Bringing Darwin into the 21st Century

Charles Darwin lived much of his adult life at Down House, the family home he established in Kent. It was where he fine-tuned his theories on natural selection, and where he wrote The Origin of Species, along with several other publications.

But it was also where he and wife Emma raised a large family, where he recreated his father's 'thinking path' and walked it three times a day for 40 years, where he played billiards with the butler, and set up a wooden slide so his children could play on the stairs.

Origin, parked with the croquet mallets

In fact, for many of the family’s years at Down House, Origin sat wrapped in brown paper in a closet under the stairs, with sheets occasionally purloined by the children as drawing paper. Some wonderful examples survive in the Cambridge University Library, one of 15 sources mined by the American Natural History Museum for its Darwin Manuscripts Project.

Down House is also a good example of the evolution of museums. Using funding tied to Darwin's bicentenary in 2009, English Heritage and curator Annie Kemkaran-Smith launched a programme of modernisation, and while she has ongoing targets for improvement, the museum today is a deft mix of Victorian and modern.

My favourite example is the recreation of Darwin’s cabin aboard HMS Beagle – a chart-room he shared with mate John Lort Stokes and 14-year-old midshipman Philip Gidley King. Lort Stokes (profiled for the BBC by relative and HMS Beagle Project chair David Lort-Phillips) would go on to command HMS Beagle for part of her third expedition, a six-year survey of the Australian coast. Draughtsman King – who would become a lifelong friend of Darwin’s – sketched some of the few existing images of the cabin and ship. Good company.

Darwin's cabin recreation, courtesy English Heritage

The ship's cabin at Down House is uncomfortably to scale, contains HMS Beagle artefacts and features a wonderful bit of Victorian technology, a type of ‘Pepper’s ghost’ projecting an image of a young Charles Darwin working at the chart table. He may or may not match your own image of the amateur naturalist, but it’s more effective than mannequins and less annoying than most costumed re-enactors. The ‘ghost’ doesn't have legs, but as Darwin never got his own at sea, perhaps that’s appropriate...

Filmed in 'seasick-cam'. There's also a 2008 video on the Sandwalk 
thinking path at Down House, which is equally disturbing...

Another state-of-the-art feature - and the focus of the 2009 effort - is a digitised archive of Darwin’s notebooks from his five-year voyage. These are accessible in an exhibition dedicated to the Beagle, in a small but well-equipped resource room, and online. Scroll through scans of the actual notebooks or, if Darwin’s scrawl defeats you, access transcribed highlights.

Curator Annie Kemkaran-Smith with some of Down House's hands-on residents

The museum also includes recreations of Darwin’s study and various living rooms, plus modern and Victorian-flavoured interactive displays. The latter chart the scientist’s developing theories, working partnerships, and family life.

As someone with a short attention span, I have to say this was one of the most enjoyable historical museums I’ve been to, with lots to offer children and adults. As part of the team trying to re-imagine the voyage of Darwin, FitzRoy and crew for a modern audience, I'll be looking to Down House's skilled mix of period, new and learning resource for inspiration. Visitor information can be found here.

Upcoming Events: Down House curator Annie Kemkaran-Smith has offered to share her knowledge and enthusiasm for the human side of Charles Darwin at HMS Beagle Project special events later in 2012 – keep an eye out by registering for updates.

40 Degrees South - a voyage on the HMB Endeavour

By Australian guest blogger Rachel Slatyer. Rachel is a soon-to-be PhD candidate, studying ecology and evolution. She has volunteered on the sail training ship STS Leeuwin II for the last two years and is currently working on the replica of Captain Cook's exploration ship HMB Endeavour. She hopes to combine her science and sailing passions through involvement in the HMS Beagle Project.

HMB Endeavour in Albany, Western Australia - Rachel Slatyer

When I signed on to the crew of the HMB Endeavour, to sail from Fremantle to Adelaide, I was more than a little bit anxious about what awaited me when we went across the Great Australian Bight. This part of the Southern Ocean has an almost legendary status for big rolling seas, fierce storms and sea sickness.

The 21st-century schedule that our 18th-century ship sails on meant that the voyage from Fremantle to Albany had to be done largely under the power of our 'iron staysails' (engines). To avoid a repeat experience on the voyage between Albany (on the western side of the Bight) and Port Lincoln (on the eastern side), our Captain decided to take a gamble and steer the ship south, aiming for the famous 'Roaring Forties' - strong westerly tradewinds at the latitude 40 degrees South.

