Treasures from the London Library: Phrasebooks and shipwrecks

A small, watermarked volume entitled The planter's manual: an English, Dutch, Malay and Keh Chinese vocabulary compiled by G. Fraser Melbourn and printed in Deli-Sumatra in 1894 has one of the most dramatic provenances of the one million books housed at the London Library. G. Fraser Melbourn was a tobacco planter who, upon ‘arriving in Deli, badly felt the want of a book from which I could pick up Malay – that is the Malay that is really spoken, in other words, every-day Malay’. To supply this deficiency he spent ‘many happy hours’ over several years preparing the ‘little work’, which he begged readers not to judge if they should be in a ‘critical mood’. Melbourn also included words in the Keh Chinese dialect as he believed it to be ‘by far the prettiest of the various dialects and with a little appreciation the easiest learnt.’

S. Hyde Turner (co-author of the alphabet book Zoological concoction, London, 1902) donated the book to the London Library in 1919. In a letter accompanying his gift he explains that G. Fraser Melbourn ‘came to England in 1897 and died here some 20 years ago’, i.e. around 1899. The use of the word ‘came’ instead of ‘returned’ is intriguing and seems to indicate that Melbourn was not born in Britain.

Melbourn’s choice of vocabulary is very revealing and evocative; a selection taken from the list of words beginning with the letter ‘s’ transports us to the hot and humid world of the plantation and its back-braking toil: swamp, swear, sweat, sweep… But the book that was written in such a damp environment was destined for even wetter surroundings...

Turner’s letter, written on stationery from the Junior Athenaeum Club, describes the book’s condition. In his opinion, the Germans are to blame for its water damage as the book was on board the cargo steamer S.S. Halcyon when she was mined and sunk only three and a half miles off Folkestone Pier whilst travelling from Bordeaux to London on 7 April 1916. The steamer was built the previous year by the Ailsa Shipbuilding Company for the General Steam Navigation Company in London and was almost brand new. Turner does not explain what a Victorian plantation owner’s manual, designed to be used in Sumatra, was doing on a cargo steamer crossing the English Channel during the First World War, although it is possible that the English seamen found some of the Dutch vocabulary useful on the continent. Turner then says that ‘the book spent about 6 months in the bed of the Channel…’.

The Halcyon is still rusting away on the Channel seabed and exactly how the book was rescued six months after sinking with the ship is unknown. However, the ghostly watermarks left on its pages suggest that the book was only partially wet and it is likely that in the moments before sinking the crew placed the ship’s books and documents in waterproof bags in the hope that they could later retrieve them from relatively shallow waters. Had they not done so, the only surviving copy of this book would be the one kept at the British Library.

Dunia Garcia-Ontiveros is head of Bibliographic Services at the London Library.