Friday 8 September 2017

ballast and binnacle

An 1815 travel guide to Madeira and the Caribbean is illustrated with a series of supplemental plates that contain sort of a first-mate’s log and the account of parallel trade voyage pictographically—with hieroglyphs, as the author states. These little drawings that capture the day’s events (or lack thereof) is a rather a novel story-telling device for the time and of course prefigure the idea of scripting oneself in emoji. Be sure to visit Public Domain Review at the link above to browse the full volume and to discover more antiquarian delights.