divingsuit

very brave man

Pearling has been carried out in Indonesian waters from very early times, with local divers collecting the shell. Some of the Indonesian divers went a con-siderable distance in search of shell. As Europeans extended their presence in the north of Australia, they saw Indonesians collecting pearls in Australian waters. The Aru Islands have been, and still are, one of the principal pearl-shell grounds in Indonesia. Al-though quite off the track of all European trade, these islands had by the early 19th century become the eastern terminus for the annual fleet of Bugis prahus from Ma-kassar (The Buginese are traders and seaborne colonists from south Sulawesi; see map, Fig. 2.) They were a source not only of pearls and mother-of-pearl, hut of such exotics as birds of paradise, tortoiseshell, trepang or sea slug, and edible birds’ nests. The British naturalist Alfred Wallace did the 1000-mile journey to the remote islands in a Bugis prahu in the 1850s (Fig. 4) and considered it quite an achieve-ment. “Even by the Makassar people themselves the voyage to the Aru Islands is looked upon as a rather wild and romantic expedi-tion, full of novel sights and strange adventures. He who has made it is looked up to as an authority, and it remains with many the unachieved ambition of their lives. I myself had hoped rather than expected ever to reach this “Ultima Thule” of the East…” (Wallace 1869:309). Source: www.penn.museum/sites/expedition/sampans-belangs-and-junkos/

According to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Renown_(1916), in 1919, HMS Renown "was refitted in preparation for a tour of Canada, Newfoundland and the United States by Edward, the Prince of Wales." Title should be "Diver" not "Driver."

The New-York Tribune., November 13, 1919, Page 4, column 3 chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83030214/1919-11-13/ed-... indicates that the Renown anchored in the Hudson on November 12. Meanwhile, the Prince of Wales was in Washington, D.C. He traveled to Washington by train from Canada.