Voyages

Abstract

Chapter 1 contends that long-distance voyages became increasingly tedious during the nineteenth century as navigational techniques improved and as the novelty of sailing to India and Australia wore off. Whereas in the eighteenth century ships had made frequent stops for water and provisions and to engage in trade, by the nineteenth century voyages to the East were generally made nonstop and out of sight of land for almost the entire distance. Shipboard diaries make clear that the worst part about these journeys was not the storms or cramped cabins, but the boredom of spending day after day out on the water with nothing to break up the monotony. If in the seventeenth and eighteenth century a voyage to India was a treacherous journey into the unknown, by the mid-nineteenth century it had become a cheerless interlude.