As we approached 40S, the order came to set 'lotsals' - lots of sails! Up went the topgallants, the jib, the spritsails...and everything else, and before long we were sailing under the magnificent sight of 17 sails. When some of the voyage crew (who pay to join the ship for single voyages) asked why, the Captain simply replied: "because we can." To use the words of Ratty from Wind in the Willows, "there is nothing, absolutely nothing half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats."

It wasn't long before our next bit of excitement. On night watch, in the eerie quiet, dark and fog that preceded a cold front coming through, we suddenly heard a loud puff right next to the boat. All hands rushed to the side to see the pale shape of a sperm whale disappearing below the water. We were soon joined by two more whales - I always find the sight of whales in these waters, where whaling has had such a long history, particularly encouraging. Our interest was also piqued by mysterious patches of bioluminescence, about a metre across, that appeared near the surface for a few seconds at a time, then vanished. Despite our best efforts, we were unable to identify the source.

The crew were keen with anticipation for 40 knot winds that would blow us into Port Lincoln. We weren't disappointed. When I emerged on deck one morning to feel the fresh sea breeze and see the ship riding the 4m swell, knowing that we were surrounded by the vast Southern Ocean, I felt invigorated and had a deep sense of freedom that I think is unique to being at sea. I have no doubt that seafarers throughout the ages have felt the same and looking at the faces of the other crew, I knew I wasn't alone.

In three weeks, I will start a PhD, with fieldwork in the Australian Alps. I'm excited by starting new research, although I know I'll miss the ship, the sailing and the camaraderie that comes from sharing a 33m ship with 55 other people. In June this year, the Endeavour will sail to Lord Howe Island, to track the Transit of Venus, like Captain Cook did from Tahiti 243 years ago. This continues the Endeavour's tradition of involvement in science. For now, though, we’re focusing on completing the circumnavigation of Australia, with only 7 more ports to visit before the ship returns to her home in Sydney. As Captain Jack Sparrow would say "now, bring me that horizon."

HMB Endeavour foremast and bowsprit with all sails set - Rachel Slatyer

Happy birthday, Charles Darwin

Cross-posted from the Guardian.

In 1819, he might have spent the day memorising Homer at boarding school. As it was a Friday, he would have rushed home at the end of the day, eager to assist his brother in their garden shed chemistry laboratory.

A few years later, the day might have been marred by the fresh memory of a lecture from his father. "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat-catching," he'd admonished, "and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

In 1826 he might have spent it holding his nose and peering into the decomposing guts of a bodysnatched corpse at Edinburgh University. Before the anatomy lesson was over, though, he would have to run out and retch in the hallway. He didn't get along very well with blood and gore.

In 1832, he was most likely retching again, this time gripping the rail of a little ship called Beagle bound for South America. Two years later, in 1834, it might have been much the same, but further south, in the Magellan Strait. In 1836 he passed the day, blessedly, on land. He was exploring Tasmania and, perhaps, pondering some of the strange animals he'd seen the previous autumn in the Galapagos archipelago.

In 1839, the day's notability would have been eclipsed by an even more significant event two weeks before: his wedding. It was a good beginning to a good year: his Journal of Researches from the voyage was published to popular acclaim, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and his first child was born.

Over the next decade, he would make a name for himself as a geologist and start sketching an idea he called "descent with modification".

Fast forward to 2009, and thousands of people around the world spent the day toasting him and this idea of his at parties, lectures, exhibitions, performances and more. There were cakes, including a spectacular one in the shape of an enormous number "200" at the Natural History Museum. I ate some of it, and though it was delicious, I will confess here that the most memorable thing about it was its location … smack dab under the bum of Dippy the Diplodocus. And yes, the frosting was brown.
As a co-founder and director of the HMS Beagle Project, 2009 was, like that frosting, bittersweet.

Three years earlier, we had initiated our project to raise funds for a modern rebuild of the aforementioned little ship. We had hoped that by the time Charles Darwin's 200th birthday rolled around, we might have already begun laying the keel and scheduling the reprise of her namesake's voyage around the world, which would carry researchers to their field sites and inspire public audiences along the way.

In a way, I'm glad the big, round-numbered birthday year is over. The lifespan and impact of the new Beagle will be measured in decades, so it was never right to confine that vision to a single year.
Moreover, this Darwin's birthday blog post notwithstanding, there are more stories associated with the Beagle than just Darwin's. Robert Fitzroy, the Beagle's captain has a story worth celebrating for its own sake. He established the Met Office and his contributions to weather forecasting saved countless lives at sea. The crew of the Beagle charted the coasts of southern South America and Australia in particular detail and her legacy can be found there in place names and even in the living memories of those who used her survey charts for navigation.

