1.
Tahiti
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Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, this overseas collectivity of the French Republic is sometimes referred to as a French overseas country. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous with surrounding coral reefs, the population is 183,645 inhabitants, making it the most populous island of French Polynesia and accounting for 68.5 percent of its total population. Tahiti is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia, the capital, Papeete, is located on the northwest coast with the only international airport in the region, Faaā International Airport, situated 5 km from the town centre. Tahiti was originally settled by Polynesians between 300 and 800 CE and they represent about 70 percent of the islands population with the rest made up of Europeans, Chinese and those of mixed heritage. The island was part of the Kingdom of Tahiti until its annexation by France in 1880, when it was proclaimed a colony of France, French is the only official language although the Tahitian language is widely spoken. Tahiti is the highest and largest island in French Polynesia lying close to Moorea island and it is located 4,400 kilometres south of Hawaii,7,900 km from Chile and 5,700 km from Australia. The island is 45 km across at its widest point and covers an area of 1,045 km2, the highest peak is Mont Orohena. Mount Roonui, or Mount Ronui in the southeast rises to 1,332 m, the island consists of two roughly round portions centred on volcanic mountains and connected by a short isthmus named after the small town of Taravao, situated there. The northwestern portion is known as Tahiti Nui, while the much smaller portion is known as Tahiti Iti or Taiarapū. Tahiti Nui is heavily populated along the coast, especially around the capital, the interior of Tahiti Nui is almost entirely uninhabited. Tahiti Iti has remained isolated, as its half is accessible only to those travelling by boat or on foot. The rest of the island is encircled by a road which cuts between the mountains and the sea. A scenic and winding road climbs past dairy farms and citrus groves with panoramic views. Tahitis landscape features lush rainforests and many rivers and waterfalls, including the Papenoo River on the side. November to April is the wet season, the wettest month of which is January with 13.2 in of rain in Papeetē, August is the driest with 1.9 inches. The average temperature ranges between 21 and 31 °C with little seasonal variation, the lowest and highest temperatures recorded in Papeete are 16 and 34 °C, respectively. The first Tahitians arrived from Southeast Asia in about 200 BCE and this hypothesis of an emigration from Southeast Asia is supported by a number of linguistic, biological and archaeological proofs. For example, the languages of Fiji and Polynesia all belong to the same Oceanic sub-group, Fijian-Polynesian, in 1769, for instance, James Cook mentions a great traditional ship in Tahiti that was 33 m long, and could be propelled by sail or paddles
2.
Kingdom of Great Britain
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The Kingdom of Great Britain, officially Great Britain, was a sovereign state in western Europe from 1 May 1707 to 31 December 1800. It did not include Ireland, which remained a separate realm, the unitary state was governed by a single parliament and government that was based in Westminster. Also after the accession of George I to the throne of Great Britain in 1714, the early years of the unified kingdom were marked by Jacobite risings which ended in defeat for the Stuart cause at Culloden in 1746. On 1 January 1801, the kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland were merged to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. In 1922, five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the United Kingdom, the name Britain descends from the Latin name for the island of Great Britain, Britannia or Brittānia, the land of the Britons via the Old French Bretaigne and Middle English Bretayne, Breteyne. The term Great Britain was first used officially in 1474, in the instrument drawing up the proposal for a marriage between Edward IV of Englands daughter Cecily and James III of Scotlands son James. The Treaty of Union and the subsequent Acts of Union state that England and Scotland were to be United into one Kingdom by the Name of Great Britain. However, both the Acts and the Treaty also refer numerous times to the United Kingdom and the longer form, other publications refer to the country as the United Kingdom after 1707 as well. The websites of the UK parliament, the Scottish Parliament, the BBC, additionally, the term United Kingdom was found in informal use during the 18th century to describe the state. The new state created in 1707 included the island of Great Britain, the kingdoms of England and Scotland, both in existence from the 9th century, were separate states until 1707. However, they had come into a union in 1603. Each of the three kingdoms maintained its own parliament and laws and this disposition changed dramatically when the Acts of Union 1707 came into force, with a single unified Crown of Great Britain and a single unified parliament. Ireland remained formally separate, with its own parliament, until the Acts of Union 1800, legislative power was vested in the Parliament of Great Britain, which replaced both the Parliament of England and the Parliament of Scotland. In practice it was a continuation of the English parliament, sitting at the location in Westminster. Newly created peers in the Peerage of Great Britain were given the right to sit in the Lords. Despite the end of a parliament for Scotland, it retained its own laws. As a result of Poynings Law of 1495, the Parliament of Ireland was subordinate to the Parliament of England, the Act was repealed by the Repeal of Act for Securing Dependence of Ireland Act 1782. The same year, the Irish constitution of 1782 produced a period of legislative freedom, the 18th century saw England, and after 1707 Great Britain, rise to become the worlds dominant colonial power, with France its main rival on the imperial stage
3.
