New stamps pay tribute to early seafarers |23 May 2009

The stamps, along with a souvenir sheet and a first day cover, will also mark the 400th anniversary of the first recorded landing in Seychelles, by the ship Ascension in 1609.

Exactly 33 years ago the Seychelles government’s Port Office received a tug from Hong Kong and renamed it Ascension.

The stamps and seafarers are:

R1.50 – Ferdinand Magellan: A Portuguese explorer born in 1480 who was the first person to sail round the globe and to lead an expedition across the Pacific Ocean. He died at the Battle of Mactan, Philippines, in April 1521.

R3.50 – Sir Martin Frobisher: An English seaman who made three voyages to the New World to find the Northwest Passage. He was knighted for his part in defeating the Spanish Armada and died in November 1594.

R6.50 – Sir Francis Drake: An English navigator and politician born in 1540 who sailed around the world, returning to England in 1580. He was second in command of the English fleet in the defeat of the Spanish Armada and died in 1595.

R8 – Henry Hudson: An English explorer born in 1570, after whom Hudson Bay, Hudson Strait, Hudson County, Hudson Valley and the Hudson River were named. He died in 1611 in Hudson Bay after being set adrift by mutineers.

R15 – Abel Tasman: He was born in October 1603 in Groningen, Netherlands, and in November 1642 sighted the west coast of Tasmania, north of Macquarie Harbour. He died in October 1659 in Batavia (now Jakarta).

R27 – Sir John Franklin: Born in April 1786, he was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer who mapped almost two-thirds of the northern coastline of North America. He disappeared in the Canadian Arctic and died on June 11, 1847.