CASTING LIGHT ON DIGHTON ROCK
On the rainy night (9 p.m.) of May 2, 1971, Prof. Steven Tegu, his assistant Nelson Martins, Joseph L. Brum, electrician, and myself, all congregated around Dighton Rock to make the final photographic study of the inscriptions.
The inscriptions of Dighton Rock can best be seen at night, with artificial lighting at a sharp angle to the face of the rock. With the use of four 150-watt flood lights the photographs were taken which appear on page 64. To Joseph R. Borges my thanks for lending us the portable generator.
A Special thanks should go to Frank Brown Jr. who has been contributing his talent in photography for the past seven years. Also my thanks to Mary Perry, my cousin António Soares de Pina and my godchild Manuel Luciano Fernandes de Pina for volunteering their help.
Specific mention should be made of José Vasconcellos, Assistant Director of Casa de Portugal in New York City, for his cooperation in obtaining needed photographs from Portugal. The employees of SNI in Lisbon, Oporto and Tomar were also extremely helpful.
MY VERY SPECIAL AND SINCERE THANKS
To
my very good friend, Stanley Ulbrych, from East Providence, I want to express
here my sincere and most appreciative thanks for the tremendous work he has done
in scanning all the text and all the 164 photographs, drawings and maps
from my original book "Portuguese Pilgrims and Dighton Rock".
With perseverance and enthusiasm, plus his extraordinary professional Internet technique, Stanley has done the marvelous work of transferring the entire contents of book to this website, so that from now on, the entire world will have access to this classical historical book.
Those of you that prefer to see the book itself, have to search for it in your local or university libraries, or then see copies of it in the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C.
I must state also that Stanley Ulbrych has done all this work free of charge. He has done it with love! It is with the same spirit that I decided to place the entire book here for the amateur-historians, students and the public in general, to read, appreciate and even refute if necessary. I hope that with this gesture the Portuguese scientific contributions to the navigation of nautical science to mankind, five hundred years ago, will be better understood by the Anglo-Saxon World!
Thanks to all of you for reading this book.
(a) Manuel Luciano da Silva, M. D.
Bristol, Rhode Island, U. S. A.
March 16, 2001.
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Copyright
© 1971 |