Divers Things: Collecting the World under Water

Sloane Hans , A voyage to the islands of Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the natural history of the … last of those islands (2 vols, London, 1707–25), i, table “iiii”, fig. 1, and figs. 2–5; p. lxxx. The image of the jellyfish was executed in the late sixteenth century by the English traveller John White off the coast of the American mainland in the vicinity of the Chesapeake Bay; Sloane later acquired White's design and juxtaposed it with the coral-encrusted objects he himself brought back from Jamaica: Kim Sloan, private communication. On the emblematic quality of this juxtaposition, see Kriz Kay Dian , “Curiosities, commodities, and transplanted bodies in Hans Sloane's ‘Natural History of Jamaica’”, William and Mary quarterly, lvii (2000), 35–78, pp. 53–7.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), ii, pp. viii, 346, and table x, fig. 5.

Delbourgo James , “Slavery in the cabinet of curiosities: Hans Sloane's Atlantic world” (2007), http://www.britishmuseum.org/PDF/Delbourgo%20essay.pdf, accessed September 2010; Ward Estelle Frances , Christopher Monck: Duke of Albemarle (London, 1915); The general contents of the British Museum (London, 1761), 79; Woodward John , Brief instructions for making observations in all parts of the world (London, 1696), 11. On natural and artificial powers of transformation, see Smith Pamela H. Findlen Paula (eds), Merchants and marvels: Commerce, science and art in early modern Europe (London, 2001), and Klein Ursula Spary E. C. (eds), Materials and expertise in early modern Europe: Between market and laboratory (Chicago, 2010). On Sloane's attention to craftsmanship as the link between his natural and artificial curiosities, see Syson Luke , “The ordering of the artificial world: Collecting, classification and progress”, in Sloan Kim Burnett Andrew (eds), Enlightenment: Discovering the world in the eighteenth century (London, 2003), 108–21, p. 111. On the early British Museum, see Goldgar Anne , “The British Museum and the virtual representation of culture in the eighteenth century”, Albion, xxxii (2000), 2000–231.

Taussig Michael , My cocaine museum (Chicago, 2004), 261; Boyle Robert , “Some considerations touching the usefulness of experimental natural philosophy” (1671), in Hunter Michael Davis Edward B. (eds), The works of Robert Boyle (14 vols, London, 2002), vi, 425. There is an enormous literature on collecting and museums. For an introduction, see Hooper-Greenhill Eileen , Museums and the shaping of knowledge (London, 1992). On early modern collections, see Impey Oliver MacGregor Arthur (eds), The origins of museums (Oxford, 1985); Findlen Paula , Possessing nature: Museums, collecting and scientific culture in early modern Italy (Berkeley, 1994); Daston Lorraine Park Katharine , Wonders and the order of nature, 1150–1750 (New York, 1998); Arnold Ken , Cabinets for the curious: Looking back at early English museums (Aldershot, 2006). For recent insights on things in the history of science, see Alder Ken (ed.), “Focus: Thick things”, Isis, xcviii (2007), 2007–142.

Shapin Steven , A social history of truth: Civility and science in seventeenth-century England (Chicago, 1994), 258–66.

