The journal records a detached operation, in very difficult weather in the western part of the strait.
The third text is the journal of Midshipman Joseph Henry Kay, a young officer aboard HMS Chanticleer, commanded by Henry Foster, which was sent out in 1828-31 to make observations in the far South Atlantic, between Cape Horn and Antarctica. Kay's diary describes encounters with Brazilian warships, largely manned by Englishmen, and his struggle against gales and snowstorms to take observations at Deception Island. In distinct contrast, the final journal, published in English for the first time, is that of Jacob Wainwright, the young African freed slave who in 1873-74 was one of those who brought the body of David Livingstone to Zanzibar after the missionary's death at Ilala in what is now northern Zambia. Each of the four journals is fully annotated and preceded by a very substantial historical and biographical introduction. Copious bibliographies are supplied, and the book is illustrated with fifty plates and eight maps.
Four Travel Journals
Updated: 19 June 2010
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