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Promoting Natural & Cultural History
TYPE: | Image |
DATE: | April 1749 |
ARTIST: | Carl Johan Gethe (1728-1765) |
AUTHOR: | Viveka Hansen. Quotes: Carl Johan Gethe & Pehr Osbeck |
CAT/REF NUMBER: | M 280: Tab. XX & p. 145. |
COLLECTION(S): | Kungliga Biblioteket, Stockholm (National Library of Sweden), Sweden. |
REFERENCE(S): | • ‘Dagbok hållen på Resan till Ost Indien, Begynt den 18 octobr: 1746 och Slutad den 20 Juni 1749’. |
ADDED: | 19/12/2018 |
iFELLOW: | Viveka Hansen |
JOURNALS ETC: | Linnaeus Apostles Global Science & Adventure, Volume 7, Page 199 |
CONTENT: | This coloured illustration of a turtle is part of the East India traveller Carl Johan Gethe’s journal. His description of the animal included thoughts on nutrition for the ship’s crew on the long return journey from Canton [Guangzhou] to Göteborg in Sweden, when the ship reached Ascension Island in April 1749: ‘The turtles as we caught were much larger in size than the ones at Sunda Strait… one single turtle was enough to feed the entire crew of 130 men…’. Gethe’s depiction and notes also being interesting comparisons to the naturalist and East India Company ship’s chaplain Pehr Osbeck’s journal,from the same island three years later he recorded: ‘The largest turtles, or sea-tortoises, have their residence on it, and are sometimes caught by hundreds in one night. The European ships on their return from the East Indies seldom sail by this island without going on shore to catch as many turtles as they want; but they never come in sight of it on their going to those parts…’ (5 April 1752). Osbeck named the species ‘Testudo mydas’ [Chelone mydas] in Latin. |
GEO-LOCATION: | WGS84(-8.00237, -14.34096) |