And so it's with great pride and pleasure I report here that 2012 is already shaping up to be a big year for The HMS Beagle Project. Buoyed by our first major donation in late 2010, we've added paid project staff who are making headway on fundraising for the shipbuild, updated our website and revitalised our blog.

We've begun a search for the UK port where the new Beagle will be built. Gloucester, Milford Haven, Crowes, Bristol and Woodbridge/Ipswich have emerged as strong contenders.

Since I last reported on our progress, we've travelled to Chile and Australia, establishing partnerships to make the most of the new Beagle's future visits to port cities and rural coastlines there. As a result of these travels, a new sister organisation has been founded in Chile and we're working to establish a similar entity in Australia. We're also building new partnerships at home, including with the Garden Museum in London, the Welsh Botanic Gardens and classic shipbuilders.

In 2013, then, the day might be spent dancing to the music of hammers and saws in a major UK port.

In 2014, we might spend it christening the new Beagle and embarking on a national tour. I have an image burned onto the back of my eyelids in which the new Beagle sails past Tower Bridge, the booms of ceremonial canonfire ricocheting up the Thames. What a golden moment for science, maritime history and education that will be!

Postscript: To really get the idea, watch this video from the day in 2007 when Swedish Ship Götheborg sailed up the Thames, exchanging ceremonial canonfire with HMS Belfast.

A miserable birthday aboard HMS Beagle

Sometimes even plain sailing isn't plain sailing:

12^th There has been a little swell on the sea to day, & I have been very uncomfortable: this has tried & quite overcome the small stock of patience that the early parts of the voyage left me. — Here I have spent three days in painful indolence, whilst animals are staring me in the face, without labels & scientific epitaphs. — This has been the first day that the heat has annoyed us.

Charles Darwin writing in his diary aboard HMS Beagle 180 years ago today, on his 23rd birthday. In almost five years voyaging around the world, the poor lad never really overcame his dreadful seasickness.

Bananas, baobab - and the germ of an idea

Guest post by Beagle archivist, writer and editor Dr Gordon Chancellor

HMS Beagle’s voyage round the world was finally under way, this time 180 years ago in February 1832. In our last post, we left the little ship on 13 January steadily working down towards Brazil on a south-southeast bearing, having not been able to stop at either Madeira or the Canaries. This was a cruel blow to Darwin, but he made the best use of his time by trawling a net behind the ship in the hope of catching something new to science.

Trawling for evolutionary ideas

Having been fascinated by strange marine invertebrates since Edinburgh University four years earlier, Darwin focused on those that seemed to be on the boundary between plant and animal. Perhaps he recalled that his grandfather Erasmus believed life had evolved from the sea? Perhaps he also suspected that his Edinburgh mentor Robert Grant’s research on marine creatures was behind Grant’s then-radical belief in evolution?

A week of firsts

The weather was beautiful and Captain FitzRoy dropped anchor at the little known Cape Verde islands on January 16th. That afternoon Darwin set foot on land for the first time out of England, in Porto Praya on St Jago Island (today’s Sao Tiago). He was fascinated by the different races of people on the island, tasted a banana for the first time in his life and "first saw the glory of tropical vegetation." It was for Darwin "a glorious day, like giving to a blind man eyes."

The next day Darwin helped FitzRoy set up an observatory on Quail Island. This was a momentous day for Darwin and the history of geology. He started collecting rock specimens and began to use a pocket-sized field notebook, now preserved at Down House. Back on board he started a ‘geological diary’ in which he recorded his interpretations. He quickly worked out that a layer of limestone in the cliff, which had obviously been laid down on the sea bed, had then been uplifted to its present position and covered by more lava.

Ilha de Fogo, Cape Verde Islands

Geology at work: putting new ideas to the testIn recognition of their friendship, FitzRoy had given Darwin the first volume of Charles Lyell’s new book Principles of Geology and the band of limestone instantly confirmed to Darwin that Lyell’s method of geology was the best available. Lyell said that geologists must interpret rocks using knowledge of present day processes, and that they could allow for unimaginable periods of time in their interpretations. Darwin was instantly converted to Lyell’s view of the Earth’s crust as constantly oscillating: any place will be sometimes under the sea, sometimes elevated above it. He could also see the immensity of time and how small gradual changes could account for anything. This was essential later for his theory of evolution.

A biblical baobab and shipboard politics

On the 20^th Darwin went for a walk with the ship’s Surgeon Robert McCormick, who carved his initials on a great baobab tree reputed to be 6,000 years old; this was older than the world according to the Bible. McCormick’s nose was out of joint, as he would normally have doubled as the ship’s official naturalist and was galled at the privileges enjoyed by the gentleman Darwin. They returned on the 24th with FitzRoy and Wickham to measure and draw the tree and on the 26th Darwin went riding into the interior with Benjamin Bynoe, Assistant Surgeon. He spent the rest of his stay on further excursions inland and collecting octopuses and scores of other animals and plants. He even collected a fish which had driven its ‘teeth through Mr Sullivan’s finger’.

