How did people travel these seas 500 years ago
u/AggravatingStable102 â 1 day ago
r/AgeofExploration
âČ 85 r/AgeofExploration
On 9 September 1583, the English adventurer Sir Humphrey Gilbert was offered a chance to escape his ailing vessel, the Squirrel. Gilbert, who was apparently reading Thomas Moreâs Utopia on deck at the time, refused the offer and later went down with his ship.
As the man who âlegalisedâ Englandâs presence in Newfoundland, Sir Humphrey Gilbert could legitimately be seen as the man who founded the English (British) Empire.
In reality, however, Gilbert is more widely known for the circumstances of his death.
On the return journey from Newfoundland to England, Gilbert got into trouble in the Atlantic Ocean, close to the Azores. When the captain of the accompanying ship, the Golden Hind, Edward Hayes, offered to assist Sir Humphrey, he refused the offer, declaring  âWe are as near to heaven by sea, as by land.â
Hayes claims that when Gilbert made this statement, he was reading Thomas Moreâs Utopia, which contains the text âHe that hathe no grave is covered with the skye: and, the way to heaven out of all places is of like length and distance.â
Gilbert went down with his ship, but the manner of his death has remained a legend in maritime history and a symbol of British stoicism in the face of adversity.
(As Ben Lowings argues in a recent Age of Exploration article, however, the story may not be entirely reliable.)
Image: The Last Moments of Sir Humphrey Gilbert (illustration of the sinking of Squirrel, c. 1874)
u/FullyFocusedOnNought â 2 days ago
Rusted cans from the 1854 Royal Navy search expedition led by Edward Belcher in search for Sir John Franklin's lost Arctic expedition; they are still on the grounds of Beechey Island in the Canadian Arctic
u/HaHalolll0 â 6 days ago
I wanted the Wikipedia band-member timeline but for pirates, so I made one
This started because I kept running into a problem where I would read about Blackbeard and then read about Hornigold, and I could never hold in my head who was actually at sea at the same time, who sailed with who, or how short most of these accounts really were.
Wikipedia has those cool horizontal timeline charts for band lineups where you can see at a glance that this guitarist overlapped with that drummer for a couple of years. I wanted that for the golden age, and I couldn't find one, so I made it.
It's 36 entries from Roche Braziliano in 1654 to William Fly in 1726. Each one gets a bar showing the years they were actually on the account, coloured by where they were at, with marks for big events. You can sort the whole thing chronologically, by how long they lasted, or by how it ended for them. There's a map of where each one went, and clicking a name opens a little biography.
On sources, I've tried to be careful about what comes from where. However, i'm certain there are errors in it. If you spot one I'd genuinely rather know. I'm not a historian after all.
u/blackdukewilder â 9 days ago