Whitby
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Whitby is a seaside town, port and civil parish in the Borough of Scarborough and English county of North Yorkshire. It is located within the boundaries of the North Riding of Yorkshire. Situated on the east coast of Yorkshire at the mouth of the River Esk, Whitby has a maritime, mineral. Its East Cliff is home to the ruins of Whitby Abbey, where Cædmon, the fishing port developed during the Middle Ages, supporting important herring and whaling fleets, and was where Captain Cook learned seamanship. Tourism started in Whitby during the Georgian period and developed further on the arrival of the railway in 1839, Jet and alum were mined locally. Whitby Jet, which was mined by the Romans and Victorians, the earliest record of a permanent settlement is in 656, when as Streanœhealh it was the place where Oswy, the Christian king of Northumbria, founded the first abbey, under the abbess Hilda. The Synod of Whitby was held there in 664, in 867, the monastery was destroyed by Viking raiders. Another monastery was founded in 1078 and it was in this period that the town gained its current name, Whitby. The abbey ruin at the top of the East Cliff is the towns oldest and most prominent landmark, other significant features include the swing bridge, which crosses the River Esk and the harbour, which is sheltered by the grade II listed East and West piers. The towns maritime heritage is commemorated by statues of Captain Cook and William Scoresby, the town also has a strong literary tradition and has featured in literary works, television and cinema, most famously in Bram Stokers novel Dracula. As a result, tourism and some forms of fishing remain the mainstay of its economy and it is the closest port to a proposed wind farm development in the North Sea,47 miles from York and 22 miles from Middlesbrough. According to the 2011 UK census, the town had a population of 13,213, Whitby was called Streanæshalc, Streneshalc, Streoneshalch, Streoneshalh, and Streunes-Alae in Lindissi in records of the 7th and 8th centuries. Prestebi, meaning the habitation of priests in Old Norse, is an 11th century name and its name was recorded as Hwitebi and Witebi, meaning the white settlement in Old Norse, in the 12th century, Whitebi in the 13th century and Qwiteby in the 14th century. A monastery was founded at Streanœhealh in AD657 by King Oswiu or Oswy of Northumbria, as an act of thanksgiving, after defeating Penda, at its foundation, the abbey was an Anglo-Saxon double monastery for men and women. Its first abbess, the royal princess Hild, was venerated as a saint. The abbey became a centre of learning and here Cædmon the cowherd was miraculously transformed into a poet whose poetry is an example of Anglo-Saxon literature. The abbey became the royal nunnery of the kingdom of Deira. The Synod of Whitby, in 664, established the Roman date of Easter in Northumbria at the expense of the Celtic one, the monastery was destroyed between 867 and 870 in a series of raids by Vikings from Denmark under their leaders Ingwar and Ubba
4.