Taussig , Cocaine museum (ref. 4), 315. On oceanographic sciences in Verne's era, see Rozwadowski Helen M. , Fathoming the ocean: The discovery and exploration of the deep sea (Cambridge, MA, 2005); on the anthropology of contemporary deep-sea science, see Helmreich Stefan , Alien ocean: Anthropological voyages in microbial seas (Berkeley, 2009). For recent histories that explore the situatedness of early modern natural sciences in long-distance commercial and colonial projects, see Stewart Larry , “Global pillage: Science, commerce and empire”, in Porter Roy (ed.), The Cambridge history of science: Eighteenth-century science (Cambridge, 2003), 825–44; Schiebinger Londa , Plants and empire: Colonial bioprospecting in the Atlantic world (Cambridge, MA, 2004); Schiebinger Londa Swan Claudia (eds)., Colonial botany: Science, commerce, and politics in the early modern world (Philadelphia, 2004); Cañizares-Esguerra Jorge , Nature, empire, and nation: Explorations of the history of science in the Iberian world (Stanford, 2006); Raj Kapil , Relocating modern science: Circulation and the construction of knowledge in South Asia and Europe, 1650–1900 (Basingstoke, 2007); Cook Harold J. , Matters of exchange: Commerce, medicine, and science in the Dutch Golden Age (New Haven, 2007); Delbourgo James Dew Nicholas (eds)., Science and empire in the Atlantic world (London, 2007); Bleichmar Daniela De Vos Paula Juffine Kristin Sheehan Kevin (eds)., Science in the Spanish and Portuguese empires, 1500–1800 (Stanford, 2008); Schaffer Simon Roberts Lissa Raj Kapil Delbourgo James (eds)., The brokered world: Go-betweens and global intelligence, 1770–1820 (Sagamore Beach, MA, 2009); Schaffer Simon , “Newton on the beach: The information order of Principia mathematica”, History of science, xlvii (2009), 2009–76; Roberts Lissa (ed.)., “Science and global history, 1750–1850: Local encounters and global circulation”, Itinerario, xxxiii (2009), 7–95; Sivasundaram Sujit (ed.)., “Focus: Global histories of science”, Isis, ci (2010), 95–158. On curiosity collections' networks, see Harris Steven J. , “Long-distance corporations, big science and the geography of knowledge”, Configurations, vi (1988), 269–304.

On oceanic space as socially constructed rather than a zone of contest over resources considered beyond the realm of the social, see Steinberg Philip E. , The social construction of the ocean (Cambridge, 2001), esp. pp. 89–109.

Pomian Krzysztof , Collectors and curiosities: Paris and Venice, 1500–1800, transl. by Wiles-Portier Elizabeth (Cambridge, 1990), 7–44; Steinberg , Social construction of the ocean (ref. 7), 99; Marx Robert F. , The history of underwater exploration (New York, 1990), 4–6; Gentleman's magazine, xviii (1748), 1748–2.

Marsigli Luigi , Histoire physique de la mer (Amsterdam, 1725); Findlen , Possessing nature (ref. 4), 192–3.

de Beer Gavin , Sir Hans Sloane and the British Museum (London, 1953), 160–1; MacGregor Arthur , “The life, character and career of Sir Hans Sloane”, in MacGregor (ed.), Sir Hans Sloane: Collector, scientist, antiquary, founding father of the British Museum (London, 1994), 28.

For an analysis of the aesthetics and arrangement of eighteenth-century shell collections, see Spary E. C. , “Scientific symmetries”, History of science, lxii (2004), 1–46.

“A poem occasion'd by the viewing Dr Sloans musaeum”, December 1712, British Library MS Sloane 1968, fol. 192.

Swan Claudia , “From blowfish to flower still life paintings: Classification and its images, circa 1600”, in Smith Findlen (eds), Merchants and marvels (ref. 3), 109–36, p. 112, and Cook Harold J. , “Time's bodies: Crafting the preparation and preservation of naturalia”, ibid., 223–47.

The will of Hans Sloane, Bart., deceased (London, 1753), 3. On the use of post-Newtonian physico-theology to combat atheism and infidelity, see Jacob Margaret C. , The Newtonians and the English revolution, 1689–1720 (New York, 1976).

Hooke Robert , Philosophical experiments and observations of the late eminent Dr Robert Hooke (London, 1736), 228.

Poole William , The world makers: Scientists of the Restoration and the search for the origins of the earth (Oxford, 2010), 95, 97–8, quotation from p. 98.

Quotations from The posthumous works of Dr Robert Hooke (London, 1705), 321; and Hooke Robert , Discourse of earthquakes and subterraneous eruptions (1667–94), in Tan Drake Ellen , Restless genius: Robert Hooke and his earthly thoughts (Oxford, 1996), 233. See also Hunter Michael Schaffer Simon (eds), Robert Hooke: New studies (Woodbridge, 1989), 16–17; Bennett James , “Hooke's instruments for astronomy and navigation”, ibid., 21–32; David R. Oldroyd, ”Geological controversy in the seventeenth century: ‘Hooke vs Wallis’ and its aftermath”, ibid., 207–33, p. 208; Tan Drake Ellen , “Hooke's ideas of the terraqueous globe and a theory of evolution”, in Cooper Michel Hunter Michael (eds), Robert Hooke: Tercentennial studies (Aldershot, 2006), 135–49; Rappaport Rhoda , “The earth sciences”, in Porter (ed.), Cambridge history of science (ref. 6), 417–35; Arnold , Cabinets for the curious (ref. 4); Poole , The world makers (ref. 16), 97–8, 101, 103, 112.

