The Steamer Dante arrives in the Maltese Harbour

04-03-1840 (Malta)

2 pages of a volume, handwritten, pre-printed form, paper;  52 × 80 cm (open volume)

National Archives of Malta
CUS 18/49

Administrative records can document moments of great significance on a daily basis. The document presented here records the arrival of the French steamer, Dante, at the Great Port of Malta on 4 March 1840.

Two Frenchmen who played a vital role in the early introduction of photography in Malta were on board of the Steamer Dante: Émile Jean-Horace Vernet (1789-1865) and his nephew Frèdèric Auguste Antoine Goupil- Fesquet (1806-1893) who initiate the voyage in October 1839 in Marseille, passing through Malta, the island of Syros, Santorini, Crete and Smyrna, Egypt, the Holy Land, Syria and Constantinople.

During the trip they produced many Daguerreotypes of the places they visited, using the new photographic technique that had appeared in France just a few months before.Back in France, they took advantage of the quarantine in Lazzaretto, Malta, to show to some distinguished guests the new and surprising photographic process.

The newspaper Il Portafoglio Maltese noted that the experiment was "perfectly successful" (Il Portafoglio Maltese, 16 March 1840).Thus the remarkable new technique which Louis Daguerre (1787-1851) had developed and made public in France in 1839, arrived in Malta only some months afterwards.

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