Luxury cruise to Okinawa a far cry from voyage 200 years ago of first Western sailor to write about the island
British naval captain Basil Hall wrote first Western description of Japanese island, then part of Ryukyu kingdom, after sailing its treacherous waters without a chart; he found a people who appeared ‘perfectly contented’
It’s so tranquil in the stateroom of the luxury cruise liner Genting Dream, if you stretch out on the sumptuous bed, with the doors to the private balcony flung open, the only sound is the sea gently washing against the ship’s hull, 13 decks below.
The 151,000-tonne floating resort, complete with two swimming pools, more than 30 bars and restaurants and a 900-seat theatre, is progressing through the Taiwan Strait at a steady 21 knots, carrying more than 3,000 passengers to the port of Naha, on the subtropical Japanese island of Okinawa. This six-day itinerary, introduced last month, is proving popular, though few on board are aware that the ship is tracing part of the route of an important historical voyage undertaken some 200 years ago.
British naval captain Basil Hall wrote the first Western account of what was known to European mariners as Great Loo Choo Island after his visit to Okinawa, in the autumn of 1816, describing a utopia inhabited by honest, refined and hospitable people.
“At Loo Choo, the people are considerably civilised but they have few wants and they appear to be perfectly contented,” wrote the 28-year-old seafarer, in what was to become a bestseller called Voyage to the West Coast of Corea and the Loo Choo Islands, published in London in January 1818.
Hall had been attached to Britain’s Amherst mission to negotiate better commercial relations with Peking, and his voyage to Okinawa from somewhere near Tianjin in HMS Lyra, a 90ft sailing sloop of war, would have been significantly less comfortable and considerably more dangerous than that experienced aboard this modern and opulent, 335.3-metre-long cruise liner.