Sloane Hans , “A letter from Hans Sloane”, Philosophical transactions, xviii (1694), 78–100.

Tutchin John , The earth-quake of Jamaica, describ'd in a pindarick poem (London, 1692), 6–7.

Parkhurst Thomas , The truest and largest account of the late earthquake in Jamaica (London, 1693), 7, 6, 2, 19, 24.

Ray John , Three physico-theological discourses, 2nd edn (London, 1693), 208. On the invocation of Newton in highly contested social philosophies during the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution, see Jacob , Newtonians and the English revolution (ref. 14). The classic account of England's early Caribbean colonies is Dunn Richard S. , Sugar and slaves: The rise of the planter class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, 1972); and on the relationship between colonial and taxonomic expansion in the British case, see Drayton Richard H. , Nature's government: Science, imperial Britain, and the ‘improvement’ of the world (New Haven, 2000).

Mulcahy Matthew , “The Port Royal earthquake and the world of wonders in seventeenth-century Jamaica”, Early American studies, vi (2008), 391–421.

Unlike Edmond Halley, for example: See Schaffer Simon , “Halley's atheism and the end of the world”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, xxxii (1977), 17–40.

Hooke Robert , Micrographia (London, 1665), 140–1; The philosophical works of Robert Hooke (London, 1726), 304–15 (discussion dated 1696).

de Rochefort Charles , The history of the Caribby-islands, transl. by Davies John (London, 1666), 106, 124, 119, 126; Smith William , A natural history of Nevis …. with many other observations on art and nature (Cambridge, 1745), 14.

John van Rymsdyk Andrew , Museum Britannicum (London, 1778), 31, 50–1; Syson , “Ordering of the artificial world” (ref. 3).

Butler Weeden , “Pleasing recollection of a walk through the British Musaeum”, British Library MS Add. 27276, fol. 21; Rymsdyk Rymsdyk , Museum Britannicum (ref. 26), 50–51; General contents of the British Museum (ref. 3), 79.

Poole , The world makers (ref. 16), 116.

Steinberg , Social construction of the ocean (ref. 7), 89–109; Armitage David , The ideological origins of the British empire (Cambridge, 2000), 100–24; Vieira Mónica Brito , “Mare liberum vs. mare clausum: Grotius, Freitas, and Selden's debate on dominion over the seas”, Journal of the history of ideas, lxiv (2003), 2003–78.

Swann Marjorie , Curiosities and texts: The culture of collecting in early modern England (Philadelphia, 2001), chap. 3.

Items 3, 580, 1280, 1900, Miscellanies Catalogue, Africa, Oceania and the Americas Library, British Museum; items 8, 468, Catalogue of Corals, Sponges, etc., Palaeontology Library, Natural History Museum, London.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), ii, 266.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, dedication.

Kolár Bohumil Unger Oldrich , Explorers of the deep: From the oldest divers to the inhabitants of underwater cities, transl. by Wilson Paul (London, 1976), 14–15, 18. For an anthropological account of Indonesian pearl divers, see Spyer Patricia , “The eroticism of debt: Pearl divers, traders, and sea wives in the Aru islands, east Indonesia”, American ethnologist, xxiv (1997), 1997–38. On the early modern pearl trade, see Warsh Molly A. , “Adorning empire: A history of the early modern pearl trade, 1492–1688”, Ph.D. thesis, Johns Hopkins University, 2009.

Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 7, 9, 11; on underwater history, see also de Latil Pierre Rivoire Jean , Man and the underwater world, transl. by Fitzgerald Edward (New York, 1956).

