The Sea-Pie and the sad sailor

The idiosyncratic diaries of one man’s voyage from Liverpool to India in 1842, and the exquisite painted souvenirs he bought there, are among the treasures in the archives at the Centre of South Asian Studies.




Entitled The Sea-Pie, the pair of diaries are inscribed to the author Charles Augustus Whitehouse’s mother, and come with the message scrawled across the front “Here it comes something hot from the oven. Mind your eye or it may burn your fingers.” Alongside the diaries is a collection of tiny mica paintings bought in India as souvenirs by the sailor in 1842.

The archives of the Centre for South Asian Studies houses a unique collection of letters, diaries, photographs and films belonging to ordinary British people who documented their lives in India and South Asia.

www.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/archive/archome.ht­ml

Sitar music courtesy of Kaiho at Freesounds

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