, now extinctMundy came from
Penryn in south
Cornwall. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a
pilchard trader to
Rouen across the
Channel in Normandy, and was then sent to
Gascony to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances. He visited
Constantinople in 1617, returning to London and overland via Bulgaria,
Sarajevo,
Split,
Venice,
Chambéry and Paris with the English Ambassador
Sir Paul Pindar, and afterwards made a journey to Spain as a clerk in the employ of Richard Wyche. Following Wyche's death and a brief spell in the family Pilchard business, he returned to London and obtained employment on account of his language skills, travelling experience and reference from Pindar, with the
East India Company on a salary of 25 pounds. As a fisherman and sailor it is likely that he spoke at least some
Cornish of which he makes some account of its relation to Welsh, visiting
Wales (and climbing
Ysgyryd Fawr) in 1639 where he noted "few of the common or poorer sort understand any English at all". He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from
the Downs on 14 April 1636. His journals record his being served "
Chaa" or tea by the Chinese and tasting chocolate aboard a Spanish merchant vessel. The fleet of four ships and two
pinnaces were sent out by
Sir William Courten, and Mundy seems to have been employed as a factor. His journals end somewhat abruptly, but a manuscript in the
Rawlinson collection at the
Bodleian Library continues the narrative of his life, spending many years living in the
Hansa free city of
Danzig - modern
Gdańsk - including journeys to Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, which lasted from 1639 to 1648. Mundy himself made the drawings for the volume and traced his routes in red on the maps of
Hondius. In 1663 he declared his travelling days over and retired to Falmouth. His journals record his own calculation of the distance he had travelled in his many voyages as 100,833 and 5/8th miles. His manuscripts were lost for nearly 300 years before being published by the
Hakluyt Society (1905-36).
Philip Marsden's history of Falmouth,
The Levelling Sea, published in 2011, provides a brief account of Peter Mundy's life on pages 131–137. He also left the earliest description of the
Musaeum Tradescantianum. == Travels to India ==