Amitav Ghosh's Blog, page 16

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 11 of 11

    Despite the mutual contempt and hostility, the tensions on the Lady Campbell remained within the bounds of what might have been described, in the English of the day, as a banyan-fight (a ‘tongue-tempest’ that ‘never rises to blows or bloodshed’)[i]. The vessel made steady progress and even when the weather turned foul, as [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 10 of 11

    Cadet Robert Ramsay’s diary§ entry for January 4, 1825, describes further trouble on the Lady Campbell: “A lascar having struck the Serang was placed on the Poop; another Lascar with a bayonet in his hands, placed sentinel over the culprit ….”     On January 5: yet another lascar was in trouble, being [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 10 of 11

    Cadet Robert Ramsay’s diary§ entry for January 4, 1825, describes further trouble on the Lady Campbell: “A lascar having struck the Serang was placed on the Poop; another Lascar with a bayonet in his hands, placed sentinel over the culprit ….” On January 5: yet another lascar was in trouble, being “put on [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 9 of 11

    What was the texture of daily life aboard a ship with a large complement of lascars? The library of Western nautical fiction, vast as it is, has little to say on this subject and the lascars themselves, inveterate story-tellers though they are said to have been, were resoundingly silent about their experiences, at [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 8 of 11

    If a ship was a living thing for lascars, was it always conceived of in the feminine, as was the case with European sailors? It is impossible to know of course, but I suspect not.   The word for dismasted, for example, is ‘lundbund’, which means literally ‘phallus-tied’ or ‘dismembered’, a locution that [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 7 of 11

      The Laskari dialect was profoundly eclectic in its influences, as befits a language that was used by such a richly varied assortment of people. Consider the names for its ranks: ‘serang’, the seniormost, is thought to be derived from Malay; the next, ‘tindal’ from Malayalam;       the word for helmsman, [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 6 of 11

      By the time Lieutenant Thomas Roebuck compiled his lexicon of the Laskari language (An English And Hindostanee Naval Dictionary, first published in Calcutta in 1811) the dialect was already centuries old. The clearest proof of this lies in the contents of the Naval Dictionary, a large number of which are derived from [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 5 of 11

        Sailing vessels are perhaps the most beautiful, most environmentally benign machines the world has ever known.                 But what really sets a sailship apart from other machines is that its functioning is critically dependant on language: underlying the intricate web of its rigging, is [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 4 of 11

        The lives of lascars are of more interest today than ever before -     for the very good reason that they were possibly the first Asians and Africans to participate freely, and in substantial numbers, in a globalized workspace.                   They were [...]

Of Fanás and Forecastles: The Indian Ocean and Some Lost Languages of the Age of Sail – 3 of 11

        In Redburn, his autobiographical novel about his first voyage, Herman Melville tells the story of how he met the lascars of a ship called the Irrawaddy, in Liverpool.             Stepping on board the ship he found a group of lascars eating on the fo’c’sle deck: “Among [...]