Gall, Basil

Lady (1793-1822), sister of Basil Gall

Basil Gall landed on Rockall Rock in 1811

Born in Edinburgh in Scotland, although the family house is located in in East Lothian . The second son of Scottish geologist Sir James Hall of Dangrass, 4th Baronet and brother of Lady ( Magdalene De Lancey , 1793-1822), who wrote the book A Week at Waterloo in 1815 . He in Edinburgh. In 1802 he entered the service of the Royal Navy of Great Britain . In 1802 he became a lieutenant, later captain. In the Navy began to keep diaries.

In 1811, while serving at the HMS Endymion, Basil Gall was a member of a group led by assistant captain Richard Israel Alleyn , who landed on Rockall Rock. He described this event in Fragments of voyages and travels .

Captain Gall discovered granite veins slitting shales in the Platteclip Gorge of Stolovoy Mountain, which he described in letters to his geologist father, Sir James Hall, his friend John Playfair and others in 1812. In 1813, Captain Gall, in collaboration with John Playfair, published an article in Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the geology of Mount Stolovoy and the Cape Peninsula ^[10] . In the years 1816-1817, Clark Abel , while traveling to China, conducted geological exploration and discovered granite veins, cutting slates, at in Cape Town . In 1818, he first described them. In 1836, Charles Darwin visited this place while traveling on a Beagle ship . In 1953, this place was declared a historical monument and the erected a memorial plaque. The also established a memorial plaque ^[11] .

In 1816, Basil Gall was the commander of the ship HMS Lyra , a 10-gun brig-sloop of the Cherokee type, which also included the Beagle of the Darwin expedition. He was sent to notify the arrival of Ambassador William Amherst to China and from Bohaiwan Bay on July 28 escorted under the command of Murray Maxwell and the cargo ship East Indian ship . On August 8, the expedition arrived at the mouth of the Haihe River, where it brought Ambassador Amherst. Then the expedition of Maxwell and Halle explored the coast of the Yellow Sea. Macwell went north to the Liaodong Peninsula , and Gall went south. They then met in Jiaozhouwan Bay . On August 29, the expedition of Maxwell and Gall left the bay and went to explore the western coast of the Korean Peninsula, discovered the Korean archipelago , then visited the Ryukyu Islands ^[7] . September 16, they anchored in Naha on Okinawa . Then they rounded Taiwan from the south and on November 2, after six weeks of traveling, arrived at the mouth of the Pearl River . Gall described the journey in the Account of a Voyage of Discovery to the West Coast of Corea and the Great Loo-Choo Island in the Japan Sea, London, 1818 )

In May 1820, Captain Gall was appointed commander of the . In August, sailed from Portsmouth to South America. From Rio de Janeiro, by order of Thomas Hardy , commander sailed to Valparaiso , where he arrived at Christmas. Then he went to Callao , where he arrived on January 31, 1821. On February 18, Gall was in Lima with a vizier with the viceroy of Peru, José de la Serna and his predecessor, Joaquin de la Pesuel . On February 23, Gall sailed from Cagallo and on February 24 met Thomas Cochrane on his flagship . February 28 arrived in Valparaiso. In Santiago, Gall met with Commander Hardy. On May 26, Gall sailed north along the coast, visited the ports of Arica , Ilo and Mollendo . On June 24, Gall returned to Callao and on June 25 met with José de San Martín , who on July 28 declared the independence of Peru from Spain in Lima. Then Gall sailed to Concepcion and Arauco , from where he returned to Valparaiso. On November 14, Gall left Valparaiso and headed north, where he stayed at Coquimbo and Copiapo . In December, he was in Kalyalo. Then he went to the Mexican port of San Blas , stopping along the way in the cities of Paita , Guayaquil , on the Galapagos Islands , in the cities of Panama and Acapulco . Arrived in San Blas on March 28. On June 15, Captain Gall sailed from England to England. September 12 arrived in Rio de Janeiro. In the spring of 1823 he arrived in Chatham in England ^[12] . Gall described this journey in Extracts From a Journal Written on the Coasts of Chili, Peru, and Mexico in the years 1820, 1821, 1822 (London, 1824).

In Gall’s own words, said in the presence of Pyotr Andreyevich Vyazemsky , he “visited almost all parts of the world”. In the years 1831-1833. in London in nine volumes, and in 1831-1834. in three volumes in a French translation came Fragments of voyages and travels . Gall's works were in the Pushkin library ^[13] ; Peter Andreyevich Vyazemsky and in the Notes by Sergei Nikolaevich Glinka have reviews of them. Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev was friendly with Halle ^{[14] [9]} .

Alexander Ivanovich Turgenev made acquaintance with Basel Halle, “an intelligent writer and stubborn Tory” in Geneva in 1833. Turgenev dined with him, attended evening receptions, and had conversations. Halle and Turgenev were united by a passion for changing places, which made Hall a truly indefatigable traveler around the world. Basil Gall was inferior to Turgenev in education and the breadth of mental interests, but could tell a lot. The favorite topic of their conversation was Walter Scott , whom they both knew personally. Gall met Walter Scott in the fall of 1831, saw the sick writer gathering on a trip and moving to Portsmouth , from where the warship provided by the English government was supposed to transport him to the island of Malta . This is described in detail in the third volume of Basil Gall's Memoirs and Travels, in the final chapter, Sir Walter Scott's embarkation at Portsmouth in the autumn of 1831, on the landing of Sir Walter Scott on a ship in Portsmouth. Turgenev outlined this chapter in a letter to Vyazemsky with lengthy extracts and his own comments. Gall supplemented the chapter with oral stories, which Turgenev told in letters to Vyazemsky. Gall showed Turgenev the manuscript of Scott's novel Antiquary . When meeting with Scott in Portsmouth before leaving for Italy, Gall showed him his manuscript and received an opinion on the novel. Scott wrote more than two pages in the manuscript, which he considered Antiquara as his best novel. Gall knew the wife and children of Walter Scott ^[15] .

In 1864-1865 in St. Petersburg, in two volumes, the Russian Essays on Marine Life: From Notes and Memoirs of Basil Gall were published in Russian volumes ^[16] .

Author of numerous scientific and literary works ^[9] , including Travels in North America in 1827 and 1828. ( Travels in North America in the years 1827 and 1828 , 1829), half-novel half-journey Schloss Hainfeld, or a Winter in Lower Styria (Paris, 1836) and Patchwork (1841).

He died on September 11, 1844 at the age of 55 at the in Gosport.