Panel
2. From Oceanic Crossroads: Empires, Networks and Histories
Ships can be generators of immense amounts of data. During the age of sail, the slower pace of voyages and the larger ship’s complement (needed to work the vessel) seem to have resulted in many crew members being able to dedicate more time towards keeping diaries, sketchbooks and other written materials. These are in addition to the ship’s journal, the surgeon’s log and other official voyage recording documents. At the conclusion of a voyage, these materials often ended up as sources for official reports, narratives, and volumes of the scientific results of the expedition. Some would also be published as popular travel narratives with the perceived novelty and exoticism of the places visited driving their demand.
The official materials are usually the most well-known of a voyage with the private or and semi-official material often being overlooked. I use examples from voyages calling in Singapore during the first half of the nineteenth century to show just how large the body of resulting materials from individual voyages can be. I suggest that these materials can be considered as distinct but networked datasets. They can in turn provide a much clearer context for the data collected during the voyage. Lastly, I explore how these data can be used in the study of Singapore’s biodiversity history.
Martyn Low
National University of Singapore (NUS), Singapore