FitzRoy completed his magnetic experiments around February 6th, then after a three-week stay in the Cape Verdes, HMS Beagle set sail again on the 8th for St Paul's Rocks, near the equator. What a day it will be when our 21st-century Beagle crosses the line!

Cape Verde baobab and Stad Amsterdam crew waaay up

The Dickens Connection

Today marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens. On days such as these, it has become something of a tradition to write a blog post linking the subject of the anniversary in question with the theme of the blog—no matter how tenuous the link. Charles Dickens and HMS Beagle? That's quite a tall order. All right, I'm game…

The link between Charles Dickens and HMS Beagle goes back to October, 1859. This happened to be one month before the publication of former Beagle occupant Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, but this story has nothing to do with Charles Darwin.

On the 25th and 26th October, 1859, a mighty storm passed along the west coast of Britain, from the English Channel, around Wales, across Liverpool Bay, and on up to Scotland. It is believed to have been the most severe storm to hit Britain in the entire Nineteenth Century, reaching force 12, hurricane force, on the Beaufort Scale. (Yes, there are numerous connections between Sir Francis Beaufort, inventor of the eponymous scale, and HMS Beagle, but this story is not about him either.)

The great storm of 1859 was responsible for the loss of around 800 lives, and the wrecking of 133 ships. Over half the lives lost, thought to have been around 459, resulted from the loss of a single ship, The Royal Charter, a steam clipper en route to Liverpool from Melbourne. Many of her passengers were returning rich from the gold fields of Australia. Having tried and failed to take on board a Liverpool pilot, the ship's captain, Thomas Taylor, decided to try to weather the storm by dropping anchor off the east coast of the Isle of Anglesey. But, early in the morning of 26th October, first one and then the other of the ship's anchor chains snapped. The Royal Charter was driven on to rocks just north of the fishing village of Moelfre, and broke apart. Only 39 crew and passengers managed to struggle ashore. The rest either drowned or were dashed against the rocks.

The Wrecking of the Royal Charter [Wikipedia].

Two months after the dreadful wreck, Charles Dickens visited Moelfre to report on the aftermath for the new journal he had founded earlier that year, All Year Round. His moving report, The Shipwreck, was later included in his collection The Uncommercial Traveller. In the piece, Dickens describes visiting the scene of the wreck:

Even as I stood on the beach with the words ‘Here she went down!’ in my ears, a diver in his grotesque dress, dipped heavily over the side of the boat alongside the Lighter, and dropped to the bottom. On the shore by the water's edge, was a rough tent, made of fragments of wreck, where other divers and workmen sheltered themselves, and where they had kept Christmas-day with rum and roast beef, to the destruction of their frail chimney. Cast up among the stones and boulders of the beach, were great spars of the lost vessel, and masses of iron twisted by the fury of the sea into the strangest forms. The timber was already bleached and iron rusted, and even these objects did no violence to the prevailing air the whole scene wore, of having been exactly the same for years and years.

Yet, only two short months had gone, since a man, living on the nearest hill-top overlooking the sea, being blown out of bed at about daybreak by the wind that had begun to strip his roof off, and getting upon a ladder with his nearest neighbour to construct some temporary device for keeping his house over his head, saw from the ladder's elevation as he looked down by chance towards the shore, some dark troubled object close in with the land. And he and the other, descending to the beach, and finding the sea mercilessly beating over a great broken ship, had clambered up the stony ways, like staircases without stairs, on which the wild village hangs in little clusters, as fruit hangs on boughs, and had given the alarm. And so, over the hill-slopes, and past the waterfall, and down the gullies where the land drains off into the ocean, the scattered quarrymen and fishermen inhabiting that part of Wales had come running to the dismal sight—their clergyman among them. And as they stood in the leaden morning, stricken with pity, leaning hard against the wind, their breath and vision often failing as the sleet and spray rushed at them from the ever forming and dissolving mountains of sea, and as the wool which was a part of the vessel's cargo blew in with the salt foam and remained upon the land when the foam melted, they saw the ship's life-boat put off from one of the heaps of wreck; and first, there were three men in her, and in a moment she capsized, and there were but two; and again, she was struck by a vast mass of water, and there was but one; and again, she was thrown bottom upward, and that one, with his arm struck through the broken planks and waving as if for the help that could never reach him, went down into the deep.

