The letters exchanged in 1861–62 between Mongkut, king of Siam, and President Abraham Lincoln are among the most curious in the White House files. Mongkut’s offer to ship breeding pairs of elephants, highly valued beasts of many uses in his kingdom, arrived in the United States in February 1861. A year later, Lincoln took a moment away from the Civil War to reply:
I appreciate most highly Your Majesty’s tender of good offices in forwarding to this Government a stock from which a supply of elephants might be raised on our own soil. This Government would not hesitate to avail itself of so generous an offer if the object were one which could be made practically useful in the present condition of the United States. Our political jurisdiction, however, does not reach a latitude so low as to favor the multiplication of the elephant, and steam on land, as well as on water, has been our best and most efficient agent of transportation in internal commerce. (Dwight Young, Letters to the Oval Office).
Although this diplomatic footnote isn’t well known, many Americans are familiar with Mongkut, if only as his majesty was first portrayed by Yul Brynner on Broadway in The King and I (1951)—a picture of the sovereign and his kingdom that today most Thais find patronizing and deeply offensive.
A better idea of the sophistication and grandeur of the Thai royal house comes from a tour of the precinct of the royal palace in Bangkok, a fabulous, glittering assembly of roughly 40 buildings behind more than a mile of crenellated walls. With this splendid site as a distraction, relatively few tourists make it across the Chao Phraya River to the Royal Barges Museum near the Phra Pinklao Bridge.
That’s too bad. The barges are beautiful, and more impressive than the generally smaller Ottoman sultans’ caiques displayed in Istanbul. Eight are intact, carved from great teak trunks, with gilded figureheads from the Hindu pantheon. Parts of several other barges are also on display. All are housed in an aircraft-hangar-like exhibit hall enclosing the dock. The Thai barges once constituted the king’s navy, a show of royal power afloat in a riverine nation.
Sadly, the kingdom’s antique barges were destroyed or damaged during World War II. The largest of the eight on display, the king’s own hundred-year-old Subanahongsa, lies grandly behind a gilded figurehead of a swan-like hamsa, the mythical fanged, glaring bird associated with the Hindu god Brahma, the creator. The figurehead is meant to suggest the king’s wisdom and grace. Afloat, the Subanahongsa is manned by a crew of 63, including 52 paddlers in red livery and seven pink-coated “chanters.” Two helmsmen steer.
More imposing still is the ferocious, seven-headed serpent figurehead on the second-ranked and only slightly smaller barge, the Anantanagaraj. This carving is of a naga, one of a semi-divine race from under the sea.
Two among the smaller (30–40 paddlers) and newer escort barges that accompany the king’s vessel feature a carving of Garuda, the fierce, snake-eating half-man, half-eagle important in Hindu and Buddhist mythology who is often associated with Vishnu, the preserver. Both figures straddle a dummy bow chaser gun. Lesser barges exhibit crowned monkeys, tigers, and other beasts drawn from the same fantastic menagerie of pious belief.
Another Garuda figurehead, this one off the bow of the barge HTMS Rattanakosin, is displayed at the Royal Thai Navy Museum in Samut Prakan, but relatively few tourists get there, either. This museum is south of the capital, across from the grounds of the Royal Thai Naval Academy (admission free; telephone 02 394 1997; open 0830–1530 daily, except public and national holidays).
The easiest way to reach Bangkok’s Royal Barges Museum is to rent a long-tailed boat from any convenient place on a canal. Like many things in Thailand, both rental and taxi fare are negotiable.
Royal Barges Museum
Open daily 0900-1700 Arun Amarin Road
Bangkok Noi Bangkok 10700
Tel: 02 424 0004
Admission 100 Thai baht (about $3)
Andrew Jampoler thanks David Thomas of Wanna Tours, Chiangmai, Thailand, for assistance. His fourth Naval Institute Press book is Horrible Shipwreck, published in 2010.