The European discovery, rediscovery and exploration of the Solomon Islands, 1568-1838

Abstract

This thesis is an attempt to trace the history of the European discovery, rediscovery and exploration of the islands lying immediately to the east of New Guinea which became known after their discovery by the attractive if historically inaccurate name Islands of Solomon. It attempts to narrate the story of the successive voyages to the archipelago in some detail, reconstructing the routes followed and identifying the landfalls made, and further attempts to relate those voyages to the background of pre-discovery knowledge and conjecture, the cartography of the Pacific, and the consideration given over the years to the position, composition and very existence of the archipelago by cartographers, chroniclers, hydrographers, geographers and historians. The study represents the result of research conducted specifically between July 1960 and December 1961 , supported by a previous knowledge of part of the Solomons and a voyage in 1961 on the yacht "Staghound" to reconstruct the routes of the discoverers, rediscoverers and explorers, and to identify their landfalls. To endeavour to summarize the story of the discovery, "disappearance" (as the immediate post-discovery phase of its history has often been romantically but misleadingly termed) and rediscovery of the Islands of Solomon is inevitably to generalize, to oversimplify and to omit much which, though of secondary importance, is vital to an understanding of the whole. This brief synopsis should not, therefore, be regarded as anything more than a very general introduction qualified by the study itself. The story of the discovery and rediscovery of the Solomons is perhaps well, if rather generally and incompletely, known. It has not, however, been previously studied both as a whole and in detail, or in relation to the all-important question of Pacific cartography which is in fact a mirror set up to its successive stages.