Manuscript journal and notes by a sailor of the East Indies trade

Manuscript notebook by a young anonymous sailor engaged in the East Indies trade, with notes from Bombay, Canton and Macau. Includes personal diary-like notes as well as retained copies of letters written to others. The first entry is dated August 27, 1843 and states "this day is the second anniversary of the day on which we sailed from Calcutta in the ship Barnstable." The writer arrived in India from Barre (Massachusetts?) in 1841 aboard the Barnstable. He describes other passengers, his reading habits, his experiences in India and China, including walking the streets of Canton and a pirate attack "while we lay at Macao." Two retained letters penned in Bombay establish the fact that he spent a good deal of time there engaged in a successful commercial enterprise. The final dated entry is a letter written aboard the "Coquette" at Shanghai in January 1846, which mentions the "Antelope" and makes reference to the "four years since I joined the Antelope." From such clues it is possible to reconstruct his career as a succession of tours aboard the ships "Barnstable," "Antelope," and "Coquette." All three vessels were built by Samuel Hill in East Boston, and were used in the China Trade. Also includes a four-page lexicon of sea terms and their "Manilese" (Tagalog) equivalents

• 1843-1846

[21] pages ; 20 x 32 cm

text

Title supplied by cataloger

Unbound loose sheets, with remnant of stitching. Manuscript writing on recto of each sheet, versos with earlier manuscript teacher reports of school children's deportment

• China
• East Indies
• India
• Macau (China)

• Antelope (Ship)
• Barnstable (Ship)
• Coquette (Ship)

• Commonplace books
• Pirates
• Sailors' writings, English
• Sailors--Language
• Voyages and travels

• text

• English

Hill Collection of Pacific Voyages

Public domain (US)

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2021-01-13