Franklin Benjamin , “Autobiography”, in Writings (New York, 1987), 1351; Dawson Kevin , “Enslaved swimmers and divers in the Atlantic world”, Journal of American history, xcii (2006), 2006–55; Percey William , The compleat swimmer (London, 1658), 2, 6, 8. On western Europeans' relationship with the sea in the nineteenth century, see Corbin Alain , The lure of the sea: The discovery of the seaside in the Western world, transl. by Phelps Jocelyn (Cambridge, 1994).

Shadwell Thomas , The virtuoso, a comedy (London, 1676), 27. I owe this point to Natalie Kaoukji.

Woodward , Brief instructions (ref. 3), 1; Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 1–2, 14, 18, 20; Wanley Nathaniel , The wonders of the little world (London, 1673), 504.

Blount Thomas , A natural history containing many not common observations (London, 1693), 167–8. Moray's account is in Birch Thomas , The history of the Royal Society of London for improving of natural knowledge (4 vols, London, 1756), 23 March 1663/4, i, 401. Rymsdyk Rymsdyk , Museum Britannicum (ref. 26), 6; see also the doubts expressed about oil-soaked sponges in Halley Edmond , “The art of living under water: Or, a discourse concerning the means of furnishing air at the bottom of the sea, in any ordinary depths”, Philosophical transactions, xxix (1714–16), 492–9, pp. 492–3.

Arunachalam S. , The history of the pearl fishery of the Tamil coast (Annamalai Nagar, 1952), 126; Kunz George Frederick Stevenson Charles Hugh , The book of the pearl: The history, art, science, and industry of the queen of gems (London, 1908), chap. 10.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, pp. lxxxiii–lxxxiv.

On Spanish ships' habit of carrying African divers with them, see Exquemelin Alexandre , Bucaniers of America (London, 1684), 91–2. See also Kunz Stevenson , Book of the pearl (ref. 40), 235–6; Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 19; Dawson , “Enslaved swimmers” (ref. 36); Carney Judith , Black rice: The African origin of rice cultivation in the Americas (Cambridge, MA, 2001).

Schiebinger , Plants and empire (ref. 6); Parrish Susan Scott , American curiosity: Cultures of natural history in the colonial British Atlantic world (Chapel Hill, 2006), chap. 7.

Smith , Natural history of Nevis (ref. 25), 7, 10–11.

Glissant Édouard , Caribbean discourse: Selected essays, transl. by Dash J. Michael (Charlottesville, 1989), 66–7; Walcott Derek , “The sea is history”, in The star-apple kingdom (New York, 1979), 25–8; Baucom Ian , Specters of the Atlantic: Finance capital, slavery, and the philosophy of history (Durham, NC, 2005), esp. chap. 12. Dawson notes that some interior Africans, unlike coastal Africans, were not adept at swimming. Olaudah Equiano, an Ibo from what is now Nigeria, could not swim, while some African-Americans warily referred to the unfamiliar Atlantic Ocean as the “Big Water”: See Dawson , “Enslaved swimmers” (ref. 36), 1337, and Morgan Philip D. , Slave counterpoint: Black culture in the eighteenth-century Chesapeake and low country (Chapel Hill, 1998), 445.

Parkhurst , Late earthquake (ref. 20), 5; Philotheos Physiologus [Thomas Tryon], Friendly advice to the gentleman-planters of the East and West Indies (London, 1684), 149. On Tryon, see Rosenberg Philippe , “Thomas Tryon and the seventeenth-century dimensions of antislavery”, William and Mary quarterly, lxi (2004), 2004–42, and Daniel Carey, “Sugar, colonialism and the critique of slavery: Thomas Tryon in Barbados”, in Wells Byron R. Stewart Philip (eds), Interpreting colonialism (Oxford, 2004), 303–21.

Pierre Mignard's double portrait entitled Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth (1682) shows an African servant girl presenting the most prized underwater objects to her aristocratic mistress: Red coral and pearls flowing out of a cornucopian nautilus shell. See Amussen Susan D. , Caribbean exchanges: Slavery and the transformation of English society, 1640–1700 (Chapel Hill, 2007), 194–5, 202. See also Dabydeen David , Hogarth's blacks: Images of blacks in eighteenth-century English art (Athens, GA, 1987).

