Jeopardy of Every Wind: The Biography of Captain Thomas Bowrey

In 1669, fleeing a London decimated by the plague and the Great Fire, a 9-year-old English child arrived alone at Fort St. George, the first English fortress in Mughal India. The boy survived to become a maverick merchant-mariner, an ‘independent' trading on the fringes of the East India Company.

Captain Thomas Bowrey gained renown in numerous fields. Operating throughout the East Indies and speaking Malay, he would publish the first ever Malay-English dictionary, a seminal work used a centu...