Armada-era Spanish astrolabe returns to Scilly after mysterious global voyage | Museums

It spent hundreds of years at the bottom of the sea off the Isles of Scilly in the far southwest of Britain before it was pulled back to the surface by divers and began a journey around the world.

Finally, the Cape Pednathis astrolabe – a rare example of a 16th-century navigational instrument used by sailors to determine latitude – has returned to Scilly after being rediscovered on the other side of the Atlantic.

It turns out that after being sold and leaving the UK, the astrolabe passed through private collections in Australia and the US, its true identity being forgotten along the way, before ending up in a museum in the Florida Keys.

“It’s been a wonderful journey,” said Xavier Duffy, curator at the Isles of Scilly Museum. “We are thrilled to have it back in Scilly and in the museum’s care. We can’t wait to share its story with visitors.”

The astrolabe, made of a type of bronze, was found around 1990 in the wreck of a Spanish ship that sank off Pednathise Head, part of the uninhabited Western Rocks of Scilly. The Scilly Archipelago, located 30 miles from the British mainland, is famous for its shipwrecks.

It is not known what the unnamed ship was doing there, but it is believed to have been lost around the time the Spanish Armada attempted to overthrow Elizabeth I in 1588.

The Ras Pednathis astrolabe was incomplete, but relatively few such astrolabes are known to survive worldwide, and the intrigue surrounding them helps make them valuable artefacts.

Philip Pullman saw examples at the History of Science Museum in Oxford, and in his Dark Materials series, he based the appearance of a mysterious truth-detecting device, the alethiometer, on the astrolabe.

The Seeley Astrolabe was sold and then disappeared. It has now been proven that at some point it was misidentified as another astrolabe found on board a ship called the Nassau, a Dutch ship that sank off Malaysia in 1606.

It is known to have been in the collection of a South Australian man, but it was confiscated by the state when he was convicted of serious crimes.

The astrolabe was later mentioned in a chat group by an Australian antiques dealer, who said he paid “peanuts” for it, and that it was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Oddly enough, it then found its way into the collection of a New Jersey car dealer who donated it to the Mel Fisher Maritime Museum in the Florida Keys.

James Jopling, the American astrolabe expert, realized that it was a Seeley astrolabe. There were two more stops for him – his laboratory in Texas and the National Maritime Museum in Falmouth, Cornwall – before he returned to Scilly.

It will take pride of place as the centerpiece of the State of Navigation at the revamped Museum of the Islands on St. Mary’s Island, the most populous island, next year.

“It’s great timing for us because our museum will open next fall,” said Lydia Bassett, Sealy’s director of arts and heritage.

“The marine exhibition will tell the story of Scilly’s many shipwrecks. We are very pleased to have the Astrolabe back.”