Walker John , Elements of geography (London, 1788), 76–7. There is an interesting similarity between late eighteenth-century accounts of African diving prowess and descriptions of the heightened sensory capacities of Jamaican Maroons. In both cases, admiration for non-European skill produced a distancing effect. Bryan Edwards, for example, depicted Maroons' sensory superiority as atypical among Africans and less than wholly natural: Edwards , The proceedings of the governor and assembly of Jamaica, in regard to the maroon negroes (London, 1796), p. xxxix. On abolitionism, see Brown Christopher L. , Moral capital: Foundations of British abolitionism (Chapel Hill, 2006).

Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 22–3; Pawson Michael Buisseret David , Port Royal, Jamaica (Oxford, 1975), 56–7; Ward , Christopher Monck (ref. 3), 266; Oldmixon John , The British empire in America (2 vols, London, 1708), ii, 285. Albemarle was also a mineralogical prospector and patentee of England's Royal Mines in the West Indies: Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, 33. see also Barham Henry , “Civil history of Jamaica to 1722”, British Library MS Add. 12422, fols 164–5.

Buisseret David (ed.), Jamaica in 1687: The Taylor manuscript at the National Library of Jamaica (Kingston, 2008), 181. The British also traded coral in West Africa to purchase slaves: Hancock David , Citizens of the world: London merchants and the integration of the British Atlantic community, 1735–1785 (Cambridge, 1995), 190.

Earle Peter , The wreck of the Almiranta: Sir William Phips and the search for the Hispaniola treasure (London, 1979), 112–27, 161–2, 167, 175, 182–4, 222; Sloane to Arthur Rawdon, 21 May 1687, in The Rawdon papers (London, 1819), 388, 390; Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, pp. lxxx–lxxxi.

Hawthorne Nathaniel , “Sir William Phips” (1830), in Selected tales and sketches (Harmondsworth, 1987), 9.

Leslie Charles , A new history of Jamaica, from the earliest accounts to the taking of Porto Bello by Vice-admiral Vernon (London, 1740), 37; Kriz , “Curiosities, commodities and transplanted bodies” (ref. 1), 56. On Spanish gold and silver's importance to Jamaican economic formation via illegal regional trade, see Zahedieh Nuala , “The merchants of Port Royal, Jamaica, and the Spanish contraband trade, 1655–1692”, William and Mary quarterly, xliii (1986), 1986–93, pp. 583–4, and “Trade, plunder, and economic development in early English Jamaica, 1655–89”, Economic history review, xxxix (1986), 1986–22.

The original phrase, a conceit borrowed from amatory fishing, concludes, “quo minime credas gurgite, piscis erit”, “where you least expect it, there will be fish”: Ovid , Ars amatoria, Book 3, ed. by Gibson Roy K. (Cambridge, 2003), lines 425–6, p. 65; see also p. 273. My thanks to John Tresch on this point.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, 51.

Sloane to Rawdon, 21 May 1687, Rawdon papers (ref. 51), 389–90. On Sloane's chemical training, see de Beer , Sir Hans Sloane (ref. 10), 16–17.

Walcott , “Sea is history” (ref. 45), 25; see also the highly-evocative description of diving in Walcott's epic Omeros (London, 1990), 43–7.

For the unusual case of a seafarer in America who “learned to dive of the Indians”, see Boyle , “Relations about the bottom of the sea” (1670), in Hunter Davis (eds), Works of Robert Boyle (ref. 4), vi, 362.

Costa Giancarlo , Storia dell'immersione subacquea (Formello, 2002), 32–3, 36–40, 42, 45, 54, 56; Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 164.

Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 30–1; von Etzenbach Ulrich , Alexander, Cod. Guelf (late 14th century), 1.2.5, fol. 128r, Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel, reproduced in Daston Park , Wonders and the order of nature (ref. 4), 96; Costa , Immersione subacquea (ref. 59), 26.

Tapia Nicolás García , “The repercussions of Spanish technology in the discovery of the American continent”, Icon, v (1999), 113–27, p. 116; Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 31–2, 35–6.

