1.
Stepney
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Stepney is a district of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in Londons East End that grew out of a medieval village around St Dunstans church and the 15th century ribbon development of Mile End Road. The area built up rapidly in the 19th century, mainly to immigrant workers and displaced London poor. Some Georgian architecture and Victorian era terraced housing survive in patches, for example Arbour Square, the side of Stepney Green. Stepney is roughly bounded by Commercial Road, part of the A13, in the south, Mile End Road, part of the A11, in the north, the western boundary with Whitechapel is rather ambiguous. It is administered by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, the first community developed around the church of St Dunstans, which was founded in 923. Its name was recorded around 1000 AD as Stybbanhyð, Stybbas landing-place, there were over 100 serfs, split between villeins who ploughed the land, and cottars who assisted the villeins in return for a hut or cottage. Bishop William held this land in demesne, in the manor of Stepney, on the day on which King Edward was alive, in the same vill Ranulph Flambard holds 3½ hides of the bishop. The Manor of Stepney was held by the Bishop of London in compensation for his duties in maintaining and garrisoning the Tower of London, further ecclesiastic holdings came about from the need to enclose the marshes and create flood defences along the Thames. Edward VI passed the land to the Wentworth family, and thence to their descendants, the ecclesiastic system of copyhold, whereby land was leased to tenants for terms as short as seven years, prevailed throughout the manor. This severely limited scope for improvement of the land and new building until the estate was broken up in the 19th century, in the early 20th century, Stepney was one of the most Jewish neighbourhoods in England, it was eventually replaced by Stamford Hill. The Siege of Sidney Street took place in Stepney in 1911, the parish included the hamlets of Mile End Old Town, Mile End New Town, and Ratcliff. At its early extent it additionally included Whitechapel, Wapping, Stratford Bow, Shadwell, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, Limehouse and Poplar. Over time the parish was broken up with these settlements forming new independent parishes, leaving a residual parish of 830 acres comprising Mile End Old Town, Mile End New Town and Ratcliff. Stepney is an area in the Anglican Diocese of London, which covers the London boroughs of Hackney, Islington and Tower Hamlets. The Metropolitan Borough of Stepney was formed in 1900, then dissolved in 1965 when it was absorbed into the newly created London Borough of Tower Hamlets which currently administers the area, Stepney is located 3.6 miles east north-east of Charing Cross. It is roughly bounded by Commercial Road, part of the A13, in the south, Mile End Road, part of the A11, in the north, the Western Boundary with Whitechapel is rather ambiguous. The area still contains a range of immigrants, particularly young Asian families, as well as elderly East Enders, some students, based on 2001 census, Bangladeshis were the largest ethnic group, then the White British. In 2011, Stepney was 47% Bengali, the highest in Southern England, a brewery was founded in 1738 that developed into Charrington and Co. in 1897
2.
Saint Helena
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It is part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Saint Helena measures about 16 by 8 kilometres and has a population of 4,534 and it was named after Saint Helena of Constantinople. The island, one of the most remote islands in the world, was uninhabited when discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 and it was an important stopover for ships sailing to Europe from Asia and South Africa for centuries. Napoleon was imprisoned there in exile by the British, as were Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, between 1791 and 1833, Saint Helena became the site of a series of experiments in conservation, reforestation and attempts to boost rainfall artificially. This environmental intervention was closely linked to the conceptualisation of the processes of environmental change, Saint Helena is Britains second-oldest remaining overseas territory after Bermuda. The Portuguese found the island uninhabited, with an abundance of trees and they imported livestock, fruit trees and vegetables, and built a chapel and one or two houses. Englishman Sir Francis Drake probably located the island on the leg of his circumnavigation of the world. In developing their Far East trade, the Dutch also began to frequent the island, the Dutch Republic formally made claim to Saint Helena in 1633, although there is no evidence that they ever occupied, colonized, or fortified it. By 1651, the Dutch had mainly abandoned the island in favour of their colony at the Cape of Good Hope. In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the English East India Company a charter to govern Saint Helena and, the following year, the first governor Captain John Dutton arrived in 1659, making Saint Helena one of Britains oldest colonies outside North America and the Caribbean. A fort and houses were built, after the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the East India Company received a royal charter giving it the sole right to fortify and colonise the island. The fort was renamed James Fort and the town Jamestown, in honour of the Duke of York, between January and May 1673, the Dutch East India Company forcibly took the island, before English reinforcements restored English East India Company control. The company experienced difficulty attracting new immigrants, and sentiments of unrest, a census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves. The island enjoyed a period of prosperity from about 1770. Captain James Cook visited the island in 1775 on the leg of his second circumnavigation of the world. St. James Church was erected in Jamestown in 1774, the site of this telescope is near Saint Mathews Church in Hutts Gate in the Longwood district. The 680-metre high hill there is named for him and is called Halleys Mount, throughout this period, Saint Helena was an important port of call of the East India Company. East Indiamen would stop there on the leg of their voyages to British India
3.
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
4.
British Empire
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The British Empire comprised the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It originated with the possessions and trading posts established by England between the late 16th and early 18th centuries. At its height, it was the largest empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. By 1913, the British Empire held sway over 412 million people, 23% of the population at the time. As a result, its political, legal, linguistic and cultural legacy is widespread, during the Age of Discovery in the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal and Spain pioneered European exploration of the globe, and in the process established large overseas empires. Envious of the great wealth these empires generated, England, France, the independence of the Thirteen Colonies in North America in 1783 after the American War of Independence caused Britain to lose some of its oldest and most populous colonies. British attention soon turned towards Asia, Africa, and the Pacific, after the defeat of France in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, Britain emerged as the principal naval and imperial power of the 19th century. In the early 19th century, the Industrial Revolution began to transform Britain, the British Empire expanded to include India, large parts of Africa and many other territories throughout the world. In Britain, political attitudes favoured free trade and laissez-faire policies, during the 19th Century, Britains population increased at a dramatic rate, accompanied by rapid urbanisation, which caused significant social and economic stresses. To seek new markets and sources of raw materials, the Conservative Party under Benjamin Disraeli launched a period of imperialist expansion in Egypt, South Africa, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand became self-governing dominions. By the start of the 20th century, Germany and the United States had begun to challenge Britains economic lead, subsequent military and economic tensions between Britain and Germany were major causes of the First World War, during which Britain relied heavily upon its empire. The conflict placed enormous strain on the military, financial and manpower resources of Britain, although the British Empire achieved its largest territorial extent immediately after World War I, Britain was no longer the worlds pre-eminent industrial or military power. In the Second World War, Britains colonies in Southeast Asia were occupied by Imperial Japan, despite the final victory of Britain and its allies, the damage to British prestige helped to accelerate the decline of the empire. India, Britains most valuable and populous possession, achieved independence as part of a larger movement in which Britain granted independence to most territories of the empire. The transfer of Hong Kong to China in 1997 marked for many the end of the British Empire, fourteen overseas territories remain under British sovereignty. After independence, many former British colonies joined the Commonwealth of Nations, the United Kingdom is now one of 16 Commonwealth nations, a grouping known informally as the Commonwealth realms, that share a monarch, Queen Elizabeth II. The foundations of the British Empire were laid when England and Scotland were separate kingdoms. In 1496, King Henry VII of England, following the successes of Spain and Portugal in overseas exploration, Cabot led another voyage to the Americas the following year but nothing was ever heard of his ships again
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.
Lieutenant (navy)
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Lieutenant is a commissioned officer rank in many nations navies. It is typically the most senior of junior officer ranks, the ranks insignia usually consists of two medium gold braid stripes and often the uppermost stripe features a loop or executive curl. The now immediately senior rank of lieutenant commander was formerly a naval lieutenant rank. Many navies also use a rank of sub-lieutenant. The appointment of first lieutenant in many navies is held by a senior lieutenant, a navy lieutenant ranks higher than an army lieutenant, the navy rank of lieutenant is a NATO OF-2 and ranks with an army captain. From at least 1580, the lieutenant on a ship had been the officer immediately subordinate to the captain, before the English Restoration, lieutenants were appointed by their captains, and this inevitably led to abuses and to the widespread appointment of men of insufficient qualification. In 1677, Samuel Pepys introduced the first examination for lieutenant, lieutenants were numbered by their seniority within the ship, so that a frigate would have a first lieutenant, a second lieutenant, and a third lieutenant. A first-rate ship was entitled to six, and they were numbered accordingly, as the rank structure of navies stabilised, and the ranks of commander, lieutenant commander and sub-lieutenant were introduced, the naval lieutenant today ranks with an army captain. In the United States Navy, promotion to lieutenant is governed by Department of Defense policies derived from the Defense Officer Personnel Management Act of 1980, DOPMA guidelines suggest 95% of lieutenants should be promoted to lieutenant after serving a minimum of two years at their present rank. The insignia of a lieutenant in many navies, including the Royal Navy and this pattern was copied by the United States Navy and various air forces for their equivalent ranks grades, except that the loop is removed. The first lieutenant in the Royal Navy and other Commonwealth navies, is a post or appointment, historically, the lieutenants in a ship were ranked in accordance with seniority, with the most senior being termed the first lieutenant and acting as the second-in-command. Although lieutenants are no longer numbered by seniority, the post of first lieutenant remains, the post of first lieutenant in a shore establishment carries a similar responsibility to that of the first lieutenant of a capital ship. In the US Navy or US Coast Guard, the billet of first lieutenant describes the officer in charge of the department or division. On submarines and smaller Coast Guard cutters, the billet of first lieutenant may be filled by a petty officer
7.
