The engagement with the ocean in eighteenth-century maritime journals

What is it about?

The journals of Pacific exploration by the mariners John Byron, Samuel Wallis, Philip Carteret and James Cook were part of a changing imaginative engagement and understanding of the ocean in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

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Why is it important?

Most previous studies of voyage narratives have focussed on the terrestrial encounters. With an ocean-centred focus this article is situated within the Blue Humanities or Ocean Studies and helps enlarge our understanding of the engagement with the ocean in the eighteenth century and its place in the European cultural imagination.