About Christopher Lloyd

18th August, York, Yorkshire.

My name is Christopher Lloyd (chris@bigbang2911.com) and I am a UK journalist and author who specialises in writing about the history of the world. My book What on Earth Happened? (in Dutch it's called Wat Is Er In Hemels Naam Gebeurd?), published in 2008, aims to reunite human history with natural history by telling the complete story of the planet, life and people from the beginning of time to the present day in an interconnected, holistic narrative.

Meanwhile, another world history in the What on Earth? series is about to be launched this October. What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World has taken 18 months to research and write and tells the story of life on Earth through the lens of 100 different lifeforms, some still living, some extinct.

The first 50 are species that evolved in the pre-human era, beginning with microbial life (viruses, bacteria, protists), through to prehistoric marine species (e.g. sharks), plants (e.g. Lepidodendron trees) , giant fungi (Prototaxites), and land vertebrates, including dinosaurs and mammals and upto man.

The second 50 are species that have thrived only as result of human domestication over the last 10,000 years. These are divided thematically into farmed foods (e.g. cows, wheat, rice, maize, sugarcane), those that have provided material weatth (cotton, rubber, silkworms); mind-enhancing drugs (e.g. tea, coffee, cacao, coca, poppies (opium), tobacco); pets (cats, dogs), and species that appeal to our senses (e.g. roses, the lotus flowers, oranges, bananas etc).

At the end I have ranked and scored all these 100 species according to their overall impact on planet, life and people (as a bit of fun).

The aim of such a survey of life on earth is to put human achievement within its proper context. It shows how the self-correcting system of natural selection, which has emerged over the last 4 billion years, is being rapidly threatened by the rival system of domestication (artificial selection).

Discussing these issues, highlighting the problems we face today and coming up with potential solutions is what I am most looking forward to on my journey retracing the first leg of Darwin’s great trip. Above all else, Charles Darwin was the man who first articulated the dichotomy between Artificial Selection (which concerns the first chapter of his On the Origin of Species) and Natural Selection (which he revealed as nature's way of adapting life to the dynamic environments on Earth).

His revelation that humans are inextricably part of the natural world (i.e. that we evolved), and are not some kind of special creatures endowed with the right to exploit the Earth's natural riches only for the sake of our own species, reverberates with as much significance today as ever it did when he first published his theory 150 years ago..

My goodness....What a lot we will have to talk about!

Boisterous weather

19th August, Whitby, Yorkshire

OK – Today I thought it would be a good idea to do some homework, so I began reading Darwin’s own journal of his voyage on the Beagle. As I turned the pages, four points leapt out from reading the account of the first leg (Plymouth to Tenerife). I must say that at times I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or to cry.

The first issue concerned delays. Did you know that after arriving in Plymouth on October 24th 1831, Darwin spent the next 10 weeks going precisely nowhere? The “boisterous weather”, as he put it, was so unfavourable that he spent most of the time staying in Plymouth (although he occasionally popped up to London to see friends), organising his minute cabin and walking up and down the streets of the town.

He later wrote in his autobiography that the “two months at Plymouth were the most miserable which I ever spent….”

Even when the Beagle attempted to set sail on 10th December, it was forced back into harbour a day later owing to yet more inclement conditions. The ship finally left on December 27th, 1831, shortly after various crew members had to be tied up in chains for 8 hours as a punishment for getting drunk over Christmas. The crew of the Stad Amsterdam should read Darwin’s account with special care: “such a scene proves how absolutely necessary strict discipline is amongst such thoughtless beings as Sailors….”

The second point that struck me about his narrative concerns the practical issues of when landies (like me) take to the seas. Darwin’s biggest initial challenge seems to have been trying to work out how to get into his hammock, an experience which made me laugh out aloud when I read it:

“I did so last night & experienced a most ludicrous difficulty in getting into it; my great 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. After a little time I daresay I shall, like others, find it very comfortable…”

I daresay I will get into equivalent pickles myself, somewhere along the way. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know….

The third point concerns the dreaded sea-sickness. In his journal entry for Monday 12th December, Darwin writes: “Boisterous weather, the ship rolled a good deal; & I actually felt rather uncomfortable: I look forward to sea-sickness with utter dismay…”

And that was while the Beagle was still docked in harbour…..