HMS Endeavour
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The navy renamed and commissioned her as His Majestys Bark the Endeavour. She departed Plymouth in August 1768, rounded Cape Horn, and she then set sail into the largely uncharted ocean to the south, stopping at the Pacific islands of Huahine, Bora Bora, and Raiatea to allow Cook to claim them for Great Britain. In September 1769, she anchored off New Zealand, the first European vessel to reach the islands since Abel Tasmans Heemskerck 127 years earlier. In April 1770, Endeavour became the first ship to reach the east coast of Australia, Endeavour then sailed north along the Australian coast. She narrowly avoided disaster after running aground on the Great Barrier Reef and he then beached her on the mainland for seven weeks to permit rudimentary repairs to her hull. On 10 October 1770, she limped into port in Batavia in the Dutch East Indies for more substantial repairs, her crew sworn to secrecy about the lands they had visited. She resumed her journey on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771. Largely forgotten after her voyage, Endeavour spent the next three years sailing to and from the Falkland Islands. As of 2016 her wreck had not been located but was thought to be one of a cluster of five in Newport Harbor. Relics, including six of her cannon and an anchor, are displayed at maritime museums worldwide, a replica of Endeavour was launched in 1994 and is berthed alongside the Australian National Maritime Museum in Sydney Harbour. The US space shuttle Endeavour is named after the ship and she is depicted on the New Zealand fifty-cent coin and she was ship-rigged and sturdily built with a broad, flat bow, a square stern, and a long box-like body with a deep hold. A flat-bottomed design made her well-suited to sailing in waters and allowed her to be beached for loading and unloading of cargo. Her hull, internal floors, and futtocks were built from white oak, her keel and stern post from elm. Plans of the ship also show a double keelson to lock the keel, floors, some doubt exists about the height of her standing masts, as surviving diagrams of Endeavour depict the body of the vessel only, and not the mast plan. If correct, this would produce an oddly truncated mast a full 9 feet shorter than the standards of the day,1794 at the top of this page. The replica standing mizzen is built to this shorter measurement and stepped in the hold on the keelson, on 16 February 1768, the Royal Society petitioned King George III to finance a scientific expedition to the Pacific to study and observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the sun. The Royal Society suggested command be given to Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple, whose acceptance was conditional on a brevet commission as a captain in the Royal Navy. However, First Lord of the Admiralty Edward Hawke refused, going so far as to say he would cut off his right hand than give command of a navy vessel to someone not educated as a seaman
8.
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
9.
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
10.
Daniel Solander
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Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an Apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil, Solander was born in Piteå, Norrbotten, Sweden, to Rev. Carl Solander a Lutheran principal, and Magdalena née Bostadia. Solander enrolled at Uppsala University in July 1750 and initially studied languages, the professor of botany was the celebrated Carl Linnaeus who was soon impressed by young Solanders ability and accordingly persuaded his father to let him study natural history. Solander traveled to England in June 1760 to promote the new Linnean system of classification, in February 1763 he began cataloguing the natural history collections of the British Museum, and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June the following year. In 1768 Solander gained leave of absence from the British Museum and they were the botanists who inspired the name Botanist Bay for the first landing place of Cooks expedition in Australia. These collections later formed the basis of Banks Florilegium, Solander also wrote a manuscript describing all the species collected from New Zealand during the six months the 1768 expedition spent there. It was called Primitiae Florae Novae Zelandiae, and was to be illustrated with the prepared by Banks. It was never published, but it was available for study by interested, first at Banks London home. Solanders return to Britain with Cook and Banks made him the first Swede to circle the globe, on their return in 1771 Solander resumed his duties at the British Museum but also collaborated with Banks on the Florilegium. In 1772 he accompanied Banks on his voyage to Iceland, the Hebrides, between 1773 and 1782 he was Keeper of the Natural History Department of the British Museum. In 1773 he was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Solander died at Banks home in Soho Square of a stroke, aged 49, an autopsy was performed the next day, and revealed a brain haemorrhage. He is buried in the Swedish Section at Brookwood Cemetery, Solanders reputation has been profoundly influenced by his limited number of publications and his premature death. However, after Solanders death, Banks, now President of the Royal Society, had he done so, he would have secured Solanders posthumous reputation. It has been claimed that Banks treated Solander, and Jonas Dryander, however, Banks clearly had a strong emotional bond with Solander, met his expenses and even supported his relatives in Sweden. I can never think of it without feeling a mortal pain, Solander remained an employee of the British Museum for the last decade of his life but was also paid by Banks to assist him with his collections. Banks relationship with Robert Brown, was more formal, Solander Gardens in the east end of London is named after him, as are the Solander Islands off New Zealands South Island and Cape Solander in the Kamay Botany Bay National Park. Also Solander Island, off the NW coast of Vancouver Island, one of the many plants named in his honour is Nothofagus solandri
11.
Point Hicks
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Point Hicks or Tolywiarar, is a coastal headland in the East Gippsland region of Victoria, Australia, located within the Croajingolong National Park. The point is marked by the Point Hicks Lighthouse that faces the Tasman Sea, the traditional custodians of the land surrounding Point Hicks are the Australian Aboriginal Bidhawal and Gunaikurnai peoples who called the point Tolywiarar. The coastal area near Point Hicks lies on the north-eastern coast of Victoria, Australia and it was the first land ever sighted and recorded by Caucasians on the East Coast of Australia. The sighting took place at first light on Thursday 20 April 1770 by Lieutenant Zachary Hicks aboard James Cooks Endeavour. This was the first of Cooks three voyages to the Pacific, and the sighting came after 19 days westward sailing following the Endeavour leaving New Zealand on its homeward journey and this was confirmed by Aaron Arrowsmiths 1798 Chart of the Pacific Ocean, clearly showing Cooks Point Hicks. George Bass sailed past the area at the end of 1797, although Matthew Flinders sailed past the area in 1798-99 and again in 1802-03, the coastal area near Point Hicks was always out of Flinders’ visual range. Therefore, it did not appear on any of Matthew Flinders published charts, the name Point Hicks was still being used on maps up until 1840, before being replaced and renamed Cape Everard. The first use of the new name has been attributed to hydrographer John Lort Stokes who surveyed the coast in the Beagle in 1843 and it is presumed he named it after fellow naval officer James Everard Home. Stokes maps dont record the name, but many sources attribute its introduction to him. The first known chart showing Cape Everard was published by surveyor George Douglas Smythe, made in 1852, if he coined the name, then according to one theory he may have been referring to William Everard, commissioner of crown lands. The name Cape Everard was then adopted from 1853 up until the early 1900s, the location of landfall sited from the Endeavour has been mired in considerable controversy for over a century. Cook estimated the coordinates of his Point Hicks to be located at 38°0′S 148°53′E, though measuring longitude in Cooks time was problematic in the absence of reliable ship chronometers, Cook and his astronomers measurements of latitude were usually very accurate. Nevertheless, the latitude of 38 degrees S placed the point more than 20 km out to sea from the East-West running coastline. It is likely that the reckoning was an error, that a cloudbank was mistaken for land, Cooks name, Point Hicks, was officially established as the name of the cape as part of the bicentenary of Cooks 1770 voyage along the East Coast of Australia. Victorian Premier Henry Bolte proclaimed the new name in a ceremony at the point on 20 April 1970, Point Hicks has a mild oceanic climate with pleasant summers and cool damp winters. Mueller River Point Hicks Marine National Park SS Saros Thurra River Point Hicks lighthouse at SeaSide Lights Point Hicks page at Geoscience Australia
12.
