There are many people and institutions deserving thanks for the help they have given me during this enterprise for, had I gone without their support and guidance, the world would have missed another book. First of all, Vanderbilt University has been generous as always with leave and research financing. I am grateful to the National Maritime Museum for a Caird Fellowship, which launched my research and writing in 2011, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for funding another year of leave that proved crucial to the momentum of the exercise. A Research Scholar’s Grant from Vanderbilt was an invaluable resource, funding two trips to Australia and two more to Britain. I shared the grant with Fiona Harrison who, with her colleague Jim May, has been steadfast in support of the book since the very start. I have never worked with neuroscientists before, and this was an education for me not only in the biochemical mysteries of scurvy but also in the marriage of two widely differing disciplines. Thanks to Fiona and Jim, I now am familiar with the function of the choroid plexus and of many other moving parts of the body, especially the nerves, of which I had hitherto been entirely ignorant. Their contribution is evident throughout and, of course, clearly manifest in the last chapter. While I was on the Caird Fellowship, the National Maritime Museum very generously hosted a conference on scurvy. I thank Nigel Rigby for acting as coordinator of the event, Lisa de Jaeger for administering it, Robert Blyth for editing the proceedings, and Kevin Fewster and Margarette Lincoln for putting the Queen’s House at our disposal. This came in the early days of the project and was a very great boost to it. Mark Harrison and Erica Charters, as well as participating in the conference, invited me to Oxford for two colloquia when I first arrived in Britain on the Caird, and their advice, as well as their work, has been extremely useful.
For over twenty years, all the work I’ve done on the sea has been heavily indebted to the knowledge and advice of Glyn Williams, an historian wonderfully patient with the more intuitive approaches to truth often taken by students of literature—some of them not strictly consistent with good historical practice. He read part of the manuscript when it was in the making and has offered invaluable help in its revision. His colleague and close friend, James Watt, was the first to investigate the possibility of significant psychological effects arising from nutritional deficits. It was he who suggested that Captain James Cook’s extravagant reactions to theft and disobedience during the third voyage might have been owing to pellagra. When I started work on scurvy, he was a generous and courteous source of encouragement: really a mainstay for what was still largely a conjectural project. Anthony Ossa-Richardson of Queen Mary University of London translated Walter Charleton’s difficult medical Latin, a terrific help. The chapter on nostalgia has benefitted from more revision than any other, and this is in large part owing to the very careful reading and advice given by Kevis Goodman and Jonathan Schroeder. I am greateful for all they have given me in advice and bibliographical direction. On the topic of photic damage, a conversation I had with John Mollon of Caius College Cambridge was of immense value. While I was working on the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, Karen May helped me a great deal. Michael McKeon, Simon Schaffer, Peter de Bolla, Noelle Gallagher, Margaret Cohen, and latterly Alistair Sponsel have been great supporters. Two former graduate students, Adam Miller and Killian Quigley, have participated so much in colloquia and in the field generally that it would be hard to specify how much they have helped me develop ideas, especially about prosthesis and aesthetics. My research assistant Katie Miller has been patience itself, smiling at chaos. Never in my experience getting books ready for the press has the awkward business of copyediting been more graciously and promptly handled than by Kelly Clody, to whom my sincerest thanks are due.
The Australian section of the book I have found a very exciting topic. I owe a special thank you to Iain McCalman. At so many stages in my career, he has been an inspiration and an active supporter, no less in this. Alison Bashford assisted me greatly and continues to do so. Paul Pickering and Alex Cook have looked after me in Canberra, and Simon During and Lisa O’Connell in Brisbane. It was a great discovery to find that Michael Rosenthal, whom I used to meet frequently at the National Humanities Centre at the Australian National University, was working on a history of early Australian painting. He has been very generous with his material, particularly concerning the vexed identity of the Port Jackson Painter. I am indebted also to Jeanette Hoorn for information about this mysterious figure. On a brief trip to Sydney and Tasmania, I was treated so cordially by Jane Harrington and Susan Hood at the Port Arthur Historic Site, by Mary Casey, who took me on an archeological adventure to Parramatta, and by Kieran Hosty at the Sydney NMM, that I find it difficult to make an adequate acknowledgment of their kindness. It is such a pleasant memory; I am eager to renew these links.
To Bridget Orr, my wife, and Charlie Lamb, my son, I offer apologies for a scorbutic ellipsis that rendered me absent so often from their company and sometimes absent-minded when I was in it. I hope I am cured.