Marten Triewald's The art of living under water (1734), transl. by Croft C. J. L. Gustafsson Lars Kahan Michael (London, 2004), 35–6, whose title paid homage to Halley (see below), provides one early genealogy of the history of the diving bell, which dismisses most of Triewald's bell-designing predecessors because they allegedly lacked understanding of the “laws of nature” as they applied to water pressure.

Tapia García , “Repercussions of Spanish technology” (ref. 61); Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 115–16.

Govier Mark , “The Royal Society, slavery, and the island of Jamaica: 1660–1700”, Notes and records of the Royal Society of London, liii (1999), 203–17; Schaffer Simon , “Golden means: Assay instruments and the geography of precision in the Guinea trade”, in Licoppe Christian Sibum Heinz Otto Bourguet Marie-Noëlle (eds), Instruments, travel and science: Itineraries of precision from the seventeenth to the twentieth century (London, 2002), 20–50; Delbourgo , “Slavery in the cabinet of curiosities” (ref. 3); Gascoigne John , “The Royal Society, natural history, and the peoples of the ‘New World(s)’, 1660–1800”, The British journal for the history of science, xlii (2009), 2009–62.

For Moray's reports, see, for example, Birch , History of the Royal Society, entries for 9, 16, 23 March 1663/4, i, 392, 396, 399–401; for Hooke's experiments, ibid., 9 March 1663/4, i, 392; and ibid., 17 February 1664, i, 385. See also 'Espinasse Margaret , Robert Hooke (London, 1956), 52–3, 73; Deacon Margaret , Scientists and the sea, 1650–1900: A study of marine science (London, 1971), chaps. 4, 8; Hunter Michael , Science and society in Restoration England (Cambridge, 1981), 94–5. On angelic assistance in salvage work conducted in this period, see Clarke J. Kent , Goodwin Wharton (Oxford, 1984), 223–6, 271–5.

Philosophical works of Robert Hooke (ref. 24), 313; Hans Sloane, minutes of Royal Society meetings, 1696–7, British Library MS Sloane 3341, 16 and 29 December 1696, fols 27, 28. For Hooke's anatomical interest in and drawings of the nautilus, see Drake , Restless genius (ref. 17), 165–7. On scientific models, see Hopwood Nick de Chadarevian Soraya (eds), Models: The third dimension of science (Stanford, 2004).

Wilkins John , Mathematicall magick (London, 1648), 178–90, quotation p. 190. Sinclair George , Natural philosophy improven by new experiments (Edinburgh, 1683), 154, also conjured biblical echoes in referring to a “Diving Ark”, explaining its name thus: “because it is of Timber, and next, because it saves a man from being overwhelmed with the Waters.” Sinclair, a mathematician and surveyor, conducted salvage work off the Scottish coast in Tobermory harbour, searching for remnants of the Spanish Armada. See also Phillips John L. , The bends: Compressed air in the history of science, diving, and engineering (New Haven, 1998), 42.

Smith , Natural history of Nevis (ref. 25), 13–14; Barlow Reverend , “The submarine, an engine for conveying air under water”, 27 May 1736, Record Book xix, 442–6, Royal Society Archives; Angliae tutamen: Or, the safety of England (London, 1695), 20; Balen Malcolm , A very English deceit: The secret history of the South Sea bubble and the first great financial scandal (London, 2002), 31. Defoe himself identified diving bells as particularly risky schemes: See Defoe Daniel , Essays upon several projects (London, 1702), 12–13, and Bastian F. , Defoe's early life (New York, 1981), 167–71. On projecting and natural philosophy, see Stewart Larry , The rise of public science: Rhetoric, technology and natural philosophy in Newtonian Britain, 1660–1750 (Cambridge, 1992). On seventeenth-century uses of primitive tubs in the Americas, see Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 32. The design of Barlow's horn-like submersible had earlier been pioneered by John Lethbridge and Jacob Rowe for salvaging East India Company wrecks during 1715–21: See Rowe Jacob , A demonstration of the diving engine (London, 2000). On Drebbel, see Keller Vera , “Cornelis Drebbel: Fame and the making of modernity”, Ph.D. thesis, Princeton University, 2008.

I owe this point to Daniel Carey.