Dickens goes on to describe how the recovered bodies of the deceased, which washed up along the shore over several weeks, were taken to a nearby chapel and cared for by the local clergyman. His piece ends with moving extracts of letters to the clergyman from the recently bereaved: a real Dickensian tear-jerker,

It is at this point that the link with HMS Beagle enters the story in the shape of her former Captain, now Admiral, Robert FitzRoy, head of the nascent Meteorological Office. FitzRoy's prime responsibility in his new role was to provide statistical data about the weather. But, being a former seaman, and convinced by the usefulness of barometric measurements for predicting changes in weather, FitzRoy's hidden agenda was to provide advance warnings to ships of impending storms. In other words, FitzRoy wanted to forecast the weather. Such an undertaking seemed preposterous to many, and FitzRoy, not for the first time, stretched his terms of reference to breaking point at times to pursue his goal, but the terrible results of The Royal Charter Storm, as the storm came to be known, provided the political impetus FitzRoy needed to develop his weather forecasts further.

The foibles of the British weather mean that, even in this age of supercomputers and satellites, providing accurate weather forecasts can still occasionally be problematical. FitzRoy never really stood a chance, and the inaccuracy of his weather forecasts, which began to appear in The Times newspaper in 1861, became something of a national joke. Indeed, the ridicule FitzRoy received, it has been suggested, might have been one of the contributing factors to his eventual suicide in 1865.

FitzRoy was, in many respects, ahead of his time. But his pioneering work, recognising the potential of weather forecasts to help prevent further disasters like the wrecking of The Royal Charter was rightly celebrated in 2002 with the renaming of the shipping area Finisterre in his honour.

Site of the wreck of The Royal Charter
[cc. Richard Carter]

Travelling to broaden the mind

Today saw the 70th anniversary edition of the classic BBC radio programme Desert Island Discs. For those of you unfamiliar with the programme, each week a different celebrity is asked to nominate the eight records that they would take with them to a desert island. For those of you unfamiliar with records, they were a bit like mp3s, but were made out of atoms rather than bits and sounded a lot better.

The special guest for the 70th anniversary programme was Sir David Attenborough. It was Sir David's fourth appearance on Desert Island Discs. An mp3 of the programme is available here.

At the start of the programme, in response to presenter Kirsty Young's suggestion that it was a staggering thought to realise that he has probably seen more of the world than anybody else who has ever lived, Sir David replied:

Well, I suppose so, but then, on the other hand, it's very salutary to remember that perhaps the greatest naturalist who ever lived and had more effect on our thinking than anybody—Charles Darwin—only spent four years travelling, and the rest of the time thinking.

Darwin's voyage around the world on HMS Beagle was closer to five years than four, but Sir David is right: a few years' ship-time was enough to inspire the greatest naturalist who ever lived (there is no ‘perhaps’ about it, Sir David!).

How many future naturalists and other scientists, I wonder, might gain a lifetime's inspiration from a few months' ship-time aboard a new Beagle?

Charles Darwin and the... Shrewsbury sermons?

American polymath Benjamin Franklin, 10th and youngest son of a working-class family, had to leave school at age 10. Sir Ernest Shackleton was invalided out during his first Antarctic trek; he was later marked for heroism in saving the crew of Endurance. Marie Curie (a.k.a. Maria Sklodowska) was refused entry by Krakow University because she was female, and went on to win Nobel Prizes in two disciplines.

The history of discovery is littered with hard-fought battles just to get on the bus, so to speak. Charles Darwin's story was no exception - his father was dead set against him him traipsing around the world, listing eight objections which included: "Disreputable to [his] character as a Clergyman hereafter... a wild scheme... a useless undertaking."

Those points and influential uncle Josiah Wedgwood's counter-arguments are documented in Cyril Aydon's biography and other easily available sources, and make for engaging reading.

Project advisor Anna Faherty gets up close

This month, however, we got a more intimate look at Darwin's travails, thanks to the Kew Archive, which offered a behind-the-scenes peek at its plant-hunters collection. Darwin's letters ranged from pleading his case and fighting his hammock to cultural observations and storms at sea.

The content is engaging, and the archivists' work is a story in itself. They've collected materials such as correspondence seals - two of which appear to show HMS Beagle - original letters, plant specimens and even an invitation to be a pall-bearer at his Westminster Abbey funeral.

Conservators have also struggled to preserve the artefacts, bathing documents in chemicals to stop the ferrous inks eating through the the paper, and creating folios such as this, with hand-marbled end-papers.

An 1833 letter written aboard HMS Beagle to mentor Rev John Henslow. Note the maximum use of paper. 

