Just two days ago I was telling you about the mysterious death of an Englishman in China. I mentioned that he worked on a part-time basis for a British outfit called Hakluyt & Co which had been set up by some ex(?)-MI6 officers. I remember pausing for a milisecond over the rather odd name but then shrugged and assumed it was an amalgam of two names, probably the two main directors.
Today, exhausted after finishing the first cut of the year on my patch of the churchyard, I was relaxing and reading my latest book The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England by Ian Mortimer (a 'Five Corker' read!) Mortimer tells of the incredible voyagers of the late 16th century starting, quite rightly, with Francis Drake, the first man to captain a circumnavigation of the globe. As these fantastic travels and explorations took place people began to write about them (my emphasis):
By far the most influential of these is Richard Hakluyt, who publishes "Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America in 1582" and the first edition of his greatest work, "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation", in 1589.
So there you have it! Two mentions of that odd name in two days. Creepy or what?
"Two mentions of that odd name in two days."
Just curious David. When was that "Time Travellers etc" book you're barking on about published?
Posted by: JK | Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 18:00
Click the link, JK, and all will be revealed!
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 18:45
" the first man to captain a circumnavigation of the globe": true but misleading. Have you considered a new career in advertising?
Posted by: dearieme | Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 22:16
The company will probably have been named after the mariner, so it's not quite such a coincidence.
Posted by: Laban Tall | Thursday, 29 March 2012 at 22:43
What do you expect, DM, I was, after all, a second-hand car dealer. Also, I was quoting Mortimer's book and for got to put the inverted commas in - and, yes, I will do the usual hundred lines!
No doubt, Laban, but the coincidence for me was coming across that very odd-sounding name twice in two days.
Posted by: David Duff | Friday, 30 March 2012 at 09:13
What on earth is 'misleading' about "the first man to captain a circumnavigation of the globe"? Magellan died in the Philippines halfway round, while de Loaisa died mid-Pacific, and the suvivors of both those expeditions took ~10 years to get home. Drake led his expedition all the way round, and did it in 3 years. He was unquestionably the first.
I have a beautiful copy of Hakluyt's 'Voyages', so the name's not strange to me, and am just reading 'The Basque History of the World', by Mark Kurlansky. This shows how many of the early pioneers of exploration came from that tiny corner of Spain. Also, for anyone who cares about the Jesuits (and I don't) both Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier were Basques.
Posted by: Webwrights | Friday, 30 March 2012 at 12:18
'The Basque History of the World'
That's what I like about you, 'Webright', you add a touch of real and much needed academia to this blog! And further to Laban's comment, Hakluyt was not actually a mariner himself, he just wrote about people who were mariners. Apparently he spent an enormous amount of time questioning them personally. One dreads to think of the amount of "sherris sack" that was consumed in the process!
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 31 March 2012 at 11:41