My first night will be in harbour, too, on Monday 31st August. Time will tell if Charles and I share a similar disposition. Then, shortly after setting sail, Darwin wrote: “I found in the only thing my stomach would bear was biscuit & raisins” – Hey, look on the brightside Lex [Dutch TV producer], It looks like the travel expenses for Dutch TV may not be so horrific afterall…..

The final cautionary warning from reading this part of Darwin’s journal concerns our initial destination – Tenerife – because in fact Darwin never actually got there, as he explains in his diary entry for 6th January 1832:

“Oh misery, misery — we were just preparing to drop our anchor within ½ a mile of Santa Cruz [Capital of Tenerife] when a boat came alongside bringing with it our death-warrant. The consul declared we must perform a rigorous quarantine of twelve days. Those who have never experienced it can scarcely conceive what a gloom it cast on every one: Matters were soon decided by the Captain ordering all sail to be set & make a course for the Cape Verde Islands. And we have left perhaps one of the most interesting places in the world, just at the moment when we were near enough for every object to create, without satisfying, our utmost curiosity.”

I reckon that’s probably enough homework for one day....

Snakes of stone

2oth August, Whitby, Yorkshire

For the last few days I have been exploring the North Yorkshire coast. It’s not an area I am at all familiar with, but it’s rich in history – both natural and human. Yesterday I walked from Whitby, a seaside town famous for its ship-building, jet carving, whaling and alum mining – to Robin Hood’s Bay, a Victorian smugglers cove. It was a 6 mile hike along a beautiful coastal path. The weather was perfect and the views stunning.

When I arrived, two hours later, I dropped into Wainright’s Bar to re-nourish my joints with a pint of Directors. I then slowly plodded up the steep hill winding up behind Robin Hood’s Bay towards the local bus stop where, I was told, I could catch a bus back to my campsite. But along the way something happened that changed my plans.

I’m not quite sure why I noticed a small sign, posted up on the Church notice board. It wasn’t in the least bit colourful or prominent. It concerned a fossil-hunt, organised by the local geological society, which was to leave from the old Customs House at 6 o’clock that evening. It was now 4.45. After consulting my bus timetable I realised there was no excuse, it was easy to get a later bus back and this was clearly an opportunity too good to miss. Back down the hill I went.

It turns out that Robin Hood’s Bay is famous for its ammonites, spiral shaped fossils dating from c. 170 million years ago. Some of them can be as big as car’s wheel, some as small as 1 penny piece. They went extinct along with so much other land and marine life in the mass extinction that finished off the dinosaurs, 65.5 million years ago.

For centuries the local people believed these curiously-shaped fossils were the remains of a horrific onslaught by sea snakes. This monstrous plague had been turned to stone by God after he answered the prayers of St Hilda (d. 680 AD), Abbess of nearly Whitby Abbey, who pleaded with him for her people’s deliverance.

Rising up high across the bay and towards the top of the cliffs, not so far into the distance, can be seen the remains of the old alum mines, worked since the 1600s. The chemical was a vital ingredient in dyeing wool, a mordant for making the dyes stick to natural fibres. After Henry VIII’s spat with the Pope, local production of this chemical became a top Royal priority to avoid having to import the stuff from its main point of European manufacture, the Papal States.
Here, in the blue shale of these cliffs, the alum was extracted using a most protracted chemical process involving kelp (seaweed) and copious quantities of locally produced human urine, shipped in floating wooden tankers from downtown Newcastle.

It was only today, on a trip to the wonderful Whitby museum, that I finally made the connection between alum, fossils and Darwin. Evidence of giant Ichthyosaurs and ancient crocodiles lunge out of the walls of this gem of a museum. These were fossils found by the alum miners, now painstakingly extracted and re-assembled where they are cemented into place for permanent display.

What I hadn’t realised is that these fossil discoveries were made several decades before Darwin published his revolutionary theory in 1859. They weren’t found by people looking to back up Darwin’s thoughts - that was hardly necessary! Hundreds of tonnes of fossils were already on display in the museums of pre-industrial towns like Whitby for all to see….

It’s largely thanks to the alum miners and Henry VIII that, at least in this part of the world, copious evidence to support Darwin’s theories was already in the public domain, carefully preserved for all to see, if they wished, in national and local museums.

Darwin’s writings forever changed the way people looked at these mysterious prehistoric relics. They were no longer snakes of stone, for so long thought by the people of Whitby to have been a testament to the will of God, but precious evidence of species long since extinct.

