These interviews highlight my research on the green sea turtle (chelonia mydas). In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the green sea turtle was a mainstay of the colonial diet in the Americas. Because of their delectability, merchants started shipping these turtles across the Atlantic Ocean to sell—for considerable sums—in English markets. Yet, these turtles seldom survived the long, arduous journey. So English chefs created mock turtle soup (of Alice and Wonderland fame) to imitate the real thing.
“Runaway Turtle!” Alexis Coe’s Study Marry Kill Newsletter, February 2021, https://alexiscoe.substack.com/p/runaway-turtle
Learn more about an advertisement for a runaway turtle placed in the New York Gazette in 1761 (pictured above).
“Going Timbering and Turtling in the Caribbean,” Conversations at the Washington Library Podcast, March 2020, https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/podcast/going-timbering-and-turtling-in-the-caribbean-with-mary-draper/
Hear how British colonists used waterways to scour for foodstuffs and timber in the British Caribbean.