MEMOIR OF CAPTAIN FRANCIS LIGHT, 



WHO FOUISTDED PENANG, 

 [Died October 21st, 1794,] 



RANCIS LIGHT was born at ^'Dallington (? Dal- 

 llngho) in Suffolk" about i 745, and came to the East 

 'Z^^^^^ at an early age in the Marine Service of the East 

 India Co. 



There is scarcely one of our Straits worthies of 

 whom so few personal particulars are knowm. He has of 

 course left official records, and several of his private letters 

 have been printed and preserved. There is also the official 

 Diary he kept during the first few months in Penang, which 

 is printed in Logan's Journal Vol. Ill; but this is all. Cap- 

 tain Light belongs to the ''active period" of the Straits, 

 to which, as in other places, the "literary period" succeeded. 

 The latter began with Marsden and Leyden of "many-lan- 

 guaged lore," who commenced his journeys in Sumatra and the 

 Peninsula in 1805. During the next fifty years there was no 

 lack of scholars and wTiters in these countries. 



But before their time almost the only English literature of the 

 Far East consisted of accounts by ship captains, like Dam- 

 PIER and Forrest, of their own and others' voyages. In 

 these narratives there is much that is useful ; but we miss the 

 literary side and the personal details that make Leyden, 

 Marsden and Raffles seem so much more familiar to us 

 than their predecessors. 



The first heard of Captain LiGHT is in 1771, when he states 

 he entered into correspondence with Warren HASTINGS as to 

 the desirability of a repairing harbour in these waters, recom- 

 mending Penang as a ''convenient magazine for the Eastern 

 trade." 1 here was no doubt negotiation for many years after 

 in the intervals of trading tours. 