Ripon
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Ripon is a cathedral city in the Borough of Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it is located at the confluence of two tributaries of the River Ure, the Laver and Skell. The city is noted for its feature, Ripon Cathedral which is architecturally significant, as well as the Ripon Racecourse. The city itself is just over 1,300 years old and it was for a period under Viking control, and later suffered under the Normans. After a brief period of building projects under the Plantagenets, the city emerged with a prominent wool, Ripon became well known for its production of spurs during the 16th and 17th centuries, but would later remain largely unaffected by the Industrial Revolution. Ripon is the third smallest city in England, according to the 2011 United Kingdom Census it had a population of 16,702, an increase on the 2001 United Kingdom Census figure of 15,922. It is located 11 miles south-west of Thirsk,16 miles south of Northallerton and 12 miles north of Harrogate. As well as its racecourse and cathedral, Ripon is a tourist destination because of its proximity to the UNESCO World Heritage Site which consists of the Studley Royal Park. During its pre-history the area later became Ripon was under the control of the Brigantes. Three miles north at Hutton Moor there is a circular earthwork created by them. The Romans did not settle Ripon, but they had a military outpost around five miles away at North Stainley, solid evidence for the origins of Ripon can be traced back to the 7th century, the time of the Anglian kingdom of Northumbria. The first structure built in the area, known at the time as Inhrypum, was a Christian church dedicated to St. Peter and this was founded by a Northumbrian nobleman known as Wilfrid, who later became Archbishop of York, he was granted the land by King Alhfrith. The earliest settlers were stonemasons, glaziers and plasterers that Wilfrid brought over to construct the Ripon monastery, from Lyon in Francia. The years following the death of Wilfrid are obscure in Ripons history, after the invasion of the Great Heathen Army of Norse Vikings in Northumbria, the Danelaw was established and the Kingdom of Jórvík was founded in the Yorkshire area. In 937 Athelstan, then King of England, granted the privilege of sanctuary to Ripon, one of his successors was less well-disposed, after the Northumbrians rebelled against English rule in 948, King Edred had the buildings at Ripon burned. Prosperity was restored by the end of the 10th century, as the body of Saint Cuthbert was moved to Ripon for a while, Ripon is thought to have shrunk to a small community around the church following the suppression. Eventually developed in the Gothic style, the project owed much to the work of Roger de Pont LEvêque and Walter de Gray, during the 12th century Ripon built up a booming wool trade, attracting Italian trade merchants, especially Florentines, who bought and exported large quantities. Ripons proximity to Fountains Abbey, where the Cistercians had a tradition of sheep farming
13.
Able seaman (rank)
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In the British Royal Navy in the middle of the 18th century, the term able seaman referred to a seaman with more than two years experience at sea and considered well acquainted with his duty. Seamen with no or less one year experience at sea are referred to as landmen or ordinary seamen respectively. In 1653 the Royal Navy introduced a new pay scale as part of reforms following defeat in the Battle of Dungeness the previous year, included in these reforms were, for the first time, separate pay scales for more experienced seamen. It distinguished between an ordinary seaman and an able seaman, the higher ranked able seaman could steer, use the lead and work aloft, traditionally to hand, reef, and steer. An able seaman received about 25% higher pay than an ordinary seaman, in peacetime, with fewer active warships, there was usually a surplus of unemployed able seamen willing to work in the navy. Some notable able seamen from the Royal Navy include, Simon, ships cat on HMS Amethyst, also said to have been promoted to able seacat Just Nuisance, a Great Dane in the Royal Navy, famous for his dislike of officers and liking of ordinary sailors. Alistair MacLean, author Sir Fairfax Moresby, English admiral of the fleet, William Charles Williams, recipient of the Victoria Cross William G. V. Williams, first recorded Australian casualty in World War 1. He was actually part of the Royal Australian Navy and was an able seaman and he died on 11 September 1914 in Rabaul, Papua New Guinea as part of the Australian expeditionary force that captured the former German colony called German New Guinea. He is buried in the Rabaul War Cemetery in Kopoko that is near Rabaul on the island of New Britain, in all trades, the rank is awarded on completion of 30 months of service, by which time all initial training is completed. Consequently, it is said that promotion to the rank of able seaman means the recipient has lost their best excuse. Able seaman is the equivalent rank to private, or simply private, in the Army, in French the rank is called matelot de 2e classe. In the Royal Australian Navy, able seaman is the second-lowest of the non-commissioned member ranks, ranking above seaman, Able seaman is the equivalent rank to Leading aircraftman, in the Royal Australian Air Force and Private Proficient Private Proficient in the Australian Army. It is not equivalent to Lance Corporal which is rated as E4, not E3 like the ranks of Able Seaman, the Wooden World, An Anatomy of the Georgian Navy. The Command of the Ocean, A Naval History of Britain, 1649–1815 W. W
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Master's mate
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Masters mate is an obsolete rating which was used by the Royal Navy, United States Navy and merchant services in both countries for a senior petty officer who assisted the master. Masters mates evolved into the rank of Sub-Lieutenant in the Royal Navy. Originally, a mate was an experienced petty officer, who assisted the master. Six masters mates were allowed on a first rate, three on a rate, and two on most frigates. Masters mates were allowed to command vessels, walk the quarterdeck, masters mates were responsible for fitting out the ship, and making sure they had all the sailing supplies necessary for the voyage. They hoisted and lowered the anchor, and docked and undocked the ship and they would examine the ship daily, notifying the master if there were problems with the sails, masts, ropes, or pulleys. They executed the orders of the master, and would command in his place if he was sick or absent, normally masters mates worked on a three-watch system, with the lieutenants, so that one served as the deputy to the lieutenant on each watch. Masters mates generally assisted the master in navigating the ship and directly supervised the quartermasters in steering the ship, the masters mate with the highest seniority was appointed the head of the midshipmans berth and was responsible for teaching mathematics, navigation, and sailing lore. Masters mates had to keep detailed logs similar to midshipmen and they were also responsible for the division of the crew that included the petty officers. Second master was a rating introduced in 1753 that indicated a deputy master on 3rd rate ships of the line or larger, masters mates also acted as Second Master of vessels too small to be allocated a warranted Master. They were paid more than masters mates, £5 5s per month. A second master was generally a masters mate who had passed his examination for master and was deemed worthy of being master of a vessel, Second masters were given the first opportunity for master vacancies as they occurred. Passed midshipmen awaiting promotion often elected to become masters mates, though formally the rating did not lead to promotion to lieutenant, masters mates were paid more than any other rating and were the only ratings allowed to command any sort of vessel. A midshipman who became masters mate earned an increase in pay from £1 13s 6p to £3 16s per month, by the first years of the nineteenth century, the prefix masters was dropped for passed midshipman, to distinguish them from masters mates in the navigators branch. In 1824 two further grades were introduced, consisting of masters assistants and second-class volunteers. These corresponded to midshipmen and first-class volunteers respectively in the executive line, from this point, passed midshipmen had the rating masters mate, abbreviated as mate, and prospective masters had the rating masters assistant. These changes helped eliminate the confusion caused by the mingling of midshipmen in the navigators branch, in 1838 a Royal Commission, presided over by the Duke of Wellington, recommended the institution of the rank of mate as an official step between midshipman and lieutenant. By 1840 there were two completely separate ladders for promotion, In 1861 mate was abolished in favor of sub-lieutenant and this made no practical difference to the officers in question since they continued to receive the same pay as before
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Midshipman
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A midshipman is an officer cadet or a commissioned officer candidate of the junior-most rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Canada, Australia, Bangladesh, Namibia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka, and Kenya. Beginning in the 18th century, an officer candidate was rated as a midshipman. After serving at least three years as a midshipman or masters mate, he was eligible to take the examination for lieutenant, promotion to lieutenant was not automatic, and many midshipmen took positions as masters mates for an increase in pay and responsibility aboard ship. Midshipman began to mean an officer cadet at a naval college, trainees now spent around four years in a college and two years at sea prior to promotion to commissioned officer rank. Between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, time at sea declined to less than a year as the age was increased from 12 to 18. Ranks equivalent to midshipman exist in other navies. Using US midshipman or pre-fleet board UK midshipman as the basis for comparison, using post-fleet board UK midshipman for comparison, the rank would be the most junior commissioned officer in the rank structure, and similar to a US ensign in role and responsibility. Today, these ranks all refer to cadets, but historically they were selected by the monarchy. The first published use of the term midshipman was in 1662, the word derives from an area aboard a ship, amidships, but it refers either to the location where midshipmen worked on the ship, or the location where midshipmen were berthed. By the 18th century, four types of midshipman existed, midshipman, midshipman extraordinary, midshipman, by 1794, all midshipmen were considered officer candidates, and the original rating was phased out. Beginning in 1661, boys who aspired to become officers were sent by their families to serve on ships with a letter of service from the crown, and were paid at the same rate as midshipmen. Their official rating was volunteer-per-order, but they were known as Kings letter boys. Beginning in 1677, Royal Navy regulations for promotion to lieutenant required service as a midshipman, by the Napoleonic era, the regulations required at least three years of services as a midshipman or masters mate and six years of total sea time. Sea time was earned in various ways, most boys served this period at sea in any lower rating, either as a servant of one of the ships officers, a volunteer, or a seaman. By the 1730s, the rating volunteer-per-order was phased out and replaced with a system where prospective midshipmen served as servants for officers. For example, a captain was allowed four servants for every 100 men aboard his ship, the school was unpopular in the Navy, because officers enjoyed the privilege of having servants and preferred the traditional method of training officers via apprenticeship. Volunteers were paid £6 per year, by 1816, the rating of midshipman ordinary was phased out, and all apprentice officers were rated as midshipmen