I came away realising how completely Darwin challenged people’s traditional perspective on the world. Afterall, at least until 1850s, despite the discovery of fossils, it was commonly believed that the Earth was only about 6,000 years old. So entrenched were these beliefs that I guess it's not that surprising that today, just 150 years after the publication of his theory, some people still find Darwin’s revelations easier to reject than accept.

A son of God?

21st August, Whitby, Yorkshire

I spoke to my father on the phone this week. He’s a mad keen golfer who has spent the last 60 consecutive summers at the seaside town of Sandwich in Kent where he plays on his favourite links course, The Royal St Georges.

He had something important to tell me: “Think about this…” he said rather sharply. “Jesus was a man – right? He was also the Son of God, right? So, how can he possibly have been descended from a monkey!”

Ever since I began writing books about the history of planet, life and people, our conversations about what I do have become a little bit strained. My father was brought up by his fundamentalist Christian mother, his own father having died of tuberculosis - as so many did in the 1920s and 1930s – leaving as his legacy a 3-month old baby son.

Darwin was himself destined for a life in the church. He began training for the priesthood at the aptly named Christ’s College, Cambridge - although he rejected the career in preference for a dream-trip around the world studying nature (tough choice, eh?).

But in 1839, three years after returning from his voyage aboard the Beagle, Darwin married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, a regular church-goer and devout Christian Unitarian (Unitarians believe in an all-powerful God but reckon Jesus was a just good man, not necessarily the son of God) .

The issue of divinity, therefore, was never far from Darwin’s domestic hearth. And, as time went on, the dichotomy between his razor-sharp observations about the natural world on the one hand and the idea of an all-knowing, benevolent God, on the other, grew agonisingly acute.
The creatures that gave Darwin his biggest cause for religious disquiet came from a family of parasitic wasps called Ichneumonidae. Darwin wrote about their gruesome lifestyles in a letter to his American botanist friend, Asa Gray:

‘I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars …’

Hymenoepimecis argyraphaga is an especially gruesome example. Its prey is a species of spider called Plesiometa argyra. The wasp temporarily paralyses the spider with its venom and then injects its eggs through a tube, called an ovipositor, deep into the live spider’s body. Inside, the growing wasp larvae manipulate the spider’s web-spinning system to make a cocoon of silk. The hapless arachnid is then gradually eaten alive….. from the inside out.

At almost every talk or lecture I give, the old chestnut about evolution Vs “intelligent design” rears its head. However secular we think we are as a society, it seems we still can’t let go of the idea of an all-powerful God, yet how much greater the headwind must have been in Darwin’s day, 150 years ago, before modern secularism gained its grip.

After publishing his theory that even humans had common ancestors (i.e. apes), Darwin was frequently mocked in magazines (see the illustration above from an edition of The Hornet in 1871).

To my mind there are two quite separate questions about the compatibility between evolution and monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Judaism or Islam.

The first concerns the issue of whether there is an intervening God – one, as in the Old Testament Bible (or Jewish Torah) who delivers real-time justice (Plagues of Egypt), or even seeks revenge (Noah’s flood). The New Testament idea of God granting humans freewill but culminating in a judgement day (the Book of Revelation) is really the same idea but with the intervention put on ice until we’re dead – a convenient way of combining the apparent injustices of everyday life with an all-powerful, all-seeing God.

I can’t imagine how you could reconcile such a view with Darwin’s revelations about the mechanics of the natural world. Nature harbours no morals, intentions or judgements regarding any of its species. Rather her survival depends on a self- correcting symmetry founded on biodiversity.

Species best adapted to prevailing conditions thrive, while those least suited suffer. As conditions randomly change (as they invariably do) some become extinct while others rise to pre-eminence. Such a system has operated for nearly 4 billion years, surviving even the most dramatic environmental traumas (most of all 252 million years ago, when 96% of marine species and 76% of land species were obliterated). Each time, nature has bounced back.

But the second question proves harder for scientists to dismiss. It’s the one about what set of conditions gave rise to this highly robust, self-correcting system in the first place?
Self-correcting systems are not unique to the biological world. The efficiency of a steam engine’s “governor’s balls” is a parallel in the world of thermodynamics, as is the self-correcting steering of a flanged baton on rails (something I hope to demonstrate on our voyage using two plastic cups and some model railway track!). What forces gave rise to nature’s self-correcting symmetry in the first place?

