Earl, George Windsor (1813-1865), was a British author, colonial official, and navigator. He is best known for his books about the Malay Archipelago, the largest group of islands in the world. The archipelago’s thousands of islands lie between the mainland of Southeast Asia and Australia. Earl’s books, including his most famous, The Eastern Seas, introduced Western readers to an area of the world that was little known at the time.
George Samuel Windsor Earl was born on Feb. 10, 1813, in Hampstead, England, the son of a sailing captain and ship owner. As a youth, he traveled to India and Australia, where he gained experience as a navigator and began his long study of the Malay Archipelago. He worked as a merchant among the islands before joining in the effort to establish a trading station at Port Essington (now part of Garig Gunak Barlu National Park on Australia’s northern coast). The station failed, and Earl returned to a variety of official positions in the region. Earl died at sea on Aug. 9, 1865. He is buried in George Town, in northwestern Malaysia.