Defoe Daniel , The complete English tradesman (1726; Gloucester, 1987), 46; Angliae tutamen (ref. 68), 20–1, 4; Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, p. lxxxi; Robertson James , “Re-writing the English conquest of Jamaica in the late seventeenth century”, English historical review, cxvii (2002), 2002–39, p. 815. On credit and its languages in this period, see Schaffer Simon , “Defoe's natural philosophy and the worlds of credit”, in Christie John Shuttleworth Sally (eds), Nature transfigured: Science and literature, 1700–1900 (Manchester, 1989), 13–44.

Boyle , ” of the systematicall or cosmicall qualities of things” (1670), in Hunter Davis (eds), Works of Robert Boyle (ref. 4), vi, 319.

Shapin , Social history of truth (ref. 5), 258–66.

Boyle , ” of the systematicall or cosmicall qualities of things”, in Hunter Davis (eds)., Works of Robert Boyle (ref. 4), vi, 349, 352, 360, 363; see also Deacon , Scientists and the sea (ref. 65), chap. 6. For contrasting views of the strength and weakness of state deployment in long-distance scientific work in this era, see, respectively, Schaffer, “Golden means” (ref. 64), and Dew Nicholas , “Vers la ligne: Circulating measurements around the French Atlantic”, in Delbourgo Dew (eds), Science and empire in the Atlantic world (ref. 6), 53–72.

Marsigli , Histoire physique de la mer (ref. 9), pp. 2, x. Marsigli was an avid collector of red coral, and involved in mining as well as underwater surveying projects, as was Marten Triewald. The link between underwater exploration and mining deserves analysis in its own right. See Stoye John , Marsigli's Europe, 1680–1730: Life and times of Luigi Fernando Marsigli, soldier and virtuoso (New Haven, 1994).

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1), i, p. lxxxi; Halley Edmond , “To walk on the bottom at a considerable depth of water …”, 6 March 1689, Classified Papers 21/28, Royal Society Archives; Cook Alan , Edmond Halley: Charting the heavens and the seas (Oxford, 1997), 236–43; Marx , Underwater exploration (ref. 8), 34–5. On the embeddedness of early modern epistemic projects in technical endeavours, see Roberts Lissa Schaffer Simon Dear Peter (eds), The mindful hand: Inquiry and invention from the late Renaissance to early industrialization (Amsterdam, 2007).

Halley , “Art of living under water” (ref. 39), 499.

Sloane , Natural history of Jamaica (ref. 1) i, p. lxxxi; Cook , Edmond Halley (ref. 75), 240; Halley , “To walk on the bottom…” (ref. 75).

Halley , “Art of living under water” (ref. 39), quotation p. 495. Contrast this late seventeenth- century attempt to maintain the image of a stable experimenting self under water with the experimental selves modified by nitrous oxide and electricity, as expressed through romantic-era autobiographical reportage: Simon Schaffer, “Self evidence”, Critical inquiry, xviii (1992), 327–62.

Shapin , A social history of truth (ref. 5); see also Golinski Jan V. , Science as public culture: Chemistry and enlightenment in Britain, 1760–1820 (Cambridge, 1992). There is no evidence that Halley went under water in 1689. In this respect, his underwater narrative was not the result of his earlier ‘research agenda’ but the product of the practical commercial project he commenced in 1691.

Journal Book 8 (1689), Royal Society Archives, 248.

Halley , “Art of living under water” (ref. 39), quotations pp. 497–9; Newton Isaac , Opticks (London, 1704), 139.

An old saying.

Pels Peter , “The spirit of matter: On fetish, rarity, fact, and fancy”, in Spyer Patricia (ed.), Border fetishisms: Material objects in unstable spaces (London, 1998), 91–121.

Marx Robert F. , Shipwrecks in the Americas (Toronto, 1987), 78–9.

On this theme, see also Taussig , Cocaine museum (ref. 4), 77–84.

Marx Robert F. , Port Royal: The sunken city, 2nd edn (Southend-on-Sea, 2003), 105, 107, 104, and photographs after 128.

Marx , Port Royal (ref. 86), 101–28, 152–3, 278.