Sloop-of-war
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In the 18th century and most of the 19th, a sloop-of-war in the Royal Navy was a warship with a single gun deck that carried up to eighteen guns. The rating system covered all vessels with 20 guns and above, thus, in the first half of the 18th century, most naval sloops were two-masted vessels, usually carrying a ketch or a snow rig. A ketch had main and mizzen masts but no foremast, while a snow had a foremast, the first three-masted sloops appeared during the 1740s, and from the mid-1750s most new sloops were built with a three-masted rig. The third sail afforded the sloop greater mobility and the ability to back sail, in the 1770s, the two-masted sloop re-appeared in a new guise as the brig sloop, the successor to the former snow sloops. Brig sloops had two masts, while ship sloops continued to have three, in the Napoleonic period, Britain built huge numbers of brig sloops of the Cruizer class and the Cherokee class. The brig rig was economical of manpower and, when armed with carronades, the carronades also used much less manpower than the long guns normally used to arm frigates. Consequently, the Cruizer class were used as cheaper and more economical substitutes for frigates. A carronade-armed brig, however, would be at the mercy of an armed with long guns. The other limitation of brig sloops as opposed to post ships and frigates was their relatively restricted stowage for water and provisions, however, their shallower draught made them excellent raiders against coastal shipping and shore installations. Bermuda sloops were found with gaff rig, mixtures of gaff and square rig and they were built with up to three masts. The single masted ships, with their sails, and the tremendous wind energy they harnessed, were demanding to sail. The longer decks of the vessels also had the advantage of allowing more guns to be carried. Originally a sloop-of-war was smaller than a frigate and was outside the rating system. A ship sloop was generally the equivalent of the corvette of the French Navy. The name corvette was also applied to British vessels. American usage, while similar to British terminology into the beginning of the 19th century, the Americans also occasionally used the French term corvette. In the Royal Navy, the sloop evolved into a vessel with a single gun deck. During the War of 1812 sloops of war in the service of the United States Navy performed well against their Royal Navy equivalents, the American ships had the advantage of being ship-rigged rather that brig-rigged, a distinction that increased their maneuverability
5.
Royal Navy
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The Royal Navy is the United Kingdoms naval warfare force. Although warships were used by the English kings from the medieval period. The modern Royal Navy traces its origins to the early 16th century, from the middle decades of the 17th century and through the 18th century, the Royal Navy vied with the Dutch Navy and later with the French Navy for maritime supremacy. From the mid 18th century it was the worlds most powerful navy until surpassed by the United States Navy during the Second World War. The Royal Navy played a key part in establishing the British Empire as the world power during the 19th. Due to this historical prominence, it is common, even among non-Britons, following World War I, the Royal Navy was significantly reduced in size, although at the onset of the Second World War it was still the worlds largest. By the end of the war, however, the United States Navy had emerged as the worlds largest, during the Cold War, the Royal Navy transformed into a primarily anti-submarine force, hunting for Soviet submarines, mostly active in the GIUK gap. The Royal Navy is part of Her Majestys Naval Service, which includes the Royal Marines. The professional head of the Naval Service is the First Sea Lord, the Defence Council delegates management of the Naval Service to the Admiralty Board, chaired by the Secretary of State for Defence. The strength of the fleet of the Kingdom of England was an important element in the power in the 10th century. English naval power declined as a result of the Norman conquest. Medieval fleets, in England as elsewhere, were almost entirely composed of merchant ships enlisted into service in time of war. Englands naval organisation was haphazard and the mobilisation of fleets when war broke out was slow, early in the war French plans for an invasion of England failed when Edward III of England destroyed the French fleet in the Battle of Sluys in 1340. Major fighting was confined to French soil and Englands naval capabilities sufficed to transport armies and supplies safely to their continental destinations. Such raids halted finally only with the occupation of northern France by Henry V. Henry VII deserves a large share of credit in the establishment of a standing navy and he embarked on a program of building ships larger than heretofore. He also invested in dockyards, and commissioned the oldest surviving dry dock in 1495 at Portsmouth, a standing Navy Royal, with its own secretariat, dockyards and a permanent core of purpose-built warships, emerged during the reign of Henry VIII. Under Elizabeth I England became involved in a war with Spain, the new regimes introduction of Navigation Acts, providing that all merchant shipping to and from England or her colonies should be carried out by English ships, led to war with the Dutch Republic. In the early stages of this First Anglo-Dutch War, the superiority of the large, heavily armed English ships was offset by superior Dutch tactical organisation and the fighting was inconclusive
6.