To rely on random chance is speculative at best and unscientific at worst. Grappling with the conundrum has even got eminent physicists proposing that we exist in some kind of “multiverse” in which our universe is just one of an infinite number. According to them, ours just happens to be the one that harbours the conditions necessary for life exist (e.g. the right forces between atoms, the right strength of gravity, the right chemicals for organic life etc, etc).
Towards the end of his life Darwin had little or no time for the intervening type of divinity. On Sunday mornings he would sit on a bench outside his local parish church while his family went inside to worship.

But that didn’t mean he was an atheist – or that to believe in evolution means you have to be an athiest. Whatever forces gave rise to nature’s infinitely brilliant design in the first place – be it statistical chance, a strike of Thor’s thunderbolt or the machinations of an extra-terrestrial beings experiment in interplanetary horticulture – merit the rare, but essential, quality of all good science – humility.

So, Dad, I’m afraid I reckon Jesus was descended from a monkey, but I can’t deny the fact that he may well have been a son of God.

Natura non facit saltum

23rd August, on the Eurostar to Paris

I am currently cruising at about 200 miles per hour along the high speed railway line between London King’ Cross and Paris Gard du Nord. My eldest daughter (Matilda, 13) is sitting opposite me as we head off back to Switzerland to rendez-vous with the rest of our family (wife Gins and younger daughter, Verity, 11). There we shall spend a week hiking in the glorious mountains of the Swiss Bernese Oberland. We will then return by car next Sunday, ready for me to turn around toute-suite to board a train for Plymouth on Monday – and then on to the Stad Amsterdam that evening.

Seeing the countryside fly past so fast makes me wonder why, when so much seems to have changed over the last 150 years, we are still so fascinated by the writings and adventures of a once obscure British naturalist. After all Charles Darwin witnessed nothing of the traumas, advances and huge changes in lifestyles that have brought us into the 21st century? Why do we still find the words of this man so striking and relevant today?

I have been musing over this conundrum for the last half hour – and, for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts.

Actually, I have concluded that life over the last 150 years has changed very little. In fact, when it comes to fundamentals, I’m not sure it’s changed that much at all.

What are the biggest agents of transformation during that period? My guess is that top of anyone’s list must be the extraordinary growth in human populations. Shortly before Darwin was born, worldwide population levels reached the 1 billion mark (c. 1804). Today we are careering towards 7 billion…

Such swollen numbers have led to truly dramatic changes in human lifestyles. In the “developed world” most people now live in cities as opposed to rural communities. Intensive farming and artificial infrastructure has reshaped much of the earth’s surface. Most of the seas are now a barren desert, void of life, thanks to the pitfalls of over-fishing and bottom-sea trawling.

Despite this, the issue of population growth is no different today from how it was Darwin’s time. In fact exponential population growth is almost exactly the same today as it was then. That’s why Thomas Malthus' essay in 1798 had such a profound impact on Darwin, giving him the keys (a Malthusian crisis) from which he deduced the mechanics of what he came to call ‘natural selection’.

Another defining feature of today’s world is the hegemony of oil – with all its offshoots including the internal combustion and jet engines. The oil economy, on which we are so reliant today for our material welfare and comfort, didn’t really kick in properly until the early 20th century, well after Darwin’s day.

Yet again, the key innovation afforded by today’s use of oil had already come about in 1801 when Richard Trevithick first stoked up the pressure of his “Puffing Devil” steam engine, the first to be mounted on wheels.

What Trevithick’s innovation did was free humanity from the shackles of nature by giving us a fully independent, transportable form of power. Until then, humans had to some extent always relied on the forces of nature for their power supplies be it by harnessing the wind (boats, windmills), water (canals, water mills), animals (horses, mules, human feet) or using the weight of the atmosphere (early steam engines).

Trevithick’s high pressure steam changed everything. It liberated humanity allowing people to power up when and where they wanted, revolutionising transport down mines, inland along railways tracks and via iron-clad ships across the seas. Steam power also gave birth to what is still the main form of electricity generation (87% of world’s electric power still comes from steam – even nuclear power stations are ultimatley driven by steam).

The discovery and harnessing of oil and petrol may have dramatically extended humanity’s liberation from nature, but the basic battle was already won with high pressure steam in Darwin’s day.

Now let’s think of what hasn’t changed in the last 150 years. Human beings have not physiologically ‘evolved’ at all during the period – evolution works on much grander times scales and, as Darwin was always keen to emphasise, it seldom, if ever, moves in leaps (Natura non facit saltum).

