Translators in Motion

In the age of cheap air travel, a journey that takes more than a day is considered to be grueling. When I worked at the National University of Singapore, I remember vividly the "ordeal" of spending 23 hours traveling from there back to Boston via first Tokyo and then Chicago once a year to visit family and friends.

Nineteenth-century Chinese translators, especially those working before the age of steam, spent a lot more time getting to and from Southeast Asia, Canton, and then later Hong Kong and the other treaty ports. A typical voyage by sail took several months. This meant that translators who worked for extended periods in East and Southeast Asia sometimes spent years of their lives living aboard vessels of various sizes and descriptions, subject to the mercy of the waves and the whims of the captain.

Ships often encountered severe weather. Pictured below is the Royal Charter, which in 1859 traveled all the way from Queensland to the Irish Sea, only to encounter the worst storm of the century and be driven ashore on the rocks with loss of 450 lives aboard.

Item is held by John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It is difficult for us today to imagine what life on board such sailing ships was like; there are very few left today. Below is a replica of the Swedish ship Götheborg. The original was completed in 1738 and used in the Swedish China trade. It had a crew of 145 men and a tonnage (cargo capacity) of 830 t, or 1.8 million pounds. On its third journey home in 1745 the original ship sank just outside its home port after striking a rock. The replica made a successful round-trip voyage to China in 2005-2007. See the wikipedia entry Gotheborg for more details.

Dining area in replica of the Swedish ship Götheborg. Imagine trying to eat while the ship was pitching and yawing!

Below are maps, an hourglass, and a book that seems to be an early Swedish-Chinese dictionary, in which the Chinese characters are grouped by pronunciation.

For the current project, we have tried to find as much information as possible about how translators spent their time during the long voyages. Luckily, some of them kept diaries, for example the young George Thomas Staunton, traveling with his father, Sir George Leonard Macartney, as part of Lord Macartney's mission to China in 1793.

The Stauntons left their family home on 15 September 1792 for Portsmouth, where they boarded the Hindostan (also spelt Hindustan and Indostan in the diary; George wasn’t a very consistent speller!) the next day. However, the ship did not get set sail until 26 September, after waiting for a favorable wind, only then to lose it and have to go ashore again; it is only on 1 October that they get properly underway, and there are numerous places in the journal where the principal topic of discussion is the amount (or lack) of wind, and at one point they spend quite a bit of time tacking back and forth trying to find the trade winds that will take them East from South America (they had been forced to travel to Rio de Janeiro by the winds and then cut across the Atlantic).

Since GT was part of an official embassy, each time they stopped there were formal visits to and by local officials, and GT records several large dinner parties, galas, and fetes in their honor along the way. This doubtless added to the length of the journey. If we take 26 September as the start date, and 19 June 1793, the date of their arrival in Canton as the end of the journey, we find that it was altogether 267 days, or almost nine months!

The embassy was accompanied by two Chinese Catholics who were to act as interpreters and also as Chinese tutor to young George Thomas. On the morning of 17 September he records what may have been his first Chinese lesson. In another place he records his daily routine on the ship, weather permitting:  “from 9 to 10 I had a Chinese lesson and from 11 to 12 another, and from 1 to 2 a Greek lesson, which when over we ?surfaced? for dinner which was at half past 2. after Dinner I had a Chinese lesson, and the rest of the day I had to myself, and so we past away the time from day to day.” In other words, GT spent approximately three hours per day on his Chinese lessons with a tutor, plus perhaps additional time practicing by himself.

Upon first boarding the ship, GT was very interested in the accommodations, noting “Lord Macartney’s cabin, which was large, commodious and well furnished. We then saw my Papa’s and Sir ?---?, which are both of the same size, well enough but small. My cabin is a part of the Parlour ?rendoly? and separated from it by a curtain.” If these were the accommodation offered to a member of an important diplomatic mission, we can imagine that ordinary folk fared much more poorly.

His diary records getting seasick when first setting out, when the seas are particularly rough, and also after every stop at land. Since they landed several times – at Madeira, the Canaries, Rio de Janeiro, and several times in Southeast Asia – he was seasick quite a bit! On one day when the ship was pitching and rolling, he recorded: “Today we rolled terribly, we could hardly eat our dinner, or keep our seats, and at tea time we could but have half cups or it would run over, so each must hold in one hand his plate, and with the other the tea, and at the same time fixing his legs to the table to prevent him from falling backward. Also whenever the ship rolls much the guns and book case make a very unpleaant creaking noise.”

Another item of interest is his description on 8 October of a device for drawing foul air out of the cockpit and blowing in fresh air. Given that no one was bathing – unless in seawater, but that is highly unlikely – improved ventilation in a cramped, damp ship must have been a godsend. 

On Sunday 18 November the ship crossed the equator, and GT details the ceremony that took place, with one of the crew dressed as Neptune and others as his wife and watery retinue initiating those sailors for whom it was the first time crossing. This included collecting money from each member of Lord Macartney’s retinue, as well as sailors who had not yet crossed the equator, and distributing it among the more seasoned crew members, after which the initiates were ducked and shaved with tar. Water was also thrown down on the decks from up in the rigging, and then Lord Neptune proceeded to the quarterdeck, where he presented Lord Macartney with a fish.

GT also notes the occasional flogging of seamen, usually for drunkenly behavior. The first occurs on 26 December, and is the only indication in the journal that Christmas had fallen on the previous day. Then there are two occurrences in January, one on the ninth and two men on the twenty-ninth.  

Barrow took a liking to the boy; GT frequently mentions going ashore with him and observing novel plants, insects, birds, and animals, some of which he describes in great detail. His entry on a “cochineal garden” (8 December) is quite detailed, as is his description of the making of indigo (14 December). These two important dyes, one derived from an insect, the other from a plant, have made a comeback in recent years after concerns about artificial coloring. Cochineal today is used widely in lipstick and other cosmetics, for example. GT also describes the tropical fruits of Indonesia (mangusteens, plantains, and two other fruits I cannot be sure of, but possibly snakefruit and marion plum).

On such long voyages, death was far from uncommon. For the first part of the voyage they seem to have managed well. GT mentions the first death of the trip, a cook, on 28 March 1793, while the expedition was in the Indonesian archipelago. He was soon followed by a carpenter, who was murdered by Malays (29 March), a servant, who died of fever (2 April), a man overboard who drowned (6 April), another who died of fever (7 April), and another who fell from the rigging and drowned (23 April). On 3 May he records that 80 of the sailors on the Lion were sick from the water, and on the next day that one of them had died; another dies a week later (10 May) and then again on 11 May. The journal ends on 17 May, a full month before they arrive in Macau, so we do not have a complete record of mortality, but still there were thirteen deaths between the two ships in the space of less than two months. To me it is striking that two of the deaths were from drowning after falling overboard; one would think that sailors would know how to swim, and the water in that region is relatively warm, so thermal shock should not be an issue.