Travel & Exploration

The last voyage of the 'Pourquoi Pas?'/Le dernier voyage du 'Pourquoi Pas?'

6th March 2019
This account of the wreck of the Pourquoi Pas, an event greeted with immense dismay in Guernsey, where Commander Jean-Baptiste Charcot was a great favourite, was kindly written by Cédric Bail, assistant curator at Hauteville House, for the Priaulx Library 'Hauteville House and the Hugo family' exhibition of summer 2018. His original French text is included below.

A Mite which did, 1934

24th August 2015
Wee Mite, Guernsey Press 1933, Priaulx Library collection.
'The evolution of an aeroplane designed, built and flown in the Channel Islands.' A cutting from the magazine Flying, January 3, 1934, written by local journalist and aviation enthusiast, Basil C de Guérin, in his Scrapbook 1919-1934, p. 91, in the Library. The photograph, from the Guernsey Press, shows the aeroplane ready for a test flight on Vazon in September 1933, with its designer and builder C W Noel at the controls. The Library has just received a very interesting donation from a descendant of Harry Kaines, who was one of the builders of the Wee Mite. The scrapbook contains cuttings and several fine photographs. The plane eventually crashed and was written off; its story is told by Bill Green in his autobiography, Guernsey Green.

Peter Paul Dobree on Cadiz, Spanish ladies, and politics, 1811

Peter Paul Dobree on Cadiz, Spanish ladies, and politics, 1811
A letter from Peter Paul Dobrée, (1782-1825), who was born in Guernsey and became Regius Professor of Greek at Cambridge University in 1823. In 1811 he had visited 'Don Pedro' (Peter Carey) Tupper, the Guernsey-born and immensely wealthy British consul in Valencia. The illustration of Cadiz is from Sir John Carr's Descriptive travels in the southern and eastern parts of Spain and the Balearic isles, in the year 1809, London: 1811, in the Library collection.

Pages

Categories