James Cook
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Captain James Cook FRS RN was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the Royal Navy. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755 and he saw action in the Seven Years War, and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the Saint Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec. This helped bring Cook to the attention of the Admiralty and Royal Society, in three voyages Cook sailed thousands of miles across largely uncharted areas of the globe. He mapped lands from New Zealand to Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean in greater detail, as he progressed on his voyages of discovery he surveyed and named features, and recorded islands and coastlines on European maps for the first time. He displayed a combination of seamanship, superior surveying and cartographic skills, physical courage, Cook was attacked and killed while attempting to kidnap the native chief of Hawaii during his third exploratory voyage in the Pacific in 1779. He left a legacy of scientific and geographical knowledge which was to influence his successors well into the 20th century, and numerous memorials worldwide have been dedicated to him. James Cook was born on 7 November 1728 in the village of Marton in Yorkshire and baptised on 14 November in the church of St Cuthbert. He was the second of eight children of James Cook, a Scottish farm labourer from Ednam in Roxburghshire, in 1736, his family moved to Airey Holme farm at Great Ayton, where his fathers employer, Thomas Skottowe, paid for him to attend the local school. In 1741, after five years schooling, he work for his father. For leisure, he would climb a hill, Roseberry Topping, enjoying the opportunity for solitude. Cooks Cottage, his parents last home, which he is likely to have visited, is now in Melbourne, having moved from England and reassembled, brick by brick. In 1745, when he was 16, Cook moved 20 miles to the village of Staithes. Historians have speculated that this is where Cook first felt the lure of the sea while gazing out of the shop window. After 18 months, not proving suitable for work, Cook travelled to the nearby port town of Whitby to be introduced to friends of Sandersons, John. The Walkers, who were Quakers, were prominent local ship-owners in the coal trade and their house is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum. Cook was taken on as a merchant navy apprentice in their fleet of vessels. His first assignment was aboard the collier Freelove, and he spent several years on this and various other coasters, sailing between the Tyne and London. As part of his apprenticeship, Cook applied himself to the study of algebra, geometry, trigonometry, navigation and his three-year apprenticeship completed, Cook began working on trading ships in the Baltic Sea
7.
Second voyage of James Cook
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Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks unreasonable demands, on 17 January 1773, Resolution was the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle which she crossed twice more on the voyage. The third crossing, on 3 February 1774, was to be the most southerly penetration, Cook undertook a series of vast sweeps across the Pacific, finally proving there was no Terra Australis by sailing over most of its predicted locations. Cook proved the Terra Australis Incognita to be a myth and predicted that an Antarctic land would be found beyond the ice barrier, on this voyage the Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer was successfully employed by William Wales to calculate longitude. This discovery led Dalrymple to publish An Historical Collection of the Several Voyages and Discoveries in the South Pacific Ocean, in 1770–1771 which aroused widespread interest in his claim of the existence of an unknown continent. Cook commanded HMS Resolution on this voyage, while Tobias Furneaux commanded its companion ship and she was 111 feet long and 35 feet abeam. She was originally registered as HMS Drake, but fearing this would upset the Spanish, twelve light 6-pounder guns and twelve swivel guns were carried. At his own expense Cook had brass door-hinges installed in the great cabin, HMS Adventure began her career as the 340 ton North Sea collier Marquis of Rockingham, launched at Whitby in 1771. She was purchased by the Navy that year for £2,103 and named Rayleigh and she was 97 feet long,28 feet abeam and her draft was 13 feet and carried ten guns. Both were built at the Fishburn yard at Whitby and purchased from Captain William Hammond of Hull, Cook was asked to test the Larcum Kendall K1 chronometer on this voyage. The Board of Longitude had asked Kendall to copy and develop John Harrisons fourth model of a clock useful for navigation at sea, the first model finished by Kendall in 1769 was an accurate copy of H4, cost £450, and is known today as K1. Although constructed like a watch, the chronometer had a diameter of 13 cm, three other clocks, constructed by John Arnold were carried but did not withstand the rigors of the journey. As anti-scorbutics they took nearly 20,000 pounds of Sour Krout and 30 imperial gallons of Mermalade of Carrots, both ships carried livestock, including bullocks, sheep, goats, hogs and poultry. The crews had fishing gear and a water system was carried for distilling sea-water or purifying foul fresh-water. Various pieces of hardware and trinkets to be used for barter or as gifts for the natives were taken aboard. Furneaux, commander of Adventure, was an explorer, having served on Samuel Walliss circumnavigation in Dolphin in 1766–1768. He headed a crew of 81 which included Joseph Shank as first lieutenant, there were also twelve marines headed by Lieutenant James Scott, Furneauxs personal servant, James Tobias Swilley, and, as masters mate John Rowe who was a relation of Furneaux. The ships astronomer was William Bayly and this refit cost £10,080 12s 9d
8.