Edwardian gentlemen were generally a little less tall than people are today (try sitting in the cramped seats of an old London theatre for a 2 hour performance!) and there are probably a few more slim-hipped women about (owing to the advent of successful techniques for caesarian sections), But these are cosmetic differences. The basic human biological formula is unchanged.

As are our present day instincts from tribalism (from wars to competitive sports); competition (in form of economic capitalism) to vanity (humans use visual recognition as the primary mechanism for mate selection unlike most other mammals which use their sense of smell). Humans are also just as obsessed as ever with the pursuit of sexual reproduction (look at the role of sex in advertising and the media) and still have a woeful disregard for the welfare of other species (any growth in the animal rights movement has been more than offset by the horrors of intensive farming)….

Who can deny that these issues, all prevent in Darwin’s day, aren’t still defining questions we constantly grapple with in our society today, consciously or otherwise, despite the cosmetic and material differences of our 21st century lives?

Then there’s education. Don’t get me started!…..! The issue of man’s place in nature is still hardly on the curriculum in most schools and colleges which regard the study of the past (which they call history) as the record of human achievement only - exactly as it was taught in Darwin’s day. Little if any attempt has yet been made to see the past in terms of the context of humanity, other life and the planet itself (see www.whatonearthhappened.com).

So now it makes more sense why we have such current curiosity in this man, Charles Darwin, who was born 200 years ago. He was the first person to truly expose the origin, vulnerability and frailty of the human condition when seen in its proper evolutionary context. Yes – human beings are indeed subject to the same rules of survival and extinction as other species – rules that Darwin was the first to articulate.

And it is because so little has changed over the last 150 years that Darwin’s prophetic warning that ‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin,’ has such profound resonance today.

Back to the future!

Monday 31st August, Tonbridge station,

Oh dear….. I rather naively thought that any travel problems I might encounter would start once I had boarded the clipper Stad Amsterdam – you know violent sea-sickness, running out of socks, falling overboard - that sort of thing.

But no. Not more than 20 minutes after kissing my wife a fond farewell from Penshurst station and the train to Redhill (where I change for Reading and then Plymouth) came to an abrupt halt. According to the driver, Redhill station has been shut owing to severe signal failure and so the train is going, non-stop, back to its original starting point at Tonbridge, two stations further back down the line from where I had boarded…

This is not helpful.

My 8 pm tryst with the clipper’s tender, so wonderfully arranged for me at the Mayflower Steps in Plymouth harbour by boat-master Ruurd, now looks highly unlikely. I shall have to try my luck traveling to Plymouth via Tonbridge and London Paddington, instead.

There is one good piece of news, though. While on holiday in Switzerland last week, I invested in this splendid waterproof coat (see me modeling it above) which can, so the lady who sold it to me, survive even the most hostile four hour gale. Now I’m in it, what do you think? I reckon even a meteorite shower would struggle to make much of an impact…

When the guard came through the train selling tickets (there is no ticket office at Penshurst station) he casually glanced my way, but then, strangely he moved on passed, and ignored me completely. I guess if my aspirations as an author ultimately fail, there is now, thanks to this glorious technicolour coat, the glittering prospect of masquerading as a railway worker and gaining free travel for life….

More anon.

The hot potato

So what’s the point of this grand adventure, re-tracing the famous voyage of Charles Darwin? Perhaps it’s simply to satisfy a Dutch thirst for TV travel shows? Or an eccentric producer’s fancy for sailing on board a 26-sail clipper as a kind of elaborate way of bobbing up and down memory creek.

No. I am told this voyage is a grand and ambitious effort to help us all peer beyond today’s horizon and delve into some of the most important questions facing all living things today.
Such sentiments would, I am sure, have been shared by Charles Darwin as he set out from Plymouth on December 27th, 1831. His ambition was to try to demystify the processes of geology and to discover the mechanics behind the “transmutation of species”.

Darwin’s thirst for answers was born out of intense frustration. He was a young man who was well and truly hacked off by his educational experiences at Shrewsbury, Edinburgh and Cambridge. Apart from the occasional ray of sunlight (such as meeting Professor Henslow who set him up on the Beagle voyage), learning anything useful at school and university was, according to Darwin’s autobiography, almost impossible and most often a complete “waste of time”.

