ship

Steaming across the oceans in high style came into fashion in the early 20th century. Glamorous ocean liner travel was as much a part of the experience as the traveler's destination until air travel dominated transportation. Ocean liners grew increasingly larger, faster, and more luxurious, and are one of the ultimate symbols of the Jazz Age and Art Deco periods. The Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library has many trade catalogs, pattern books, sheet music covers, and other materials documenting these time periods.

In 2015, media outlets were abuzz with the news of the discovery of a sunken slave ship near the coast of South Africa. The Portuguese slave ship Sao José Paquete de Africa (often shortened to Sao José) began its journey in 1794 from Mozambique, heading to the cotton and rice plantations of Brazil with a cargo of roughly 500 African captives. The ship never reached its destination—as it rounded the Cape of Good Hope, it was ripped apart by high winds and sank just off the coast. Although the crew survived, 212 of the slaves drowned.

Dejima, or Deshima, was a small fan-shaped artificial island in the bay of Nagasaki, Japan. During the Edo period (1615-1868), Dejima was the only place in which foreign traders were allowed to conduct business with Japan. It was originally built for Portuguese traders but was later used by the Dutch East India Company. In 1858, when Japan concluded the Treaty of Kanagawa with the United States, Dejima’s role as the only port of entry for the West was over. The island was expanded by reclaiming land, and it was merged into Nagasaki, thus obscuring the island’s original borders.

This 50-page book is copy number 160 of only 500 in a limited-edition printing. Number six of the Pacific History Series, this book's cover features a handsome 1867 image of the wooden side-paddle wheel steamer "China." This ship was manufactured to transport mail across the Pacific, from San Francisco to Japan. One side effect of the California Gold Rush was the increase of California's commercial ties with Asia.

The British National Antarctic Expedition (1901 – 1904), commonly called the Discovery Expedition, was a trailblazer of British exploration of the South Pole.  It launched the careers of leading figures of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including Ernest Shackleton, who competed with Roald Amundsen to be the first person to reach the South Pole and died in a later Antarctic exploration in 1921.  This volume contains information discovered on that expedition, including tidal, pendulum, and magnetic observations; earthquakes and other geological movements; and aurorae.  Signif