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Royal Society
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Founded in November 1660, it was granted a royal charter by King Charles II as The Royal Society. The society is governed by its Council, which is chaired by the Societys President, according to a set of statutes and standing orders. The members of Council and the President are elected from and by its Fellows, the members of the society. As of 2016, there are about 1,600 fellows, allowed to use the postnominal title FRS, there are also royal fellows, honorary fellows and foreign members, the last of which are allowed to use the postnominal title ForMemRS. The Royal Society President is Venkatraman Ramakrishnan, who took up the post on 30 November 2015, since 1967, the society has been based at 6–9 Carlton House Terrace, a Grade I listed building in central London which was previously used by the Embassy of Germany, London. The Royal Society started from groups of physicians and natural philosophers, meeting at variety of locations and they were influenced by the new science, as promoted by Francis Bacon in his New Atlantis, from approximately 1645 onwards. A group known as The Philosophical Society of Oxford was run under a set of rules still retained by the Bodleian Library, after the English Restoration, there were regular meetings at Gresham College. It is widely held that these groups were the inspiration for the foundation of the Royal Society, I will not say, that Mr Oldenburg did rather inspire the French to follow the English, or, at least, did help them, and hinder us. But tis well known who were the men that began and promoted that design. This initial royal favour has continued and, since then, every monarch has been the patron of the society, the societys early meetings included experiments performed first by Hooke and then by Denis Papin, who was appointed in 1684. These experiments varied in their area, and were both important in some cases and trivial in others. The Society returned to Gresham in 1673, there had been an attempt in 1667 to establish a permanent college for the society. Michael Hunter argues that this was influenced by Solomons House in Bacons New Atlantis and, to a lesser extent, by J. V. The first proposal was given by John Evelyn to Robert Boyle in a letter dated 3 September 1659, he suggested a scheme, with apartments for members. The societys ideas were simpler and only included residences for a handful of staff and these plans were progressing by November 1667, but never came to anything, given the lack of contributions from members and the unrealised—perhaps unrealistic—aspirations of the society. During the 18th century, the gusto that had characterised the early years of the society faded, with a number of scientific greats compared to other periods. The pointed lightning conductor had been invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1749, during the same time period, it became customary to appoint society fellows to serve on government committees where science was concerned, something that still continues. The 18th century featured remedies to many of the early problems
17.
Sydney Parkinson
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Sydney Parkinson was a Scottish Quaker, botanical illustrator and natural history artist. Parkinson was employed by Joseph Banks to travel with him on James Cooks first voyage to the Pacific in 1768, Parkinson made nearly a thousand drawings of plants and animals collected by Banks and Daniel Solander on the voyage. He had to work in conditions, living and working in a small cabin surrounded by hundreds of specimens. In Tahiti he was plagued by swarms of flies which ate the paint as he worked and he died at sea on the way to Cape Town of dysentery contracted at Princes Island off the western end of Java. Banks paid his salary to his brother. Parkinson is commemorated in the common and scientific name of the Parkinsons petrel Procellaria parkinsoni, the great Florilegium of his work was finally published in 1988 by Alecto Historical Editions in 35 volumes and has since been digitized by the Natural History Museum in London. The Art of Botanical Illustration, A history of classic illustrators and their achievements, pp.72,77
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Charles Clerke
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Captain Charles Clerke RN was an officer in the Royal Navy who sailed on four voyages of exploration,3 with Captain James Cook. When Cook was killed during his 3rd expedition to the Pacific, Clerke took command, Clerke started studying at the Royal Naval Academy in Portsmouth when he was 13. During the Seven Years War he served aboard HMS Dorsetshire and HMS Bellona and he was in the mizzen-top of HMS Bellona when the mast was shot away in 1761 and he became the only survivor of those who consequently fell overboard. In June 1764 he joined Captain John Byron, aboard HMS Dolphin, the Dolphin returned in May 1766. Its circumnavigation of 22 months was the shortest up to that point, upon his return Clerke published an account of encountering Patagonian giants, a hoax which the Dictionary of Canadian Biography attributed to his high spirits. Clerkes last three voyages were all under the command of Captain James Cook and he started the first voyage aboard HM Bark Endeavour as a masters mate. Cook promoted him to acting lieutenant in 1771, and he was confirmed in that rank on 31 July 1771. He was HMS Resolutions second lieutenant on Cooks second voyage, while ashore between Cooks 2nd and 3rd voyages Clerke agreed to serve time in the Kings Bench debtors prison for a debt one of his brothers, Sir John Clerke had incurred. While in debtors prison he was infected with the tuberculosis that killed him. For Cooks third expedition, Clerke was placed in command of HMS Discovery, when Cook was killed in a skirmish with Hawaiians on 14 February 1779, Clerke took command of the expedition and of HMS Resolution. He continued the exploration of the Northern Pacific coast, searching for a navigable Northwest Passage. The expedition then proceeded to the Pacific coast of Siberia, Lieutenant James King, one of his subordinates, wrote that Clerkes illness had reduced him to skeletal thinness. Clerke died from tuberculosis on his 38th birthday en route to Kamchatka from the Bering Strait and he was buried in Kamchatka on 29 August 1779. Clerkes second in command, Lieutenant John Gore took command of the expedition as captain of Resolution, the expedition then sailed via China and the Sunda Strait to Cape Town, returning to England in August 1780. In 1913, the British Admiralty erected an obelisk in Clerkes honour at Petropavlovsk-Kamchatskiy, Russia
19.
Maritime flag
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A maritime flag is a flag designated for use on ships, boats, and other watercraft. Naval flags are considered important at sea and the rules and regulations for the flying of flags are strictly enforced, the flag flown is related to the country of registration, so much so that the word flag is often used symbolically as a synonym for country of registration. Ensigns are usually required to be flown when entering and leaving harbour, when sailing through foreign waters, and when the ship is signalled to do so by a warship. Warships usually fly their ensigns between the morning ceremony and sunset when moored or at anchor, at all times when underway. When engaged in battle a warship often flies multiple battle ensigns and this tradition dates from the era of sailing vessels. Tradition dictated that if a ship lowered its ensign it was deemed to have surrendered, masts were targets of gunfire, and the second and subsequent ensigns were flown in order to keep the ensign flying even after a mast hit. Jacks are additional national flags flown by warships at the head of the ship and these are usually flown while not underway and when the ship is dressed on special occasions. Jacks in the Royal Navy must be run up when the first line is ashore when coming alongside, although they continued to fly the same ensign as U. S. Since then, commissioned ships of NOAA, which fly the same national ensign as U. S. Navy ships, have flown the flag of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration as a distinguishing mark. Similarly, all ships of the United States Lighthouse Service flew the U. S, the rank flag or distinguishing flag is the flag flown by a superior officer on his flagship or headquarters. The origins of this are from the era before radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony, the flag denotes the ship which must be watched for signals designating orders. Such flags are also flown when leaders of the government are aboard Navy ships, today, with the progress in communications, this flag indicates the obligation of the other Naval vessels to pay the relevant honours according to nautical etiquette. In a group of ships all commanded by superior officers. In the Royal Navy, admirals fly rectangular rank flags, an Admiral of the Fleet flies a Union Flag, the flags of vice-admirals and rear-admirals have one and two additional red balls respectively. Commodores fly a Broad Pennant which is a short swallow-tailed pennant based on the St Georges Cross, in the United States Navy as well as in some other countries, admirals fly rectangular flags with stars according to rank. Line officer flags are blue with stars, while staff officer flags are white with blue stars. Captains, when commanding a flotilla or squadron, fly a burgee with the colours of Hellenic Navy Jack, when a rank flag is flown the commissioning pennant is displaced downward. The pennant, historically called a pennon, is a long narrow flag, conveying different meanings depending on its design, examples, A commissioning pennant, or masthead, which a warship flies from its masthead and indicates the commission of the captain of the ship
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Cape Horn
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Cabo de Hornos is a Chilean commune located in the south of Tierra del Fuego archipelago, in Antártica Province, Magallanes Region. The municipality of Cabo de Hornos, located in the town of Puerto Williams and it is named for Cape Horn. According to the 2002 census of the National Statistics Institute, Cabo de Hornos spans an area of 15,853.7 km2 and has 2,262 inhabitants, of these,1,952 lived in urban areas and 310 in rural areas. The population grew by 24. 7% between the 1992 and 2002 censuses, as a commune, Cabo de Hornos is a third-level administrative division of Chile administered by a municipal council, headed by an alcalde who is directly elected every four years. The 2016-2020 alcalde is Patricio Fernández, the commune is represented in the Senate by Carlos Bianchi Chelech and Carolina Goic as part of the 19th senatorial constituency. Murray Channel Cabo de Hornos commune,2006 Official website of the Municipality of Cabo de Hornos Official website of Puerto Williams Gobierno Regional Magallanes y Antártica Chilena Official website Cape Horn Biosphere Reserve
21.