Darwin’s wanted to know how the world was made, how old it was, and what processes gave rise to its abundance of various life-forms. He approached the problem without preconceptions – there was no “theory of everything” that he was trying to prove or disprove. All his ideas about Natural Selection came several years after the trip aboard the Beagle and then they precipitated only after rigorous examination and interpretation of hard evidence that Darwin collected during his travels.

Something like the same process is underway today on board the Stad Amsterdam. Scientists, environmentalists and other experts will, like Darwin, be focused on gathering evidence about the world and its species. But with one big difference. Today, it is not where life came from, - the origin of species – that is the issue. Rather, it is where they are going? What are the future prospects for life on Earth?

Some scientists today talk of a “sixth mass extinction” caused, they argue, by a world inhabited by approaching 7 billion humans. Climatologist James Lovelock, originator of Gaia theory, warns in his latest book The Vanishing face of Gaia that it is now probably too late to avoid catastrophic global heating. Within 100 years, he says, global temperatures are likely to have catapulted up by c. 6 degrees to a new hot-state, with sea levels rising by as much as 25 metres.

Flooding and famine will be the immediate causes of ecological destruction as the earth / life system (Gaia) adjusts to a new equilibrium. Ice-free poles, acidic oceans, vast new deserts and a global mass extinction of species are, he warns, now the most likely scenario – whatever we do or do not do. The simple truth is that 7 billion humans, with all their billions of livestock and pets, eject far too much carbon dioxide and methane for the planet to cope in its current state.

Are the seas really rising twice as fast as was predicted by scientists over the last 10 years, as Lovelock claims? Is climate change unstoppable even if we cut carbon emissions, as politicians propose, by 60% by 2050? Are ecological initiatives in so-called “renewable energy” (e.g. wind farms, biofuels) just empty gestures made by popularity-conscious Western governments that simply suit companies eager to profit from the latest centralized subsidy-binge?

The questions are is Lovelock right? And if so, what’s to be done? Is global catastrophe inevitable and, if so, what then is the best way of trying to manage a crisis, the scale of which is beyond precedent in human history?

This is the rather hot potato that our voyage in the wake of Darwin seeks to address.

Sick as a parrot

Falmouth, 2nd September. 10 AM.

“Everyone starts off feeling a bit sea-sick….”

"It’ll soon pass….”

“You’ll be fine tomorrow……”

Dutch people are nothing if not positive. They are also highly hospitable, enthusiastic and practical. The nine hour sail from Plymouth harbour yesterday began a little choppy. I stayed on deck, strictly adhering to my good wife’s recommendations to keep my eyes focused on the horizon.

Which is all very well until your insides start to turn themselves into outsides. The only practical posture I found was to lie on deck …. But then I couldn’t see the horizon… I must have mumbled it outloud – “Oh yes you can – it comes into view over there” pointed out a kindly lady nearby.

And she was right. Every so often for a micro-second it came into view as the boat lurched up and down like a drunken cow with BSE.

Darwin spent most of his two weeks traveling to Tenerife being sick (See the “Boisterous Weather” post below). I spent last night trying to console myself with the reassuring Dutch words that most people feel just fine on their second day, but always there was the nagging fact that, well, Darwin didn’t. So what if I’m like him? Being sick six times in as many hours is fairly disabling, and by 3pm yesterday I was stricken on my bunk, unable to move any further than the nearby toilet.

But I have convinced myself that things will be different from how is was for Darwin in 1831. The Beagle was only half the size of this majestic ship, the Stad Amsterdam. My cabin is situated nicely in the middle of the boat, lessening the lurches – he was higher p in the poop. And I have drugs – a stronger dose is now being administered by Everhard the ship’s doctor and my newest, best old friend.

By about 8pm yesterday evening we had anchored in the benign harbour at Falmouth. I then rose, as if from the dead, feeling surprisingly human. We even did some filming in the long-room, a group of us, including Sarah Darwin, Charles’ great, great granddaughter, discussing why this voyage is so important, what potential it has to help raise awareness about the planet’s current plight and what can or should be done concerning “the future of species”.

Then blissful sleep as the boat bobbed gently up and down, I have no motion sickness in port. Today, though, there are ominous warnings about conditions at sea. It will be very rough, and our planned departure in two hours time is, rumour has it, to be delayed owing to yet more boisterous weather. And now I hear the captain, ice-cool Richard Slootweg, is about to address us all in the long room….

Force 9 from Navaronne

Falmouth, 2nd September. 12 AM.

