Galathea expeditions

First expedition

Preparations

The first Galathea Expedition took place from 1845 to 1847 and had political and scientific objectives. It was initiated by the King of Denmark, Christian VIII, with its main purposes the handover of the Danish colonies in India, following their sale to the British East India Company, as well as a final Danish attempt to explore and recolonise the Nicobar Islands in the Indian Ocean. Additional aims were the expansion of trade with China and the discovery of new trading opportunities, as well as making extensive scientific collections.

The Galathea was a three-masted sailing ship, a naval corvette which had been built in 1831 at the Gammelholm naval shipyard in Copenhagen. It was 43 m (141 ft) in length and had a draught of 5 m (16 ft). When it departed on its voyage under the leadership of Captain Steen Andersen Bille it carried 231 seamen and scientists, 36 guns, and supplies for one year.

The scientists included physician and assistant botanist Didrik Ferdinand Didrichsen, botanist Bernhard Casper Kamphøvener, entomologist Carl Emil Kiellerup, geologist Hinrich Johannes Rink and zoologists Wilhelm Friedrich Georg Behn and Johannes Theodor Reinhardt, not all of whom remained for the duration of the voyage, as well as sketch artist Johan Christian Thornam and genre painter Poul August Plum.

It was an expensive undertaking, with a budget of nearly half a million Rixdollars, equivalent to 3% of Denmark's annual state revenues at the time.

The voyage

The Galathea left Copenhagen on 24 June 1845 and, after a provisioning stop at Madeira, sailed southwards around Africa to India, where she visited Tranquebar, Pondicherry, Madras and Calcutta. In Calcutta an additional ship, the steamboat Ganges, was purchased and the carrier Christine hired, to assist with work in the Nicobar Islands. Considerable time and effort was expended at the Nicobars; most of January 1846 was spent in the northern Nicobar islands, and February in the southern. As well as scientific surveys and collecting, preparations were made for a new colony based at Pulo Milu. Several people, including the geologist Rink, remained there when the expedition departed, though the nascent colony was abandoned only two years later.

The Galathea proceeded to Southeast Asia, calling at Penang, Singapore, Batavia, and Manila before heading for the Chinese coast and visiting Hong Kong, Macau, Canton, Amoy, and Shanghai. An attempt to stop at Japan was rebuffed by the authorities there. The ship then crossed the Pacific Ocean, visiting the Hawaiian archipelago and Tahiti on the way, to Valparaiso, Callao, and Lima in South America, before rounding Cape Horn. Further visits were made to Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rio de Janeiro, and Bahia, following which the Galathea headed back to Denmark, anchoring in Copenhagen harbour on 24 August 1847 after a voyage of more than two years. During the course of the voyage 20 Danish sailors had died and several others were discharged.

Results

The expedition returned with 93 containers of "zoological, entomological, botanical and geological Objects". There were also 21 boxes of ethnographic material, a large collection from Java, as well as gifts from scientists in many of the cities and ports visited by the expedition. The intention of Christian VIII was to sponsor the publication of the scientific results of the expedition. However, the King died in January 1848 and the country was thrown into the Three Years' War. Most of the boxes of collected items lay unopened for many years and, with some exceptions, were never properly processed, nor the full results formally published. The collections subsequently served mainly as reference material.