All members of the Hakluyt Society are invited to contribute to this page. Please let us know about any recent activities, appointments, awards, or books published, that you think might be of interest to other members and to the Society in general. Contributions should be sent to the website's editor, Ray Howgego, at
Society membership across three generations
The editor of this website has received this interesting note from member Geoff Sheddick, reproduced here with his permission:
My maternal grandfather, Ernest M. Mellor, probably joined the Society in 1922, because, although his collection includes a few notable volumes prior to that date, the run of the collection starts with vol. 52, issued for 1922. When he died in 1961, his widow gave my late father, [Professor] Vernon G. Sheddick, the price of the subscription as a Christmas present, and my father remained a member until his death in 1991. Following my father's death in 1991, I in turn joined the society, and have continued the collection. My grandfather's interest in the Society probably stemmed from his love of travel. Although his father was a victorian Stationmaster in Staffordshire, my grandfather trained as a chemist in Italy before the First World War, before setting up his own pharmacy back in England. This business gave him the wherewithal to holiday in Europe with his wife and daughters in the interwar years. I like to think that perhaps "The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe" enhanced his appreciation of some of the places that he visited!
[Ernest Mellor joined the Society in 1923 -- ed.]
New books by members of the Society
Professor Barry Gough, whose most recent Hakluyt Society contribution is the Introduction to the William Robert Broughton volume, has recently had published his double biography of the famed dueling historians of the Royal Navy in the Twentieth Century: Historical Dreadnoughts: Arthur Marder, Stephen Roskill and Battles for Naval History (Barnsley: Seaforth of Pen & Sword, 2010). For more information, and to order the book, please click here.
Members of the Society will be interested in a new book by John Robson, the Society's representative in New Zealand and an acclaimed authority on the life and voyages of James Cook. Titled Captain Cook’s War and Peace: the Royal Navy Years, 1755-1768, the book focuses on the Cook's early years with the Royal Navy during which he acquired the skills as a surveyor, astronomer and cartographer which would so admirably qualify him for leadership of the Endeavour expedition. The book will be available from Seaforth Publishing in the UK, UNSW Press in Australia, and the US Naval Institute Press in North America. Further details are published on their websites.
It is now 135 years since Albert Tootal and Richard Burton produced their Hakluyt Society annotated translation of the True History of the captivity of Hans Staden of Hesse, and 81 years since the Routledge translation of Malcolm Letts. Readers will therefore be interested to hear of a new definitive edition of this landmark anthropological work, co-authored by Society member Neil L. Whitehead, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin, and Michael Harbsmeier, Associate Professor of History at Roskilde University in Denmark. Titled Hans Staden's True History: An Account of Cannibal Captivity in Brazil, the book is published in both cloth and paperback formats and is available from Duke University Press, Durham & London. For details please go to the publisher's website and copy the title into the search box.
Captain M. K. Barritt RN, a Vice President of the Society, has published Eyes of the Admiralty: J.T Serres, an artist with the Channel Fleet, 1799-1800, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, 2008. The book recounts the origins and progress of the artist’s appointment by the Admiralty to record the environs of Brest and other ports around the Biscay coasts of France and Spain. Many of his fine water-colour views are reproduced. They include vignettes of the ships of the inshore squadrons during the close blockade maintained by the Channel Fleet under the rigorous command of Admiral St Vincent. The coastal panoramas from Bayonne to Cape Finisterre are particularly fine. The challenges of coastal navigation in the period are explained, the co-operation between artist and navigation teams in the frigates La Nymphe and Clyde is described, and the resultant hydrographic products are analysed.
Captain Barritt is now writing a second book describing the front-line surveying activity of the Royal Navy in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars and the consequent emergence of a specialist surveying service. He welcomes information on any manuscript material or early charts arising from RN surveys of the period which may be in private collections of members of the Hakluyt Society.
Raymond John Howgego, the editor of this site, at the insistence of the President, notes the publication of the fourth volume of his massive prime resource for all interested in the history of exploration of all periods and places: Encyclopedia of Exploration (Hordern House, Sydney, 2003-2008). The four volumes, which comprise one of the largest unaided single-author works in the English language, include over 4500 articles in approximately 3660 pages, some 3.8 million words. For further details see www.explorersencyclopedia.com
Ray Howgego's The Book of Exploration, a more modestly priced, lavishly illustrated popular history of exploration, was published simultaneously in August 2009 by Weidenfeld & Nicholson (Orion Books) in the UK and Bloomsbury (Walker Publishing) in the USA, and is available from online booksellers and local bookstores throughout the world. A German translation was published by Primus Verlag in September 2010. In addition, Ray has recently completed a biography of the prolific lady traveller Gertrude Benham. Titled A very quiet and harmless traveller: Gertrude Emily Benham 1867-1938, it was published by the Plymouth Museum in July 2009 and is available from the museum's bookshop.
Ray is Consultant Editor for the Illustrated Atlas of Exploration, published in 2011 by Weldon Owen, Sydney, Australia, and in his spare time is working on a definitive annotated bibliography of invented, imaginary and apocryphal voyages to be published by Hordern House as the fifth volume of the Encyclopedia. He has also contributed a number of articles on 'missing explorers' to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
