Galathea (ship, 1831)
 Detail from a painting by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
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The Galathea was a Danish corvette that made the first Danish circumnavigation of the world in the 19th century . Two other Danish research trips with ships are named after the ship, which were carried out in the 20th and 21st centuries. All these Galatea - expeditions went around the Earth.
The ship
The Galathea was a corvette rigged as a full ship , 43 meters long, 10.2 meters wide and 4.5 meters draft . She was built in 1831 at Gammelholm Marine Shipyard in Copenhagen for the Royal Danish Navy . After circumnavigating the world from 1845 to 1847, she took part in the first Schleswig-Holstein War and was later used as a guard ship in Øresund .
The ship was decommissioned in 1861, sold to the trading company Mohr & Kjær in 1862, who converted it into a merchant ship. It was lost off the Algerian coast in 1889 .
Circumnavigation 1845 to 1847
On May 14, 1845, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences received a letter from King Christian VIII. Friedrich , in which he formulated the goals of an expedition. He had decided to send the Corvette Galathea to the East Indian Islands and the Nicobar Islands , over which Denmark held sovereignty at the time, in order to conduct studies there on the products of these islands and their use for cultivation and trade.
The Galathea began her research trip under the leadership of Captain Steen Andersen Bille (1797-1883). Bille later became Minister of the Navy under changing governments. On board were 231 sailors and scientists, 36 cannons and provisions for a year. Scientists included the doctor and botanist Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen (1814–1887), the botanist Bernhard Casper Kamphøvener (1813–1846), the entomologist Carl Emil Kellerup (1822–1908), the geologist Hinrich Johannes Rink (1819–1893) and the zoologists Wilhelm Behn (1808–1878) and Johannes Theodor Reinhardt (1816–1882), but not all of them stayed for the duration of the trip, as well as draftsman Johan Christian Thornam (1822–1908) and genre painter Poul August Plum (1815–1876) ). The budget for the expedition was half a million Reichstaler, about three percent of the annual state income.
The Galathea left Copenhagen on June 24, 1845. After a brief stop in Madeira from July 21 to 27, the ship sailed around Africa towards India , where they anchored in Tranquebar , Pondicherry , Madras and Calcutta . In Calcutta an additional ship, the steamship Ganges , was acquired to support the planned tasks on the Nicobar Islands . There was intensive scientific work there. The expedition spent January 1846 on the northern Nicobar Islands and February on the southern Nicobar Islands.
The Galathea continued its journey to Southeast Asia. They called at Penang , Singapore , Batavia and Manila before visiting the Chinese coast and Hong Kong , Macau , Canton , Amoy and Shanghai . The attempt to anchor in Japan was rejected by the authorities there. The ship then crossed the Pacific Ocean . The Hawaiian Islands and Tahiti , Valparaíso , Callao and Lima were visited on October 5, 1846 . Then you circled Cape Horn . From here one drove to Buenos Aires , Montevideo , Rio de Janeiro and Bahia . Eventually the Galathea sailed back to Denmark and anchored in the port of Copenhagen on August 24, 1847.
In the course of the voyage, 20 Danish sailors were killed, several were released or left the expedition. The expedition brought back 93 containers with zoological, botanical and geological objects as well as 21 boxes of ethnographic material.
literature
- Wilhelm Hermann Nopitsch: Commercial reports, collected on a trip around the world with the war Corvette Galathea, in the years 1845, 46 and 47. Besser & Mauke, Hamburg 1849, digitized .
- Steen Anderson Bille: Report on the journey of the Corvette Galathea around the world in the years 1845, 46 and 47. 2 volumes, Copenhagen / Leipzig 1852, vol. 1 digitized , vol. 2 digitized
- Søren Koustrup: Galatheas Forunderlige Rejse. Jorden Rundt: 1845–1847 . Lindhardt og Ringhof, 2006, ISBN 87-614-0449-7 .
- Thorkild Sandbeck: Danske havforskningsskibe gennem 250 år Skib Forlag, Stenstrup 2007, ISBN 87-90374-36-3 .
- Martin Krieger: The “Galathea” in Calcutta. Nature research and colonial power , in: Oliver Auge, Martin Göllnitz (Hrsg.): With thirst for research and adventure. Expeditions and research trips from Kiel scientists. Frankfurt am Main 2017, pp. 23–36.
Web links
- Route of the Galathea
- Data and illustration on Danish Naval History (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Johnny E. Balsved: Danish naval history - GALATHEA (1833-1861) ( Memento of the original from November 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Jens Munk and Carsten Niebuhr: Historical perspective ( Memento of the original from March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Dansk Ekspeditionsfond, Videnskabsministerie
- ↑ Report on the journey of the Corvette Galathea around the world in the years 1845, 46 and 47 (1852)
- ^ Statewide County HI Archives News. Hawai'i Chronology and The United States - Part 5. June 3, (2008)
- ↑ Galathea 3: Route of Galathea . ( Memento of the original from July 5, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Anne Fox Maule: An account of the botanical studies and collections of the two "Galathea" expeditions ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Botanisk Tidsskrift . 69: 167-205, 1974.
