Forbes, James, 1749-1819, James Forbes letter, Cochin, 1766 January 30, copied between 1794 and 1800
- Call Number:
- Folio A 2023 69
- Creator:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819
- Title(s):
- James Forbes letter, Cochin, 1766 January 30
- Date:
- copied between 1794 and 1800
- Classification:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Series:
- Series I: A voyage from England to Bombay with descriptions in Asia, Africa, and South America
- Part of Collection:
- volume 1, page 231-241
- Provenance:
- Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection
- Conditions Governing Access:
- The materials are open for research.
- Conditions Governing Use:
- The collection is the physical property of the Yale Center for British Art. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts.
- Scope and Content:
- Forbes’s fourth letter, written from Cochin (Kochi) on the Malabar Coast, depicts his voyage from Brazil to the Indian subcontinent. His time at sea is an eventful one—the narrative touches on the natural history of the Atlantic Ocean, the piety of his fellow sailors, and the perils of maritime travel. Unwilling to add to the delays incurred by the stay in Brazil, the ship’s crew decides to skirt the Dutch settlements at the Cape of Good Hope, instead making directly for India. Cape Town, established by the Dutch in the seventeenth century, played a central role in both the Atlantic and Indian Ocean worlds: it brought together merchants, enslaved people, and travelers, like Forbes, from across multiple hemispheres and empires. Unable, however, to convey any information about this nearby outpost, Forbes turns his attention to the life in the sea and aboard the ship. Sharks occupy a considerable amount of attention: he conveys both their size, appearance, and so on, but also their place within the sailor’s imagination. They have, he writes, “a peculiar relish for human flesh” and that, “many a poor sailor has been divided by these monsters, when swimming near the ship: his dreadful shrieks have reached his terrified companions…” Forbes likewise describes fire aboard the ship, the most dangerous catastrophe one could conceivably encounter at sea. And yet it’s disease that proves the deadliest for his shipmates. Forbes depicts the effects of scurvy—“the last stage seems to be a total putrefaction”—and the funerals for dead sailors: “There is something peculiarly solemn in a funeral on board a ship, when the body is consigned to the fathomless abyss.” He notes the rarity with which one sees the entirety of the ship together for worship, and yet laments the incessant, almost daily, necessity of these rituals as the ship travelled between Africa and India. The sight of land—the Malabar Coast in southwest India—marks the end of these various trials. The ship anchors at Cochin, a onetime Portuguese settlement, then under control of the Dutch, which would, by 1814, fall under control of the British Empire. Forbes promises more news once he reaches Bombay. Content is paraphrased on pages 8-13 of <title>Oriental Memoirs</title>, volume 1. Bibliography: Ward, Kerry. “‘Tavern of the Seas?’ The Cape of Good Hope as an Oceanic Crossroads during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries.” <title>Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges</title> (2007): 137-52. Vink, Markus. “‘The World’s Oldest Trade’: Dutch Slavery and Slave Trade in the Indian Ocean in the Seventeenth Century.” <title>Journal of World History</title> vol. 14 no. 2 (June 2003): 131-177.
- Physical Description:
- 10 pages
- Genre:
- Correspondence , Botanical illustrations, Ornithological illustrations, Travel sketches, Maps, Watercolors (paintings), Drawings (visual works), Engravings (prints), and Portraits
- Subject Terms:
- Forbes, James, 1749-1819. Descriptive letters and drawingsForbes, James, 1749-1819. Oriental memoirs
- Associated Places:
- EnglandItalyScotlandWales
- Associated People/Groups:
- East India CompanyForbes, James, 1749-1819
- Finding Aid Title:
- James Forbes archive
- Archival Object:
- https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199310
- Metadata Cloud URL:
- https://metadata-api.library.yale.edu/metadatacloud/api/aspace/repositories/3/archival_objects/3199310?mediaType=json&include-notes=1&include-all-subjects=1