Belau

Belau, or Palau, is a group of islands in the western Pacific, its high islands and limestone islets enclosed by extensive reefs. Villages and chiefly communities were linked by sea, while exchanges reached as far as Yap, whose people valued stone quarried in Palau and carried it across the open sea to their home islands.

In 1783 the East India Company packet Antelope was wrecked on a reef near Ulong. Its captain Henry Wilson and his crew received help from the Ibedul, the high chief of Koror, and built a vessel to leave. The chief’s son Lee Boo travelled with Wilson to England in 1784, where he died later that year. Accounts of the wreck brought Palau to the attention of readers far beyond the islands.

The later city of Ngerulmud lies here.