Third voyage of James Cook
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HMS Resolution, to be commanded by Cook, and HMS Discovery, commanded by Charles Clerke, were prepared for the voyage which started from Plymouth in 1776. The ships travelled to Cape Town by way of Tenerife then on to New Zealand, Omai was returned to his homeland and the ships sailed onwards, discovering the Hawaiian Archipelago, before reaching the Pacific coast of North America. The two charted the west coast of the continent and passed through the Bering Strait when they were stopped by ice from sailing either east or west, the vessels returned to the Pacific and called briefly at the Aleutians before retiring towards Hawaii for the winter. After a time during which Cook, and his crew were feted and he soon suffered damage to his ship and had to turn back. On his return, conflict arose which resulted in Cooks death, Cooks remains were taken away by the Hawaiians but some were returned to be buried at sea by his crew. The command of the expedition was assumed by Charles Clerke who tried in vain to find the passage before his own death, under the command of John Gore the crews returned to a subdued London in October 1780. Principally, the purpose of the voyage was an attempt to discover the famed Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific around the top of North America. Cooks orders from the Admiralty were driven by a 1745 Act which, initially the Admiralty had wanted Charles Clerke to lead the expedition, with Cook, who was in retirement following his exploits in the Pacific, acting as a consultant. However, Cook had researched Berings expeditions, and the Admiralty ultimately placed their faith in the veteran explorer to lead with Clerke accompanying him. The arrangement was to make a two pronged attack, Cook moving from the Bering Strait in the north Pacific with Richard Pickersgill in the frigate Lyon taking the Atlantic approach and they planned to rendezvous in the summer of 1778. He arrived in London in October 1774 and was introduced into society by the naturalist Sir Joseph Banks, ostensibly, the third voyage was planned to return Omai to Tahiti, this is what the general public believed. On his last voyage, Cook once again commanded HMS Resolution. Resolution began her career as the 462 ton North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and she was 111 feet long and 35 feet abeam. She was originally registered as HMS Drake, after she returned to Britain in 1775 she had been paid off but was then recommissioned in February 1776 for Cooks third voyage. The vessel had on board a quantity of livestock sent by George III as gifts for the South Sea Islanders and these included sheep, cattle, goats and pigs as well as the more usual poultry. She was 27 feet abeam with a depth of 11 feet. Originally a brig, Cook had her changed to a full rigged ship, as his first lieutenant, Cook had John Gore, who had been round the world with him in the Endeavour and with Samuel Wallis in HMS Dolphin. James King was his officer and John Williamson third
9.
North Sea
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The North Sea is a marginal sea of the Atlantic Ocean located between Great Britain, Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and France. An epeiric sea on the European continental shelf, it connects to the ocean through the English Channel in the south and it is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of around 570,000 square kilometres. The North Sea has long been the site of important European shipping lanes as well as a major fishery, the North Sea was the centre of the Vikings rise. Subsequently, the Hanseatic League, the Netherlands, and the British each sought to dominate the North Sea and thus the access to the markets, as Germanys only outlet to the ocean, the North Sea continued to be strategically important through both World Wars. The coast of the North Sea presents a diversity of geological and geographical features, in the north, deep fjords and sheer cliffs mark the Norwegian and Scottish coastlines, whereas in the south it consists primarily of sandy beaches and wide mudflats. Due to the population, heavy industrialization, and intense use of the sea and area surrounding it. In the southwest, beyond the Straits of Dover, the North Sea becomes the English Channel connecting to the Atlantic Ocean, in the east, it connects to the Baltic Sea via the Skagerrak and Kattegat, narrow straits that separate Denmark from Norway and Sweden respectively. In the north it is bordered by the Shetland Islands, and connects with the Norwegian Sea, the North Sea is more than 970 kilometres long and 580 kilometres wide, with an area of 570,000 square kilometres and a volume of 54,000 cubic