Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16329

    Drawing of a fish from Bermuda

    Date
    1699-1700
    Creator
    Edmond Halley (1656 - 1742, British) , Astronomer
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p1
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (paper): 335mm
    width (paper): 209mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Zoology
          > Ichthyology
    Content object
    nature
       > animal
          > fish
    nature
    Description
    Side view of an unidentified fish, inscribed above in pencil: 'A Fish Taken in the Latitude of 36 degrees NE 6N from Bermudas following an old mast overgrown with Barnacles.'

    This is one of a set of sketches Edmond Halley made during his voyage to the South Atlantic as Captain of the Paramore (September 1699 to September 1700), which was tasked to take readings of the variations of the magnetic needle in the Atlantic Ocean to improve navigation (Alan H. Cook, Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 256-91).

    Halley arrived in the Bermudas in June 1700. See The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore, 1698-1701, ed. by J. Norman and W. Thrower, 2 vols (London: Hakluyt Society, 1981), I, 198-200.

    On his return, Halley submitted his sketches to a meeting of the Royal Society on 6 November 1700. They were placed in the Repository.
    Transcription
    A Fish Taken in the Latitude of 36o
    NE 6N from Bermudas following an old
    mast overgrown with Barnacles
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    At the meeting of the Royal Society on 6 November 1700, '[Captain Halley] produced several sketches of fishes, and of the Batavian Islands, for which he was thanked, and the sketches ordered to be put into the Repository. The fishes were of two sorts of flying fish &c.' (JBO/10/198).
    Related fellows
    Edmond Halley (1656 - 1742, British) , Astronomer
    Associated place
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