Geography as Genealogy
I was particularly pleased with this article. I had been following up some of my wife's ancestors, and discovered that two of them were sailors on HMS Basilisk on a trip to Australia and New Guinea between 1870 and 1874. Research at the Caird Library at Greenwich, showed that an island off the eastern coast of New Guinea had been named after one of them. Furthermore, Paples Island exists still, and can be found using a simple Google search.
Click the link below to download a pdf of a slightly edited version of the piece, © 2012, Wiltshire Family History Magazine and the author.
I was particularly pleased with this article. I had been following up some of my wife's ancestors, and discovered that two of them were sailors on HMS Basilisk on a trip to Australia and New Guinea between 1870 and 1874. Research at the Caird Library at Greenwich, showed that an island off the eastern coast of New Guinea had been named after one of them. Furthermore, Paples Island exists still, and can be found using a simple Google search.
Click the link below to download a pdf of a slightly edited version of the piece, © 2012, Wiltshire Family History Magazine and the author.
| geography_as_genealogy.pdf |
Update added March 2018... Captain Moresby's book, Discoveries and Surveys in New Guinea, available as a free download in Google Books, contains a map in the appendix of eastern New Guinea with all of his discoveries of new islands etc marked in red. A cursory glance shows a number of other members of his crew honoured with features named after them.