kilometres. Around the edges of the North Sea are sizeable islands and archipelagos, including Shetland, Orkney, the North Sea receives freshwater from a number of European continental watersheds, as well as the British Isles. A large part of the European drainage basin empties into the North Sea including water from the Baltic Sea, the largest and most important rivers flowing into the North Sea are the Elbe and the Rhine – Meuse watershed. Around 185 million people live in the catchment area of the rivers discharging into the North Sea encompassing some highly industrialized areas, for the most part, the sea lies on the European continental shelf with a mean depth of 90 metres. The only exception is the Norwegian trench, which extends parallel to the Norwegian shoreline from Oslo to a north of Bergen. It is between 20 and 30 kilometres wide and has a depth of 725 metres. The Dogger Bank, a vast moraine, or accumulation of unconsolidated glacial debris and this feature has produced the finest fishing location of the North Sea. The Long Forties and the Broad Fourteens are large areas with uniform depth in fathoms. These great banks and others make the North Sea particularly hazardous to navigate, the Devils Hole lies 200 miles east of Dundee, Scotland. The feature is a series of trenches between 20 and 30 kilometres long,1 and 2 kilometres wide and up to 230 metres deep. Other areas which are less deep are Cleaver Bank, Fisher Bank, the International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the North Sea as follows, On the Southwest
10.
Deptford
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Deptford is an area of South-East London, England, located in the London Borough of Lewisham. From the mid-16th to the late 19th century, Deptford was home to Deptford Dockyard, the area declined as the Royal Navy moved out and commercial docks shut, the last dock, Convoys Wharf, closed in 2000. Historically a part of Kent, Deptford became a Metropolitan Borough in 1900 and this became part of Inner London in 1965, within the newly created county of Greater London. Deptford began life as a ford of the Ravensbourne along the route of the Celtic trackway which was paved by the Romans. The modern name is a corruption of deep ford, Deptford was part of the pilgrimage route from London to Canterbury used by the pilgrims in Chaucers Canterbury Tales, and is mentioned in the Prologue to the Reeves Tale. Trinity House, the organisation concerned with the safety of navigation around the British Isles, was formed in Deptford in 1514, with its first Master being Thomas Spert and it moved to Stepney in 1618. The name Trinity House derives from the church of Holy Trinity and St Clement, originally separated by market gardens and fields, the two areas merged over the years, with the docks becoming an important part of the Elizabethan exploration. Queen Elizabeth I visited the royal dockyard on 4 April 1581 to knight the adventurer Francis Drake, diarist John Evelyn lived in Deptford at Sayes Court from 1652. Evelyn inherited the house when he married the daughter of Sir Richard Browne in 1652, on his return to England at the Restoration, Evelyn laid out meticulously planned gardens in the French style, of hedges and parterres. In its grounds was a cottage at one time rented by master woodcarver Grinling Gibbons, after Evelyn had moved to Surrey in 1694, Russian Tsar Peter the Great studied shipbuilding for three months in 1698. He and some of his fellow Russians stayed at Sayes Court, Evelyn was angered at the antics of the Tsar, who got drunk with his friends and, using a wheelbarrow with Peter in it, rammed their way through a fine holly hedge. Sayes Court was demolished in 1728-9 and a built on its site. This massive facility included warehouses, a bakery, a cattleyard/abattoir and sugar stores, all that remains is the name of Sayes Court Park, accessed from Sayes Court Street off Evelyn Street, not far from Deptford High Street. The Pepys Estate, opened on 13 July 1966, is on the grounds of the Victualing Yard. At its peak, around 1907, over 234,000 animals were imported annually through the market, the yard was taken over by the War Office in 1914, and was an Army Supply Reserve Depot in the First and Second World Wars. The site lay unused until being purchased by Convoys in 1984, in the mid-1990s, although significant investment was made on the site, it became uneconomic to continue using it as a freight wharf. In 2008 Hutchison Whampoa bought the 16ha site from News International with plans for a £700m 3, the Grade II listed Olympia Warehouse will be refurbished as part of the redevelopment of the site. High unemployment caused some of the population to move away as the industries closed down in the late 1960s
11.
