Mediating Cultural Memory in Britain and Ireland


Book Description

The first book to analyze the interplay of cultural memory, politics and the changing media ecology of early eighteenth-century Britain.




The Darien Disaster


Book Description

In 1698 the Parliament of Scotland, in one of its last acts before the nation lost its political identity, decided to establish a noble trading company and settle a colony. The site chosen for the colony was Darien on the Isthmus of Panama. Three years later the "noble undertaking", crippled by the quarrelsome stupidity of its leaders, deliberately obstructed by the English Government, and opposed in arms of Spain, had ended in stunning disaster. Nine fine ships owned by the Company had been sunk, burnt or abandoned. Over two thousand men, women and children who went to the fever-ridden colony never returned.




Darien Exploring Expedition


Book Description

This is the story of exploration - Exploration in all the glory of isolation and starvation. There is something inexpressibly mournful in the detached sentences, entered by a weak and half-starved man in his journal. The absence of all attempt at description; the resigned, almost humble, way of recording their sufferings and their steadily-increasing prostration, are more touching than the most elaborate narrative. Tuesday, March 14. Left camp at 7.30 A.M. After marching about half an hour, Edward Lombard (seaman), who had delayed the party very much yesterday, threw himself on the ground, declared his utter inability to proceed, and begged to be left to his fate. He had made the same request every day for several days previous. "After much persuasion, Mr. Truxton led him along, allowing him to throw away his blanket and other effects. Among other reasons for refusing his request was the fear that he would go back and dig up and eat the Granadian commissioner."




Crossing the Darien Gap


Book Description

If you ever plan to travel between North America and South America, you must consider that there is no road. Ten hours southeast of the Panama Canal, the Pan-American Highway penetrates the jungle, shrivels into a footpath and dies. The highway resurrects in Colombia, another continent. But the land between the two countries is a vast and primitive realm. On a map the two ends of the highway appear as two slivers of life, separated by the unknown. Filling this void is a rugged wilderness known as the Darien Rainforest. Because the Darien hinders all contact by land between North America and South America, it has earned the name "the Darien Gap." Yet most travelers never encounter the Darien Gap. When they go to South America they fly or perhaps take a boat. I decided to cross the Darien overland, traversing from Panama to Colombia by foot and riverboat.




The Darien Gap


Book Description

If you want to drive from North America to South America, youll have a hard time when you reach Panamas southernmost province, Darien. The Pan-American Highway ends just sixty miles short of Colombia. This book presents the history of the region.




The Darkest Jungle


Book Description

In 1854, Leiutenant Isaac G Strain, an ambitious American explorer and U S Naval officer, was given command of Cyane, the first ship to voyage to the Darien Gap. Strain was a natural born leader, a wild-haired, wiry-strong frontiersman who had travelled extensively throughout the Southern Hemisphere. Greatly admired, Strain was expected to successfully cross the ithsmus of Central America through the Darien Gap. However, the expedition would prove to be perilous. Armed with fraudulent information about the areas rugged terrain, phony maps and only a small supply of food, Strain and his team of 29 men ventured far from their ship and became lost in this mountainous, steep-banked jungle, full of unfriendly natives that attacked the party. Beaten down by intense heat and days of walking, some of Strain's men contracted lurid mystery diseases, while others, despite the lush vegetation, were slowly starving to death. The situation was grim and Strain beleived that their best bet for survival was for him to force his way down river in search of help. When he did not return after 21 days, the detachment decided to back track and left Strain for dead. But Strain made it back to his men with help, though nine had perished and the rest were delirious. He managed to lead his enfeebled party nearly 200 miles to safety.




31 Days in the Darien


Book Description

The Darien Gap is the ultimate off-road challenge; a two-hundred-mile section of jungle separating Colombia, South America from Panama, Central America.Ride along with Mike Arnold as he shares his five-month experience via a daily journal and pictures as he travels with the group known as the Expedicion de las Americas. His off-road adventure team not only conquered the Darien Gap, they took it further and traveled from the tip of South America to the tip of North America following the Pan-American Highway.




Scotland, Darien and the Atlantic World, 1698-1700


Book Description

The history of a seventeenth-century Scottish trading colony on the Gulf of Darien This book synthesises the rare indigenous voice with newly discovered archival sources in Spain, Jamaica and the United States. The result is a new and expanded chronicle of the Scottish Panamanian initiative. It broadens what we know about the Company of Scotland beyond British history and into its rightful place in the saga of the multinational, tumultuous seventeenth-century Atlantic world. Julie Orr offers an in-depth analysis of the complex sociopolitics into which the Scots recklessly inserted themselves through their choice of Darien for settlement. Entanglement with slave-trading interests; the trial of five expedition participants in Spain; the dispatch of Admiral Benbow to the Caribbean with offers of assistance to Spanish governors; the activities of the Scottish spy Walter Herries; and the unintended diaspora of deserters, prisoners and survivors - all are afforded their rightful place in the story of Scotland's attempt to establish a trading colony on the isthmus of Panama. Julie Orr is an independent scholar who acquired a PhD in history from the University of Dundee following a career in environmental health and science for a series of tribal, state and federal governments.




Darien


Book Description

The Company of Scotland and its attempts to establish the colony of Caledonia on the inhospitable isthmus of Panama in the late seventeenth century is one of the most tragic moments of Scottish history. Devised by William Paterson, the stratagem was to create a major trading station between Europe and the East. It could have been a triumph, but inadequate preparation and organization ensured it was a catastrophe - of the 3000 settlers who set sail in 1688 and 1699, only a handful returned, the rest having succumbed to disease, and the enormous financial loss was a key factor in ensuring union with England in 1707. Based on archive research in the UK and Panama, as well as extensive travelling in Darien itself, John McKendrick explores this fascinating and seminal moment in Scottish history and uncovers fascinating new information from New World archives about the role of the English and Spanish, and about the identities of the settlers themselves.




The Adventurer's Son


Book Description

NATIONAL BESTSELLER "Destined to become an adventure classic." —Anchorage Daily News Hailed as "gripping" (New York Times) and "beautiful" (Washington Post), The Adventurer's Son is Roman Dial’s extraordinary and widely acclaimed account of his two-year quest to unravel the mystery of his son’s disappearance in the jungles of Costa Rica. In the predawn hours of July 10, 2014, the twenty-seven-year-old son of preeminent Alaskan scientist and National Geographic Explorer Roman Dial, walked alone into Corcovado National Park, an untracked rainforest along Costa Rica’s remote Pacific Coast that shelters miners, poachers, and drug smugglers. He carried a light backpack and machete. Before he left, Cody Roman Dial emailed his father: “I am not sure how long it will take me, but I’m planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. I’ll be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever.” They were the last words Dial received from his son. As soon as he realized Cody Roman’s return date had passed, Dial set off for Costa Rica. As he trekked through the dense jungle, interviewing locals and searching for clues—the authorities suspected murder—the desperate father was forced to confront the deepest questions about himself and his own role in the events. Roman had raised his son to be fearless, to be at home in earth’s wildest places, travelling together through rugged Alaska to remote Borneo and Bhutan. Was he responsible for his son’s fate? Or, as he hoped, was Cody Roman safe and using his wilderness skills on a solo adventure from which he would emerge at any moment? Part detective story set in the most beautiful yet dangerous reaches of the planet, The Adventurer’s Son emerges as a far deeper tale of discovery—a journey to understand the truth about those we love the most. The Adventurer’s Son includes fifty black-and-white photographs.