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
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1769 Transit of Venus observed from Tahiti
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During a transit, Venus appears as a small black disc travelling across the Sun. This unusual astronomical phenomenon takes place in a pattern repeats itself every 243 years. It includes two transits that are eight years apart, separated by breaks of 121.5 and 105.5 years and these men, along with a crew of scientists, were commissioned by the Royal Society of London for the primary purpose of viewing the transit of Venus. Not only would their findings help expand scientific knowledge, it would help with navigation by accurately calculating the observers longitude, at this time, longitude was difficult to determine and not always precise. A secret mission that followed the transit included the exploration of the South Pacific to find the legendary Terra Australis Incognita or unknown land of the South, in his report, Halley suggested places that a full transit should be viewed due to a cone of visibility. Places he recommended for observing the phenomenon included the Hudson Bay, Norway, the next transits would occur in 1761 and 1769. Halley died in 1742, almost twenty years before the transit, the viewing of the 1761 transit involved the effort of 120 observers from nine nations. Thomas Hornsby reported the observations as unsuccessful primarily due to weather conditions. He alerted the Royal Society in 1766 that preparations needed to begin for the 1769 transit, the Royal Society boasted that the British were inferior to no nation on earth, ancient or modern and were eager to make another attempt. When choosing a location for viewing the transit, The Royal Society basically chose the locations Halley suggested in his 1716 article. The committee recommended that the transit be observed from three points, the North Cape at the Arctic tip of Norway, Fort Churchill at Hudson Bay Canada and they stated that two competent observers were to be sent to each location. King George III approved of the project and arranged for the Navy to provide ships and he allocated 4000 pounds for the society to help with the expenses. In June 1767, British navigator, Samuel Wallis, made the first European contact with Tahiti, Wallis returned from his voyage in time to help the Royal Society decide that it would be an ideal location to observe the Transit of Venus. A big advantage was that Tahiti was one of the few islands in the South Pacific that they knew the longitude and latitude of, the Admiralty was not really interested in particularly where in the South Pacific the observation of the Venus transit would take place. They were more interested in the mission that would be revealed after the Venus transit observation. HMS Bark Endeavour was chosen to take the astronomers and other scientists to Tahiti, James Cook was commissioned as Lieutenant and appointed to command the vessel. Once the Endeavour arrived on the island, Cook decided to set up the Venus transit observatory on shore and he required a completely stable platform which the ship could not provide and plenty of space to work with. The location of the observatory would be known as Fort Venus, a sandy spit on the northeast end of Matavai Bay, named Point Venus by Cook, was chosen for the site
23.
Botany Bay
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Botany Bay, an open oceanic embayment, is located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia,13 km south of the Sydney central business district. The total catchment area of the bay is approximately 55 km2, despite its relative shallowness, the bay serves as greater metropolitan Sydneys main cargo seaport, located at Port Botany, with facilities managed by Sydney Ports Corporation. Two runways of Sydney Airport extend into the bay, Botany Bay National Park is located on the northern and southern headlands of the bay. The area surrounding the bay is generally managed by Roads and Maritime Services, the land adjacent to Botany Bay was settled for many thousands of years by the Tharawal and Eora Aboriginal peoples and their associated clans. On 29 April 1770, Botany Bay was the site of James Cooks first landing of HMS Endeavour on the mass of Australia. Later the British planned Botany Bay as the site for a penal colony, out of these plans came the first European habitation of Australia at Sydney Cove. Archaeological evidence from the shores of Botany Bay has yielded evidence of Aboriginal settlement dating back 5,000 years, the Aboriginal people of Sydney were known as the Eora with sub-groups derived from the languages they spoke. The people living between the Cooks River and the Georges River were the Bidjigal clan, on the shores of the bay were the Gweagal clan. An artefact collected on Cooks first voyage in Botany Bay is the bark shield left behind by a member of a local Aboriginal tribe. This very rare object is now in the British Museums collection and was the subject of a programme in the BBC radio series A History of the World in 100 Objects. Lieutenant James Cook first landed at Kurnell, on the banks of Botany Bay, on Sunday 29 April 1770. Cooks landing marked the beginning of Britains interest in Australia and in the colonisation of this new ‘southern continent’. Initially the name Sting Ray Harbour was used by Cook and other journal keepers on his expedition and that name was also recorded on an Admiralty chart. Cooks log for 6 May 1770 records The great quantity of these sort of found in this place occasioned my giving it the name of Stingrays Harbour. Eighteen years later, in 1788, Governor Arthur Phillip sailed the armed tender HMS Supply into the bay on 18 January, two days later the remaining ships of the First Fleet arrived to found the planned penal colony. However, the land was ruled unsuitable for settlement as there was insufficient fresh water. Phillip decided instead to move to the excellent natural harbour of Port Jackson to the north, on the morning of 24 January the French exploratory expedition of Jean-François de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse was seen outside Botany Bay. On 26 January, the Supply left the bay to move up to Port Jackson, on the afternoon of 26 January, the remaining ships of First Fleet arrived at Sydney Cove
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Indigenous Australians
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Indigenous Australians are the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of Australia, descended from groups that existed in Australia and surrounding islands prior to European colonisation. In present-day Australia these groups are divided into local communities. At the time of initial European settlement, over 250 languages were spoken, it is estimated that 120 to 145 of these remain in use. Aboriginal people today mostly speak English, with Aboriginal phrases and words being added to create Australian Aboriginal English, a population collapse following European settlement, and a smallpox epidemic spreading three years after the arrival of Europeans may have caused a massive and early depopulation. Since 1995, the Australian Aboriginal Flag and the Torres Strait Islander Flag have been among the flags of Australia. The word aboriginal has been in the English language since at least the 16th century, to mean, first or earliest known and it comes from the Latin word aborigines, derived from ab and origo. The word was used in Australia to describe its indigenous peoples as early as 1789 and it soon became capitalised and employed as the common name to refer to all Indigenous Australians. Strictly speaking, Aborigine is the noun and Aboriginal the adjectival form, however, use of either Aborigine or Aboriginal to refer to individuals has acquired negative connotations in some sectors of the community, and it is generally regarded as insensitive and even offensive. The more acceptable and correct expression is Aboriginal Australians or Aboriginal people, the term Indigenous Australians, which also includes Torres Strait Islander peoples, has found increasing acceptance, particularly since the 1980s. The broad term Aboriginal Australians includes many groups that often identify under names from local Indigenous languages. Anindilyakwa on Groote Eylandt off Arnhem Land, Palawah in Tasmania and these larger groups may be further subdivided, for example, Anangu recognises localised subdivisions such as Pitjantjatjara, Yankunytjatjara, Ngaanyatjarra, Luritja and Antikirinya. It is estimated that prior to the arrival of British settlers, the Torres Strait Islanders possess a heritage and cultural history distinct from Aboriginal traditions. The eastern Torres Strait Islanders in particular are related to the Papuan peoples of New Guinea, accordingly, they are not generally included under the designation Aboriginal Australians. This has been another factor in the promotion of the inclusive term Indigenous Australians. Six percent of Indigenous Australians identify themselves fully as Torres Strait Islanders, a further 4% of Indigenous Australians identify themselves as having both Torres Strait Islander and Aboriginal heritage. The Torres Strait Islands comprise over 100 islands which were annexed by Queensland in 1879, eddie Mabo was from Mer or Murray Island in the Torres Strait, which the famous Mabo decision of 1992 involved. The term blacks has been used to refer to Indigenous Australians since European settlement, while originally related to skin colour, the term is used today to indicate Aboriginal heritage or culture in general and refers to people of any skin pigmentation. In the 1970s, many Aboriginal activists, such as Gary Foley, proudly embraced the term black, the book included interviews with several members of the Aboriginal community including Robert Jabanungga reflecting on contemporary Aboriginal culture
25.