Natural history
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Natural history is the research and study of organisms including animals, fungi and plants in their environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. It encompasses scientific research but is not limited to it, with articles nowadays more often published in magazines than in academic journals. Grouped among the sciences, natural history is the systematic study of any category of natural objects or organisms. That is a broad designation in a world filled with many narrowly focused disciplines. For example, geobiology has a strong multi-disciplinary nature combining scientists, a person who studies natural history is known as a naturalist or natural historian. The English term natural history is a translation of the Latin historia naturalis and its meaning has narrowed progressively with time, while the meaning of the related term nature has widened. In antiquity, it covered essentially anything connected with nature or which used materials drawn from nature. For example, Pliny the Elders encyclopedia of this title, published circa 77 to 79 AD, covers astronomy, geography, man and his technology, medicine and superstition as well as animals and plants. Medieval European academics considered knowledge to have two divisions, the humanities and divinity, with science studied largely through texts rather than observation or experiment. In modern terms, natural philosophy roughly corresponded to modern physics and chemistry, natural history had been encouraged by practical motives, such as Linnaeus aspiration to improve the economic condition of Sweden. Similarly, the Industrial Revolution prompted the development of geology to help find useful mineral deposits, the astronomer, William Herschel was also a natural historian. Instead of working with plants or minerals he worked with the stars and he spent his time building telescopes to see the stars and the rest of the time watching the stars. In the beginning, he believed there to be a known as a nebulae. Herschel can be considered a natural historian because he observed the natural world, in the process he made charts of all the stars and kept records of all that he saw. S. Wilcove and T. Eisner, The close observation of organisms—their origins, their evolution, their behavior and it encompasses changes in internal states insofar as they pertain to what organisms do. Some definitions go further, focusing on observation of organisms in their environment. Bartholomew, A student of history, or a naturalist, studies the world by observing plants. A common thread in many definitions of natural history is the inclusion of a component, as seen in a recent definition by H. W. Greene
12.
Joseph Banks
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Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was a British naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural history expedition to Newfoundland and he took part in Captain James Cooks first great voyage, visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and, after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of President of the Royal Society for over 41 years and he advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the worlds leading botanical gardens. He is credited with introducing the eucalyptus, acacia, and the named after him, Banksia. Approximately 80 species of plants bear his name and he was the leading founder of the African Association and a member of the Society of Dilettanti which helped to establish the Royal Academy. Banks was born on Argyle Street in London to William Banks, a wealthy Lincolnshire country squire and member of the House of Commons and he had a younger sister, Sarah Sophia Banks, born in 1744. Banks was educated at Harrow School from the age of 9 and at Eton College from 1756, as a boy, Banks enjoyed exploring the Lincolnshire countryside and developed a keen interest in nature, history and botany. When he was 17, he was inoculated with smallpox, but he became ill, in late 1760, he was enrolled as a gentleman-commoner at the University of Oxford. At Oxford, he matriculated at Christ Church, where his studies were focused on natural history rather than the classical curriculum. Determined to receive instruction, he paid the Cambridge botanist Israel Lyons to deliver a series of lectures at Oxford in 1764. Banks left Oxford for Chelsea in December 1763 and he continued to attend the university until 1764, but left that year without taking a degree. He began to make friends among the men of his day and to correspond with Carl Linnaeus. As Bankss influence increased, he became an adviser to King George III and urged the monarch to support voyages of discovery to new lands and he became a Freemason sometime before 1769. He made his name by publishing the first Linnean descriptions of the plants and animals of Newfoundland and his diary, describing his expedition to Newfoundland, was rediscovered recently in the Royal Geographical Society of South Australia. Banks also documented 34 species of birds, including the great auk, on 7 May, he noted a large number of penguins swimming around the ship on the Grand Banks, and a specimen he collected in Chateau Bay, Labrador, was later identified as the great auk. Banks was appointed to a joint Royal Navy/Royal Society scientific expedition to the south Pacific Ocean on HMS Endeavour and this was the first of James Cooks voyages of discovery in that region. Banks funded seven others to him, the Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander. The voyage went to Brazil, where Banks made the first scientific description of a now common garden plant, bougainvillea, and to other parts of South America
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Great Britain