The archivists who led Kew's tour were great hosts, and it's clear that classic British plant-hunters have a special place in their hearts - these men (and the odd woman) roamed the planet for the better part of three centuries, and included the likes of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker, physician, botanist, Antarctic explorer and Kew's second director.

Many of the collectors illustrated their travels beautifully with drawings and photos, and all of them - like Darwin - multi-tasked to secure their places, working as naval surgeons, surveyors, and even spies. Though Darwin's 'day-job' as Captain Robert FitzRoy's companion could be tense and complicated, he would have had more time than many of his peers for naturalist pursuits.

Another common trait was plant-hunters' influence on matters far beyond botany: Darwin's writings on natural selection, ethics and slavery sparked debate that continues today; William Colenso championed Maori rights in New Zealand; and Hooker helped upset international trade by shifting rubber-tree cultivation from Brazil to Southeast Asia.

Not all the plant-hunters - pioneering botanist Carl Linnaeus among them - struggled to be taken seriously, and it must have been tempting for the 22-year-old Darwin to give up - especially when his father said rather unkindly that many others had surely been asked first but refused because of some problem with the ship or journey.

Good thing he persisted. Being a clergyman would have been an honourable enough choice, but we'd definitely be the poorer for it.

The archives at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew are open to the public, and you can ask to see (or hear) nearly anything in their collection. It's well worth a visit.

The HMS Beagle Project will also be working on a plant-hunters's series of exhibits and talks later this year with new science outreach partner the Garden Museum (this will involve some excellent cakes from their in-house baker ;>). For information, register for updates on our home page.

Sir Joseph Hooker's invitation to Darwin's funeral

Repost: The new Beagle, a flagship for science in a new age of sail

What with new ships being in the news,  I thought I'd repost my 2009 Letter to the Editor of Zoologica Scripta* from 2009.


--

SIR – Your Special Issue, ‘In Linnaeus' Wake: 300 Years of Marine Discovery’ (Zoologica Scripta 38: Suppl. 1, February 2009) encompassed both the history of maritime scientific exploration and its enduring legacies. Impressive marine and terrestrial specimen hauls from three centuries of scientific voyaging, largely under sail, underpinned major scientific advances not least Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection.

‘Science in the age of sail’ came to a gradual end between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries, as sails were first combined with and ultimately replaced by coal-fired steam and then diesel engines—an irony considering that the historic specimens collected on such voyages would ultimately be seen as useful to establish pre-industrial baselines for climate change research.

While a changing source of energy for maritime transport signaled the end of the 'sail' in 'science under sail', the 'science' also suffered setbacks. After a brief but intensive period of specimen collecting on diesel powered expeditions (such as the Discovery expeditions), ocean voyages for scientific discovery under all modes of propulsion declined as research funding was diverted to post-war explorations of both outer space and also the inner space of the cell.

Contrary to public perception, expedition-based science did not decline because the task of species discovery was completed: though 1.8 million species have been discovered and named this figure is estimated to represent only 1-10% of the true total. Moreover, marine organisms are under-represented; the diversity of marine life is still largely unknown to science, especially in the deep sea, of which a smaller percentage has been explored than of the surface of the moon. Exacerbating this dearth of marine knowledge are the increasing threats of climate change and habitat loss, coupled with a decline of taxonomic expertise and resources called the ‘taxonomic impediment’.

The need for a new age of discovery science

There is international recognition that the time is ripe for a reinvigoration of expeditionary science, with a particular emphasis on marine environments. The Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans, (POGO) was created in 1999 “by directors and leaders of major oceanographic institutions around the world to promote global oceanography, particularly the implementation of an international and integrated global ocean observing system” (www.ocean-partners.org). POGO makes a case for extensive and sustained oceanic observation, research and modeling – a case which is echoed in a themed issue of Nature (450; 2007) on “Earth Monitoring” and the accompanying online special, “Earth Observation” (http://tinyurl.com/mvp9bg), which calls for the ‘patching together' of a complete worldview that unites Earth observations from space with ground- and ocean-based exploration and monitoring.

Today, wine; tomorrow, science

Since the aim of a new era of discovery and monitoring is to understand and mitigate the effects of climate change and habitat loss on biodiversity and other complex Earth systems, there is both a real and a symbolic benefit to conducting these explorations a way that minimises environmental damage.

Sail-power is already making a comeback in the cargo industry. After nearly a hundred years of fossil fuel-driven shipping, the first transatlantic voyage to be (once again) augmented by high-tech sail power has just been successfully completed; the so-called SkySail delivered an average fuel savings of 20% on the journey. The use of traditional sailing ships for the movement of goods is also being revived, as marked by the first shipment of Bordeaux wine to Dublin aboard the 170-foot brig Belem in February of this year.

