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The Cybercentre English Magazine |
Edition 5, July/August 2012
'Summer afternoon – summer afternoon;
to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.’
Henry James
'A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing,
the birds are singing, and the lawn mover is broken.’
James Dent
I am writing this introduction to the Cybercentre English Magazine, sitting in the sun about a ten-minute walk away from a Sussex beach, complete with typically British pebbles, which looks more or less like this:
It is the beach between Hastings and Bexhill, called Bulverhythe, where in 1749 a big sailing vessel of the Dutch East India company, called ‘The Amsterdam’, was run ashore. The wreck is still there for us to explore when the tide is low, which it definitely isn’t in the photo above. The site is protected for its historical significance. Like so many of the other protected sites in the British Isles, it is a place where past and present come together, the first being so clearly a part of the latter. You can learn more about ‘The Amsterdam’ further on in the magazine.
In this extra-long, special summer edition of the magazine, attention will be paid to a British author who is very popular at the moment, and who never fails to keep my attention when I'm reading her work, no matter which one of her books I read.
You will also read about one of Britain´s heritage sites: Battle Abbey, and about professor Doctor David Crystal´s new book about the English language. Where learning English is concerned, you will be able to do an E-learning grammar exercise and you can learn some very useful English proverbs.
I hope that you still remember the programme called ‘Freerice’ that I tried to draw your attention to in the June edition, and that you will keep on playing it all through summer, for your own good and that of others.
Wishing you sunny and happy holidays, and a lot of fun reading!
Christa in’t Veld
To play Freerice, please click on the banner below:
In this extra-long, special summer edition of the magazine, attention will be paid to a British author who is very popular at the moment, and who never fails to keep my attention when I'm reading her work, no matter which one of her books I read.
You will also read about one of Britain´s heritage sites: Battle Abbey, and about professor Doctor David Crystal´s new book about the English language. Where learning English is concerned, you will be able to do an E-learning grammar exercise and you can learn some very useful English proverbs.
I hope that you still remember the programme called ‘Freerice’ that I tried to draw your attention to in the June edition, and that you will keep on playing it all through summer, for your own good and that of others.
Wishing you sunny and happy holidays, and a lot of fun reading!
Christa in’t Veld
To play Freerice, please click on the banner below:
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Do you know the difference between ‘rice’ and ‘rise’? |
The Amsterdam
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In a severe gale on Sunday 26 January 1749, The Amsterdam, a large East-Indiaman was run ashore at Bulverhythe. Of the 333 people on board, 50 had died of the plague since the ship left the Netherlands, on a voyage to Java. The crew got drunk and mutinied, climbing off the ship at low tide, and being taken into safety in Hastings. |
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Local smugglers raided the ship as fast as they could, because there was a lot of silver on board. The local officials had the 2.5 tons of bullion that the ship was carrying removed, and tried to recover as much as they could of the missing bars of silver from the locals.
In just a few months the Amsterdam sank about 8m into the beach, so that nowadays the remains of her decks are buried with much of her cargo, supplies and personal possessions still intact. The bow of the ship lies towards the shore, and the seaward end of the wreck is surrounded by steel sheet piling put there in the 1980’s to aid archaeological excavations by a combined Dutch and British team.
The Amsterdam is of global importance since she is two-thirds complete, the most intact East Indiaman of any country known in the world, and it was the East India Companies of Europe, particularly the Dutch and the English, that opened up global trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, by using East Indiamen.
In just a few months the Amsterdam sank about 8m into the beach, so that nowadays the remains of her decks are buried with much of her cargo, supplies and personal possessions still intact. The bow of the ship lies towards the shore, and the seaward end of the wreck is surrounded by steel sheet piling put there in the 1980’s to aid archaeological excavations by a combined Dutch and British team.
The Amsterdam is of global importance since she is two-thirds complete, the most intact East Indiaman of any country known in the world, and it was the East India Companies of Europe, particularly the Dutch and the English, that opened up global trade in the 17th and 18th centuries, by using East Indiamen.
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© 2012 Cybercentre for English Language Learning