Sailing Around the World

From 1894 to 1895, William Slater, his wife Ellen, and their two children, Eleanor and Willie, went on a giant grand tour. The concept of a grand tour dates back all the way to the Renaissance, and it describes a very large journey taken by members of the wealthy elite classes for the purposes of education and exposure to different people, places, and cultures. Most of the grand tours early on concentrated all throughout Europe, but through the 19th century, places such as China, India, Egypt, the Middle East, and other places in this region became popular destinations. Now, as more and more Americans came into the middle and upper classes in American society, international travel became a very important and popular way of experiencing these unseen parts of the globe. The items that you see throughout this gallery are examples of souvenirs, fine arts, and decorative pieces that families like the Slaters and others would have brought back with them as souvenirs from their travels, very similar to how we would go on vacations today and bring back a souvenir. Well, it was exactly the same even back then. The Slaters were among the wealthiest families in Norwich, and as a result, they were able to travel in style, and they could afford some of the most prestigious luxuries that were available to them. One of them is their private yacht, the Eleanor, named after their daughter, Eleanor. This yacht was built at a cost of $300,000, and just for a little bit of comparison, the entire cost of building the Slater Memorial Museum was about $160,000, or almost half of what it cost to build this beautiful yacht, and it was equipped with all of the state-of-the-art comforts and defense systems that they could have asked for. One of those defense systems was a series of Gatling guns that were equipped to the deck of the ship to fend off any unfriendly ships that they may have happened across. And for their entire journey, the Eleanor was their home. With the exception of a brief period when they docked in France, the Slaters did not stay in any hotels on land. They lived exclusively on their yacht as they traveled all throughout the world. When the Slaters traveled on their grand tour, Asia was an incredibly popular destination, and this was due to, in part, of a few key advancements in technology and travel routes. This was the era in the 19th century where steam-powered vessels largely began to replace older sail-powered ships that normally were the standard, and the other innovation lied in the travel routes themselves. For example, in 1869, the completion of the Suez Canal allowed for convenient access from the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea and along into the Indian Ocean, which greatly opened up new opportunities as well as traveling and economic expansion. Now, all of these major advancements in technology as well as traveling brought the world together much closer than ever before, but it also wasn't without consequence. Throughout the 19th century, this was an era where we saw a rapid increase in Western colonization throughout Asia and Africa, and we also saw massive amounts of immigrants coming into the United States from Europe and China and other countries, and it changed the face of our nation. To this very day, we still see these thriving immigrant communities and how they have contributed to our society over the years. Now, at this time, one of America's most famous citizens was Mark Twain. Mark Twain contributed greatly to the world of American literature, and he has a lot of thoughts and perspectives that I think really summarize how this world and how our nation was changing rapidly throughout the 19th century. And he also, like the Slaters, went on a grand tour. He did it in the year 1869, and he ended up publishing a book called The Innocence Abroad, which was based on his trip. Now, Mark Twain has quite a few quotes that are very inspirational, I think, on traveling, and I'd like to share one of them with you. Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.