That's very well for wine, but what of science? Though a few private sailing vessels have already been used for modern scientific exploration, such as J. Craig Venter’s Sorcerer II and the Oceanographic Research Vessel Alguita, a symbolic sailing ship to mark the beginning of science in a new age of sail has not yet materialised.

The new Beagle

The HMS Beagle Project (www.thebeagleproject.com) is raising funds to rebuild HMS Beagle to serve as a charismatic flagship for science in a new age of sail. After she is built, the new Beagle will circle the world in Darwin's wake, making similar landfalls. She is not intended to be a museum ship; she will be equipped with modern laboratories and equipment to support a series of researcher-led marine and terrestrial projects as well as continuous collections of samples for DNA barcoding (www.barcoding.si.edu) and metagenomics (Nature Reviews Genetics 6, 805; 2005).

As formally established in a signed International Space Act Agreement with NASA, scientists aboard the new Beagle will collaborate with astronauts aboard the International Space Station on biodiversity and climate change research. Ocean surface water samples for biological assessment will be time-stamped for correlation with images taken from space. These images will enable the visible characteristics of plankton blooms and other biotic phenomena as seen from space to be ground-truthed by real measurements from the ship.

Charles Darwin improvised the first plankton collecting apparatus aboard HMS Beagle in 1832 which he wrote “is a bag four feet deep, made of bunting, & attached to semicircular bow this by lines is kept upright, & dragged behind the vessel. — this evening it brought up a mass of small animals, & tomorrow I look forward to a greater harvest” and, the next day, “I am quite tired having worked all day at the produce of my net. — The number of animals that the net collects is very great & fully explains the manner so many animals of a large size live so far from land. — Many of these creatures so low in the scale of nature are most exquisite in their forms & rich colours. — It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose.”

Today, the source of Darwin's wonder is under threat by anthropogenic change. An essential part of diminishing this threat is increasing public awareness and inspiring mitigating action from personal to global scales. Thus the new Beagle’s public engagement and formal learning capacities are equally if not more important than her science capacity.

The attraction of a famous tall ship – even a replica of one – is exemplified by the fact that 300,000 people visited the replica of the Swedish Ship Götheborg (right, towering above yours truly) during her voyage to China, and 2 million visited the exhibition site, with a total media coverage value of €300 million.

The original Götheborg was one of many ships that bore Carl Linnaeus' so-called 'disciples' around the world on their seminal voyages of discovery, and the physicality of climbing aboard the replica Götheborg brings those journeys to life in a way that no written history can.

Just as Linnaeus and his apostles had a double mission to spread the ‘gospel’ of the new botanical principles and collect empirical data so the new Beagle will have a double mission of multi-disciplinary science and inspiring public engagement with – and action to protect – global biodiversity and climate stability.



*Note: This is a longer version of a Letter to the Editor published in Zoologica Scripta in 2009 (doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2009.00403.x). As long as I tell you that the 'definitive version' is available here, I am entitled by Wiley-Blackwell 'to use all or part of the article, without revision or modification, in personal compilations or other publications of [my] own work', as I've done here. -KJ

A jubilee ship for the Queen? Why not a Beagle?

Much fluttering in the media dovecotes this week when Education Secretary Michael Gove suggested to Media and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt that maybe a grateful nation should buy Her Majesty a new royal yacht to mark her golden jubilee.

The letter was leaked to the Guardian newspaper, leading the Prime Minister to initially hole the suggestion below the waterline. All sailors will know that leaks are bad for ships. Then, following an approach which outlines plans for a 600 foot, four masted multipurpose sailing ship (sail training, scientific research and with state rooms for her Majesty and retinue at the stern), David Cameron has today supported the plans. As long as it doesn't cost the taxpayer.

Might we suggest that we already have a set of plans, funds coming in (another £500 today, thank you), a builder in the blocks ready to start and a ship with a pedigree and some experience in honouring Royalty.

In July 1820 the newly launched HMS Beagle had the honour of being the first ship to sail under the new London Bridge leading a fleet review to mark the coronation of King George IV. Perhaps Her Majesty might find Beagle's stern cabin somewhat cramped, and it would be remiss of us to expect Royalty to indulge in the gymnastics required of the young Charles Darwin in wriggling his way into his hammock for the first time (oh for a time machine to have seen that moment). As Darwin wrote in his diary:

I intend sleeping in my hammock.- I did so last night & experienced the most ludicrous difficulty in getting into it. My fault of jockeyship was in trying to put my legs in first. The hammock being suspended I thus only succeeded in pushing it away without making any progress in inserting my own body.- The correct method is to sit accurately in centre of bed, then give yourself a dexterous twist & your head & feet come into their respective places.