Great Ayton
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Great Ayton is a village and civil parish in the Hambleton district of North Yorkshire, England, on the edge of the North York Moors. It lies 7 miles southeast of Middlesbrough and 3 miles northeast of Stokesley on the border with the authorities of Redcar and Cleveland. According to the 2011 Census, it has a population of 4,629, the name Great Ayton derives from the Old English Ea-tun, tun meaning farm and ea meaning river. In the 18th and 19th centuries Great Ayton was a centre for the industries of weaving, tanning, brewing, subsequently, whinstone was also quarried from the Cleveland Dyke. It was home to the Great Ayton Friends School from 1841 until it closed in 1997, Great Ayton is at the foot of the Cleveland Hills beneath Easby Moor and the distinctively-shaped Roseberry Topping. The River Leven, a tributary of the River Tees, flows through the village, the Cleveland Dyke, a narrow band of hard whinstone rock that runs for about 31 miles between Robin Hoods Bay and Eaglescliffe lies to the north-east of the village. An electoral ward of the name exists. This ward stretches east to Kildale with a population taken at the 2011 census of 4,973, the village was the boyhood home of Captain James Cook, the British explorer and navigator and many notable local landmarks relate to this. The Cook family home on Bridge Street was built by James father in 1755, the cottage was dismantled in 1934 to be shipped to Australia. Each stone was numbered so that the cottage could be reconstructed exactly in its new home in the Fitzroy Gardens in Melbourne, a granite obelisk now marks the original site of the cottage in Great Ayton. The obelisk is constructed from granite taken from Point Hicks, the first land sighted by Cook in Australia, the Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum is within a former charity school, founded in 1704 by landowner Michael Postgate. James Cook received his education here from 1736 to 1740. A statue on High Green depicts James Cook at the age of 16 looking towards Staithes where, according to tradition, the sculpture was commissioned by Hambleton District Council and is the work of sculptor Nicholas Dimbleby. It was unveiled on 12 May 1997, in the parish of Little Ayton high on Easby Moor is Captain Cooks Monument a 51 ft high obelisk and visible for miles around. It was constructed from sandstone and was erected in 1827. The parish church of Christ Church was built in 1876 and it holds a number of services during the day that attract a total attendance of about 200. In the summer months, the service takes place in All Saints Church, the former parish church. The church has a built by James Jepson Binns
26.
Isaac Smith (Royal Navy officer)
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Isaac Smith was a Rear Admiral in the Royal Navy and cousin of the wife of Captain James Cook, with whom he sailed on two voyages of exploration in the South Pacific. Smith was the first European to set foot in eastern Australia, Smith was born in London in 1752, the eldest of seven children of Charles and Hannah Smith and cousin to James Cooks wife Elizabeth. Smith sailed with Cook to Tahiti, then to New Zealand, on 28 April 1770 he became the first European to set foot on eastern Australian soil, Cook telling him Jump out, Isaac as the ships boat touched the shore at Botany Bay. A month later on 23 May 1770, Smith was promoted to midshipman following James Magras suspension on suspicion of having assaulted Cooks clerk, Cooks lieutenant Zachary Hicks died from tuberculosis in May 1771, and was replaced by the masters mate Charles Clerke. In turn, Smith was promoted to fill Clerkes former role and served with distinction for the remainder of the voyage. Cook singled him out in a letter to the Secretary of the Admiralty in 1772, noting that Smith had been of use to me in assisting to make Surveys. Smith sailed again with Cook in 1772, as mate aboard the HMS Resolution. He assisted first mate Joseph Gilbert in drawing Cooks maps and survey charts during the voyage, Smiths wider artistic talents were also demonstrated by the production of a small watercolour of icebergs, painted while Resolution sailed close to Antarctica in 1773. On Resolution′s return to England in 1775, Smith was promoted to lieutenant and given command of the elderly 16-gun sloop HMS Weazel, in December 1787, he was promoted to post-captain in command of the 36-gun frigate HMS Perseverance. The future Admiral John Surman Carden was a member of Smiths crew from 1787 to 1793, despite this achievement and continued commendation from his superiors, Smiths active service days were drawing to a close. In 1794 he contracted hepatitis, and his ill health prevented him from performing his duties. In either 1804 or 1807 he applied for and received a promotion to the superannuated post of Rear Admiral and returned to England to retire. In initial retirement Smith shared a house in Clapham with his cousin, Cooks widow Elizabeth, until in the 1820s he inherited Merton Abbey in Merton, Surrey, from his brother in law. He then divided his time between two homes, until his death on 2 July 1831 at the age of 78. His will left a sum of £700 to the church of St Mary the Virgin in Merton, a memorial to Smith, originally financed by Elizabeth Cook, stands in the church grounds. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery, I, The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771. Rigby, Nigel, van der Merwe, Pieter, Captain Cooks War and Peace, The Royal Navy Years 1755-1768. University of New South Wales Press, parliament Street, London, J. B. Nichols & Son
27.
The Sydney Morning Herald
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The Sydney Morning Herald is a daily compact newspaper published by Fairfax Media in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1831 as the Sydney Herald, the SMH is the oldest continuously published newspaper in Australia, the newspaper is published six days a week. It is available at outlets in Sydney, regional New South Wales, Canberra, the Sydney Morning Herald includes a variety of supplements, including the magazines Good Weekend, and Sunday Life. By February 2016, average circulation had fallen to 104,000, similarWeb rates the site as the fifth most visited news website in Australia and as the 42nd newspapers website globally, attracting more than 15 million visitors per month. In 1931 a Centenary Supplement was published, the original four-page weekly had a print run of 750. In 1840, the newspaper began to publish daily, in 1841, an Englishman named John Fairfax purchased the operation, renaming it The Sydney Morning Herald the following year. Fairfax, whose family were to control the newspaper for almost 150 years, based his editorial policies upon principles of candour, honesty and we have no wish to mislead, no interest to gratify by unsparing abuse or indiscriminate approbation. During the decade 1890, Donald Murray worked there, the SMH was late to the trend of printing news rather than just advertising on the front page, doing so from 15 April 1944. Of the countrys metropolitan dailies, only The West Australian was later in making the switch, in 1949, the newspaper launched a Sunday edition, The Sunday Herald. Four years later, this was merged with the newly acquired Sun newspaper to create The Sun-Herald, in 1995, the company launched the newspapers web edition smh. com. au. The site has grown to include interactive and multimedia features beyond the content in the print edition. Around the same time, the organisation moved from Jones Street to new offices at Darling Park and built a new printing press at Chullora, the SMH has since moved with other Sydney Fairfax divisions to a building at Darling Island. In May 2007, Fairfax Media announced it would be moving from a format to the smaller compact or tabloid-size, in the footsteps of The Times. Fairfax Media dumped these plans later in the year, however, in June 2012, Fairfax Media again announced it planned to shift both broadsheet newspapers to tabloid size, in March 2013. Fairfax also announced it would cut staff across the group by 1,900 over three years and erect paywalls around the papers websites. The subscription type is to be a model, limiting readers to a number of free stories per month, with a payment required for further access. In July 2013 it was announced that the SMHs news director, Darren Goodsir, would become Editor-in-Chief, on 22 February 2014, the final Saturday edition was produced in broadsheet format with this too converted to compact format on 1 March 2014. Ahead of the decommissioning of the plant at Chullora in June 2014
28.
JSTOR
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JSTOR is a digital library founded in 1995. Originally containing digitized back issues of journals, it now also includes books and primary sources. It provides full-text searches of almost 2,000 journals, more than 8,000 institutions in more than 160 countries have access to JSTOR, most access is by subscription, but some older public domain content is freely available to anyone. William G. Bowen, president of Princeton University from 1972 to 1988, JSTOR originally was conceived as a solution to one of the problems faced by libraries, especially research and university libraries, due to the increasing number of academic journals in existence. Most libraries found it prohibitively expensive in terms of cost and space to maintain a collection of journals. By digitizing many journal titles, JSTOR allowed libraries to outsource the storage of journals with the confidence that they would remain available long-term, online access and full-text search ability improved access dramatically. Bowen initially considered using CD-ROMs for distribution, JSTOR was initiated in 1995 at seven different library sites, and originally encompassed ten economics and history journals. JSTOR access improved based on feedback from its sites. Special software was put in place to make pictures and graphs clear, with the success of this limited project, Bowen and Kevin Guthrie, then-president of JSTOR, wanted to expand the number of participating journals. They met with representatives of the Royal Society of London and an agreement was made to digitize the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society dating from its beginning in 1665, the work of adding these volumes to JSTOR was completed by December 2000. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funded JSTOR initially, until January 2009 JSTOR operated as an independent, self-sustaining nonprofit organization with offices in New York City and in Ann Arbor, Michigan. JSTOR content is provided by more than 900 publishers, the database contains more than 1,900 journal titles, in more than 50 disciplines. Each object is identified by an integer value, starting at 1. In addition to the site, the JSTOR labs group operates an open service that allows access to the contents of the archives for the purposes of corpus analysis at its Data for Research service. This site offers a facility with graphical indication of the article coverage. Users may create focused sets of articles and then request a dataset containing word and n-gram frequencies and they are notified when the dataset is ready and may download it in either XML or CSV formats. The service does not offer full-text, although academics may request that from JSTOR, JSTOR Plant Science is available in addition to the main site. The materials on JSTOR Plant Science are contributed through the Global Plants Initiative and are only to JSTOR
29.
