As this island has been in the news lately, http://www.sunstar.com.ph/manila/lo...ts-philippines-claims-over-scarborough-217012 I was a bit curious why it was named after a British town.. According to Wikipedia it was because a British trade ship crashed into it killing all crew in the late 1800`s. http://en.wikipedia....arborough_Shoal Did a quick search for the ship and get a different story.. Long story short,it started out as a convict transporter to Botany bay and then a tea trade ship in Asia for the East India Company. According to this site http://firstfleetfel...ms-scarborough/ The last entry for the vessel can be found in Lloyd’s Register for 1805, twenty-three years after it was built. The fate of the vessel,(according to Lloyd`s) whether it was broken up or lost at sea cannot be ascertained. (The Filipino`s obviously knew different or why would they have renamed the island back then in the name of this vessel?) This really is a bit of a mystery to me..The Scarborough is not seen or heard from since 1805 but then secretly crashes into an island west of R.P .. Years later the locals name the island after it!! The locals obviously forgot to tell Lloyds of London! Talk about an old English ghost ship!! Weird.
very interesting. I did an immediate google search and came up with this provocative heading PH has claimed Scarborough for centuries The Chinese certainly seem keen to be the bully boys of the region.
The 'locals' didn't name it Scarborough. The British admiralty put the name on the map. At the time the Philippines was ruled by Spain, I'm not sure it's even on a Spanish map of the period.
Britain only held Manila for 18 months, 1764-66 and didn't actually rule the country. The shoal was not surveyed until 1780, by which time Manila was back in Spanish hands, as it had been before the arrival of the Spanish, so Spain was the colonial power in the Philippines at the time. The Scarborough hit the shoal in 1784, nearly two decades after the British gave Manila back to the Spanish and the Spanish apparently gave it the name, according to a navigation book published in 1801. Contrary to the wiki, at least one man did survive, the ship's master, Captain d'Auvergne, who wrote about the foundering so others could learn from his mishap. Pretty obviously, the ship of the First Fleet of the same name is not the same ship.
Indeed. A glance at the Admiralty chart of the South China Sea shows that a huge number of shoals are named after British ships that found them the hard way - remember that before the opium clippers no ship could beat up against the NW monsoon; once the opium clippers came in people could... and so did the tea clippers. I'll dig out a copy of the chart and add a few more names.
Thanks, Methergate. Shoals seem to have been appearing and disappearing, with a number of false spottings (and non-spottings). Thanks to Januarius for bring the subject up.
Not living in the Philippines, I knew nothing about this dispute between Philippines & China over the sovereignty of the Scarborough Reef. Given that The Philippine Government wants to take this to an international court but China does not, I think that is a pretty clear indication that the Philippines thinks it has a good case but China does not. If I had a Chinese girlfriend, maybe I would feel different of course!