But for a ship to take the nation's youth sail training, to take its scientists over the horizon, whose building would add excitement to the Olympic year and that of the Queen's Golden Jubilee?

It could only be our very own Beagle. She changed the world. Nothing less would add lustre to 2012.

To find out more, contact us or follow the discussion on Facebook.  To donate to the new Beagle or to talk to us about sponsorship, please click here.

"Sorely tried" on the first leg of the voyage

Guest post by Beagle archivist, writer and editor Dr Gordon Chancellor

The voyage around the world of HMS Beagle was finally under way, this time 180 years ago in January 1832. She was sailing briskly in as southerly a course as possible, heading for Madeira where Captain FitzRoy intended to check the longitude. On board the little 235-ton survey ship were 74 men, plus three Fuegian Indians, the young naturalist Charles Darwin and a few personal servants and all their provisions for crossing the Atlantic to Brazil.

By 13 January they had already crossed the Bay of Biscay where Darwin had suffered terribly from sea sickness. He had been forced to lie down much of the time but this gave him a chance to re-read Alexander Humboldt’s Personal Narrative. That book had fired Darwin’s imagination as a student the year before with its classic descriptions of the Canaries and had convinced him that he needed to explore the tropics himself. He had even starting to plan his own expedition, but this was of course completely ‘knocked on the head’ by the offer of the place on the Beagle.

Around 4 January the voyage had reached Madeira but the swell prevented their landing and FitzRoy decided to press on for Tenerife in the Canaries, which they made on 6 January. Here Darwin suffered what FitzRoy called ‘a real calamity’; a quarantine meant a wait of 12 days before landing. FitzRoy not being a man to twiddle his thumbs, once more gave the order to press on. Darwin was bereft, having longed to see nature as Humboldt had so beautifully described it.

On that day Darwin did, however, do something which in many ways now seems more important for the history of science: he opened his ‘zoological diary’ (published by his great-grandson Richard Keynes in 2000). Apart from his geological training in Wales and near his Shropshire home, this was Darwin’s first ever chance to make new discoveries. His first short entry that day described the way the sea water gave off ‘sparks’ at night.

The Beagle crossed the Tropic of Cancer on 10 January and the weather was beautiful. Darwin constructed a net to catch marine life and started to describe and draw anything unusual. He also started to collect ‘specimens in spirits of wine’, each with its own unique number stamped onto a tin tag and his notes rapidly became more professional-looking.

I have chosen 13 January for this blog post because exactly one year later in 1833 the voyage of the Beagle was very nearly aborted forever by a terrible storm. That was the moment off Tierra del Fuego immortalised by FitzRoy’s account of how the Beagle was ‘sorely tried’ by a giant wave. This tore away one of the precious ship’s boats and nearly sent the Beagle and all who sailed in her to the bottom. My father John Chancellor painted the scene in 1982, not long before his untimely death, as I described in the special Darwin issue of ‘The Linnean’ in 2009. It is sobering to reflect that if the little ship had sunk that day the wonderful Beagle Project would not be happening and every one of us would be the poorer.

New Beagle Project podcast

After something of a hiatus (ahem!), we have just published a new HMS Beagle Project podcast on the Beagle Channel.

David Lort-Phillips, co-founder and Executive Committee member of the HMS Beagle Project, talks about his relative, Admiral John Lort-Stokes, the last captain of HMS Beagle. The interview with BBC Radio Wales's Jamie Owen was recorded on 01-Aug-2011.

David-Lort-Phillips-Interview-2011-08-01.mp3 (9.9 kB).

Finally!

In his final "Setting sail" post, maritime historian and HMS Beagle expert Dr Gordon Chancellor marks the day in 1831 when FitzRoy and Darwin left England behind...

In our last post we left the HMS Beagle on Christmas Day, stuck in Plymouth by south-westerly gales. 26 December in contrast was ‘a beautiful day,’ and Captain FitzRoy’s Narrative indicates that there was ‘a dead calm’ with every prospect that soon there would be a breeze from the east. The whole day was wasted, however, because so many of the crew were in irons for getting plastered the day before!

FitzRoy’s easterly duly arrived 180 years ago, on 27 December 1831, and he resolved to strike south for Madeira. Darwin ‘took a farewell luncheon’ of mutton and champagne ashore with Sullivan. The two friends boarded at about 2pm ‘and immediately with every sail filled by a light breeze, we scudded away’ from England.

So, after months of preparations and false starts, one of the most important voyages of all time was under way. As FitzRoy so truly said, the voyage ‘though likely to be long, promised much that would interest, and excite, and perhaps reward....’