Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.16377

    Pilot fish

    Date
    April 1700
    Creator
    Edmond Halley (1656 - 1742, British) , Astronomer
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p49
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 196mm
    width (page): 302mm
    Subject
    Biology
       > Zoology
          > Ichthyology
    Content object
    Description
    Side view of a variety of pilot fish [Naucrates ductor] with inscription: 'A Pilot Fish taken in the Latitude of 10 Degrees South near Cape St Augustine.'

    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- September 1700), which was tasked to take readings of the variations of the magnetic needle in the Atlantic Ocean to improve navigation. (See Alan H. Cook, Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 256-91.)

    Paramore arrived at Pernambuco, Brazil in April 1700 from Trinidad, and must therefore have passed by the Cape of St Augustine, south of Recife. (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, 188-89.)

    On his return, Halley submitted his sketches to a meeting of the Royal Society on 6 November 1700. The sketches were placed in the Repository.
    Transcription
    A Pilot Fish taken in the Latitude of 10 Degrees South near Cape St Augustine
    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.
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > South America
          > Brazil
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