OCLC
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The Online Computer Library Center is a US-based nonprofit cooperative organization dedicated to the public purposes of furthering access to the worlds information and reducing information costs. It was founded in 1967 as the Ohio College Library Center, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat, the largest online public access catalog in the world. OCLC is funded mainly by the fees that libraries have to pay for its services, the group first met on July 5,1967 on the campus of the Ohio State University to sign the articles of incorporation for the nonprofit organization. The group hired Frederick G. Kilgour, a former Yale University medical school librarian, Kilgour wished to merge the latest information storage and retrieval system of the time, the computer, with the oldest, the library. The goal of network and database was to bring libraries together to cooperatively keep track of the worlds information in order to best serve researchers and scholars. The first library to do online cataloging through OCLC was the Alden Library at Ohio University on August 26,1971 and this was the first occurrence of online cataloging by any library worldwide. Membership in OCLC is based on use of services and contribution of data, between 1967 and 1977, OCLC membership was limited to institutions in Ohio, but in 1978, a new governance structure was established that allowed institutions from other states to join. In 2002, the structure was again modified to accommodate participation from outside the United States. As OCLC expanded services in the United States outside of Ohio, it relied on establishing strategic partnerships with networks, organizations that provided training, support, by 2008, there were 15 independent United States regional service providers. OCLC networks played a key role in OCLC governance, with networks electing delegates to serve on OCLC Members Council, in early 2009, OCLC negotiated new contracts with the former networks and opened a centralized support center. OCLC provides bibliographic, abstract and full-text information to anyone, OCLC and its member libraries cooperatively produce and maintain WorldCat—the OCLC Online Union Catalog, the largest online public access catalog in the world. WorldCat has holding records from public and private libraries worldwide. org, in October 2005, the OCLC technical staff began a wiki project, WikiD, allowing readers to add commentary and structured-field information associated with any WorldCat record. The Online Computer Library Center acquired the trademark and copyrights associated with the Dewey Decimal Classification System when it bought Forest Press in 1988, a browser for books with their Dewey Decimal Classifications was available until July 2013, it was replaced by the Classify Service. S. The reference management service QuestionPoint provides libraries with tools to communicate with users and this around-the-clock reference service is provided by a cooperative of participating global libraries. OCLC has produced cards for members since 1971 with its shared online catalog. OCLC commercially sells software, e. g. CONTENTdm for managing digital collections, OCLC has been conducting research for the library community for more than 30 years. In accordance with its mission, OCLC makes its research outcomes known through various publications and these publications, including journal articles, reports, newsletters, and presentations, are available through the organizations website. The most recent publications are displayed first, and all archived resources, membership Reports – A number of significant reports on topics ranging from virtual reference in libraries to perceptions about library funding
30.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
31.
Project Gutenberg
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Project Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks. It was founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart and is the oldest digital library, most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books. The project tries to make these as free as possible, in long-lasting, as of 3 October 2015, Project Gutenberg reached 50,000 items in its collection. The releases are available in plain text but, wherever possible, other formats are included, such as HTML, PDF, EPUB, MOBI, most releases are in the English language, but many non-English works are also available. There are multiple affiliated projects that are providing additional content, including regional, Project Gutenberg is also closely affiliated with Distributed Proofreaders, an Internet-based community for proofreading scanned texts. Project Gutenberg was started by Michael Hart in 1971 with the digitization of the United States Declaration of Independence, Hart, a student at the University of Illinois, obtained access to a Xerox Sigma V mainframe computer in the universitys Materials Research Lab. Through friendly operators, he received an account with an unlimited amount of computer time. Hart has said he wanted to back this gift by doing something that could be considered to be of great value. His initial goal was to make the 10,000 most consulted books available to the public at little or no charge and this particular computer was one of the 15 nodes on ARPANET, the computer network that would become the Internet. Hart believed that computers would one day be accessible to the general public and he used a copy of the United States Declaration of Independence in his backpack, and this became the first Project Gutenberg e-text. He named the project after Johannes Gutenberg, the fifteenth century German printer who propelled the movable type printing press revolution, by the mid-1990s, Hart was running Project Gutenberg from Illinois Benedictine College. More volunteers had joined the effort, all of the text was entered manually until 1989 when image scanners and optical character recognition software improved and became more widely available, which made book scanning more feasible. Hart later came to an arrangement with Carnegie Mellon University, which agreed to administer Project Gutenbergs finances, as the volume of e-texts increased, volunteers began to take over the projects day-to-day operations that Hart had run. Starting in 2004, an online catalog made Project Gutenberg content easier to browse, access. Project Gutenberg is now hosted by ibiblio at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Italian volunteer Pietro Di Miceli developed and administered the first Project Gutenberg website and started the development of the Project online Catalog. In his ten years in this role, the Project web pages won a number of awards, often being featured in best of the Web listings, Hart died on 6 September 2011 at his home in Urbana, Illinois at the age of 64. In 2000, a corporation, the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Long-time Project Gutenberg volunteer Gregory Newby became the foundations first CEO, also in 2000, Charles Franks founded Distributed Proofreaders, which allowed the proofreading of scanned texts to be distributed among many volunteers over the Internet
32.
First voyage of James Cook
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The first voyage of James Cook was a combined Royal Navy and Royal Society expedition to the south Pacific Ocean aboard HMS Endeavour, from 1768 to 1771. It was the first of three Pacific voyages of which Cook was the commander, the aims of this first expedition were to observe the 1769 transit of Venus across the Sun, and to seek evidence of the postulated Terra Australis Incognita or unknown southern land. The voyage was commissioned by King George III and commanded by Lieutenant James Cook, departing from Plymouth-Dock in August 1768, the expedition crossed the Atlantic, rounded Cape Horn and reached Tahiti in time to observe the transit of Venus. In September 1769 the expedition reached New Zealand, being the second Europeans to visit there, Cook and his crew spent the following six months charting the New Zealand coast, before resuming their voyage westward across open sea. In April 1770 they became the first Europeans to reach the east coast of Australia, making landfall at Point Hicks, the expedition continued northward along the Australian coastline, narrowly avoiding shipwreck on the Great Barrier Reef. In October 1770 the badly damaged Endeavour came into the port of Batavia in the Dutch East Indies and they resumed their journey on 26 December, rounded the Cape of Good Hope on 13 March 1771, and reached the English port of Deal on 12 July. The voyage lasted almost three years, the year following his return Cook set out on a second voyage of the Pacific, which lasted from 1772 to 1775. His third and final voyage lasted from 1776 to 1779, the Royal Society suggested command be given to Scottish geographer Alexander Dalrymple, whose acceptance was conditional on a brevet commission as a captain in the Royal Navy. However, First Lord of the Admiralty Edward Hawke refused, going so far as to say he would cut off his right hand than give command of a Navy vessel to someone not educated as a seaman. The impasse was broken when the Admiralty proposed James Cook, an officer with a background in mathematics. Acceptable to both parties, Cook was promoted to Lieutenant and named as commander of the expedition, the vessel chosen by the Admiralty for the voyage was a merchant collier named Earl of Pembroke, launched in June 1764 from the coal and whaling port of Whitby in North Yorkshire. She was ship-rigged and sturdily built with a broad, flat bow, a square stern, a flat-bottomed design made her well-suited to sailing in shallow waters and allowed her to be beached for loading and unloading of cargo and for basic repairs without requiring a dry dock. Her hull was sheathed and caulked, and a third internal deck installed to provide cabins, a longboat, pinnace and yawl were provided as ships boats, as well as a set of 28 ft sweeps to allow the ship to be rowed if becalmed or demasted. Alcohol supplies consisted of 250 barrels of beer,44 barrels of brandy and 17 barrels of rum, on 30 July 1768 the Admiralty authorised a ships company for the voyage, of 73 sailors and 12 Royal Marines. The voyage was commanded by 40-year-old Lieutenant James Cook and his second lieutenant was Zachary Hicks, a 29-year-old from Stepney with experience as acting commander of the Hornet, a 16-gun cutter. The third lieutenant was John Gore, a 16-year Naval veteran who had served as mate aboard HMS Dolphin during its circumnavigation of the world in 1766. Other notable people on the expedition include the official astronomer, Charles Green, then assistant to the Astronomer Royal, Joseph Banks had been appointed to the voyage as the official botanist. Banks funded seven others to him, a Swedish naturalist Daniel Solander
33.
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
34.
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
35.
HMS Adventure (1771)
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HMS Adventure was a barque that the Royal Navy purchased in 1771. She had been the merchant vessel Marquis of Rockingham, launched in 1770 at Whitby, in naval service she sailed with Resolution on James Cooks second expedition to the Pacific in 1772–1775. She was the first ship to circumnavigate the globe from west to east, after her return she served as a store ship until 1779. The navy sold her in 1783 and she resumed a civilian career and she was lost in May 1811. She began her career as the North Sea collier Marquis of Rockingham and he arranged for the Navy to purchase two ships, the second and smaller of which was Marquis of Rockingham. The Navy purchased her in 1771 and first named her Raleigh or Rayleigh, the Navy commissioned her under Joseph Shank. Cook was given the command of Resolution, with Commander Tobias Furneaux accompanying him in Adventure, Furneaux was an experienced explorer, having served on Samuel Walliss circumnavigation in Dolphin in 1766–1768. Resolution and Adventure left Plymouth on 13 July 1772 and on 17 January 1773 were the first European ships to cross the Antarctic Circle. On 8 February 1773 the two became separated in a fog and Furneaux directed Adventure towards the prearranged meeting point of Queen Charlotte Sound. On the way to the rendezvous, Adventure surveyed the southern and eastern coasts of Tasmania, Furneaux made the earliest British chart of this shore, but as he did not enter Bass Strait he assumed Tasmania to be part of Australia. Most of his names here survive, Cook, visiting this shore-line on his voyage, confirmed Furneauxs account and delineation of it. Adventure arrived at Queen Charlotte Sound on 7 May 1773 and Resolution followed on 17 May, from June to October the two ships explored the southern Pacific, reaching Tahiti on 15 August, where Omai of Raiatea embarked on Adventure. After calling at Tonga in the Friendly Islands the ships returned to New Zealand but were separated by a storm on 22 October and this time the rendezvous at Queen Charlotte Sound was missed — Resolution departed on 26 November, four days before Adventure arrived. Cook had left a message buried in the setting out his plan to explore the South Pacific. Furneaux decided to home and buried a reply to that effect. Before he could leave, a fight out between Adventures crew and the local Māori people, in which ten crewmen and two Māoris were killed. This was reportedly prompted by a breach of tapu by a sailor. Lieutenant John Hallum recommissioned Adventure in March 1775 and he sailed for North America on 26 June 1775
36.
HMS Discovery (1774)
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HMS Discovery was the consort ship of James Cooks third expedition to the Pacific Ocean in 1776–1780. Like Cooks other ships, Discovery was a Whitby-built collier originally named Diligence when she was built in 1774, purchased in 1775, the vessel was measured at 299 tons burthen. Originally a brig, Cook had her changed to a full rigged ship and she was commanded by Charles Clerke, who had previously served on Cooks first two expeditions, and had a complement of 70. When Cook was killed in a skirmish with natives of Hawaii, Clerke transferred to the expeditions flagship HMS Resolution and she then became a dockyard craft at Woolwich, and was broken up at Chatham Dockyard in October 1797. European and American voyages of scientific exploration Kidnapping of Kalaniʻōpuʻu by Captain James Cook Colledge, J. J. Warlow, Ships of the Royal Navy, The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy. Rif Winfield, British Warships in the Age of Sail, 1714-1792, the Life of Captain James Cook. Ships of the World entry Digitised copies of the logs of HMS Discovery
37.
HMS Resolution (1771)
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She impressed him enough that he called her the ship of my choice, and the fittest for service of any I have seen. Resolution began her career as the North Sea collier Marquis of Granby, launched at Whitby in 1770 and she was originally registered as HMS Drake, but fearing this would upset the Spanish, she was soon renamed Resolution, on 25 December 1771. Her armament consisted of 12 6-pounder guns and 12 swivel guns, at his own expense Cook had brass door-hinges installed in the great cabin. However, in sea trials the ship was found to be top-heavy, banks subsequently refused to travel under the resulting adverse conditions and Johann Reinhold Forster and his son, George, replaced him. Resolution departed Sheerness on 21 June 1772, carrying 118 people, including 20 volunteers who had sailed on Cooks first voyage in HMS Endeavour in 1768–1771 and she joined HMS Adventure at Plymouth and the two ships departed English waters on 13 July 1772. Resolutions first port of call was at Funchal in the Madeira Islands, which she reached on 1 August. The ship was reprovisioned with fresh water, beef, fruit and onions, several of the crew had brought monkeys aboard as pets, but Cook had them thrown overboard to prevent their droppings from fouling the ship. Kendalls K1 was remarkably accurate and was to prove to be most efficient in determining longitude on board Resolution, on 17 January 1773, Resolution was the first ship to cross the Antarctic Circle and crossed twice more on the voyage. The third crossing, on 3 February 1774, was the most southerly penetration, Resolution thus proved Alexander Dalrymples Terra Australis Incognita to be a myth. She returned to Britain in 1775 and was paid off. She arrived back in Britain on 4 October 1780, in 1780, Resolution was converted into an armed transport and sailed for the East Indies in March 1781. Sphinx and Annibal of Suffrens squadron captured Resolution on 9 June 1782, after the action at Negapatam on 6 July 1782, Resolution sailed to Manila for wood, biscuit and rigging, and to press any seaman she found there. She then sailed on 22 July 1782 and was never seen again, on 5 June 1783 de Suffren wrote that Resolution had last been seen in the Sunda Strait, and that he suspected she had either foundered or fallen into the hands of the English. An item from the Melbourne Argus,25 February 1879, said that she ended her days as a Portuguese coal-hulk at Rio de Janeiro, alternatively, in 1789 she may have been renamed Général Conway, in November 1790 Amis Réunis, and in 1792 Liberté. She settled to the bottom just a mile from Endeavour, european and American voyages of scientific exploration Beaglehole, J. C. ed. The Journals of Captain James Cook on His Voyages of Discovery II, I, The Voyage of the Resolution and Adventure 1772–1775. Ships of the Royal Navy, The Complete Record of all Fighting Ships of the Royal Navy, dugard, Martin Farther Than Any Man The Rise and Fall of Captain James Cook, Washington Square Press. Paine, Lincoln P Ships of the World, an Historical Encyclopedia, Houghton Mifflin
38.
William Bligh
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Vice admiral William Bligh FRS RN was an officer of the British Royal Navy and a colonial administrator. Fifteen years after the Bounty mutiny, he was appointed Governor of New South Wales in Australia and his actions directed against the trade resulted in the so-called Rum Rebellion, during which Bligh was again placed under arrest and deposed from his command. William Bligh was born on 9 September 1754 but it is not clear where. It is likely that he was born in Plymouth, Devon, as he was baptised at St Andrews Church, Plymouth on 4 October 1754, Blighs ancestral home of Tinten Manor in St Tudy near Bodmin, Cornwall, is also a possibility. Blighs mother, Jane Pearce, was a widow who married Francis at the age of 40. Bligh was signed for the Royal Navy at age seven, at a time when it was common to sign on a young gentleman simply to gain, or at least record, the experience at sea required for a commission. In 1770, at age 16, he joined HMS Hunter as an able seaman and he became a midshipman early in the following year. In September 1771, Bligh was transferred to the Crescent and remained on the ship for three years, Bligh returned to England at the end of 1780 and was able to give details of Cooks last voyage. Bligh married Elizabeth Betham, daughter of a collector, on 4 February 1781. The wedding took place at nearby Onchan, a few days later, he was appointed to serve on HMS Belle Poule as master. Soon after this, in August 1781, he fought in the Battle of Dogger Bank under Admiral Parker, for the next 18 months, he was a lieutenant on various ships. He also fought with Lord Howe at Gibraltar in 1782, between 1783 and 1787, Bligh was a captain in the merchant service. Like many lieutenants, he would have found employment in the Navy, however. In 1787, Bligh was selected as commander of Bounty and he rose eventually to the rank of vice admiral in the Royal Navy. William Blighs naval career involved various appointments and assignments and he first rose to prominence as Master of Resolution, under the command of Captain Cook. Bligh received praise from Cook during what would be the final voyage. Bligh served on three of the ships from Fletcher Christians naval career. In the early 1780s, while in the merchant service, Bligh became acquainted with a man named Fletcher Christian
Kingdom of Great Britain
British Empire
Royal Navy
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