I guess Richard Burton would have taken the captain’s recent weather update, delivered to us all in the long room just a few minutes ago, well in his stride.

Apparently we can’t leave as scheduled at 12 noon because the wind is dead against us and the waves are so high that even with the engine’s motor on (it does have a motor, unlike the Beagle, of course) we could make no headway – just stay still.

“There’s no point exhausting the crew and getting no-where” said Richard.

Quite.

So we’ll leave tonight when the wind is expected to shift slightly westwards, when we can catch just enough to help push us on our way to Tenerife. By then the waves will be 6 metres high and the wind at least a Force 9. Oh my giddy….!

Bart, the ship’s chef, makes a terrific soup, which in this smooth harbour environment slips down beautifully.

I just don’t want to see it again later.....

The longest night......?

Falmouth, 2nd September. 6.30 PM.

Captain Richard has set the sail time for 7.45pm. The weather will begin at a steady Force 8, gradually increasing to Force 9 as we head out. After that, he told me after the public briefing, it will probably get a bit worse. Maybe Force 10.

“I would have like to have left it another day, when the winds would be better, but that won’t leave enough time to make our schedule…..”

Earlier he showed me how the ship's barometer had plunged below 1,000 millibars...
Meanwhile, many of us are hanging out in the long room, devouring Bart the chef’s delicious dinner of potato wedges, runner beans and fish drizzled in balsamic vinegar.

There is a general atmosphere of excitement, mixed, I think, with large dollops of trepidation. Couldn’t we just wait one more day? As I close up, my mind can’t help itself from turning over the rather dreadful speculation that this could be the longest night of my life…..

Defragmentation complete

Somewhere with rather a lot of sea swell 3rd September. 5. PM.

Just to warn you that I am going to have to write this v e r y s l o w l y…. probably just one sentence at a time followed by a series of long, careful, restorative pauses…. That ok?

[takes a sip of water, boat rolls, horizon flits passed momentarily through the long room porthole….. }

The ‘night of the long dives’ in the teeth of a Force 9 gale did not, for me at least, prove quite as appalling as I had feared. I think most people survived it fairly well. But typing and focusing your eyes on a computer screen is not a good way of tackling sea-sickness, so I must be careful

[pause]

The views on deck as we headed out into the stormy seas last night were spectacular. Imagine the bright, regular beam of the Falmouth lighthouse flinging round through 360 degrees to port, offset by myriad moon beams breaking through the fractured clouds to starboard, spilling a majestic grey hue onto the boisterous waters below.

Wow!

[long pause]

With the wind in our faces, it was an exhilarating departure.

And then straight to bed, hatches securely fastened.

I tell you getting your boots off in a Force 9 gale on a clipper is no simple task. Bend down to untie the laces, and, as the boat lurches, your face ends up somewhere on the floor. Lift your boots to your lap, an alternative approach, and when the boat lurches you just fall of the chair…
I eventually resorted to lying on my bunk and just pulling very hard.

Sleep was intermittent. Thankfully, though, the dreaded sick-sickness was in remission. Dreams came through thick and fast, the brain flitting through all those images and sensation of the last few days, like a computer disk, de-fragmenting its newest data, to make it easier to fetch and carry for the future.

Suddenly the ship was on skis – whoah! – and still in full sail. Down the slopes we careered, then up the other side, Whooooosh… Now that was fun!

By the morning the weather was beginning to calm from the tempestuous night – well, a little. I spent two hour on deck eyes fixed on the horizon, chatting variously to the extraordinary talents here on board – the sculptor Anthony Smith, who plans to model a bust of Fitzroy, the man who captained HMS Beagle, and Wim, my room-mate, an artist who takes exquisite pictures through his microscope of microbial sea creatures.

John Francis, the American environmentalist is another. He got so fed up with arguing with people over the damage humans are doing to the environment that he spent 17 years in silence, walking across America, teaching himself how to listen and learning to live his own life along a new path.

And, as I slowly type, Sarah Darwin, great great granddaughter of Charles, enters the long room and joins me here at the large round table. She’s a biologist with the Natural History Museum in London, and submitted her PhD on the tomatoes of the Galapagos Islands the day we set sail… a project which has taken her nine years to complete.

She’s brought her two sons Leo (6) and Joss (2) for at least 4 weeks. Leo, a budding photo-journalist, is taking pictures of everyone, and sticking them into his ship’s log using an instant picture-developing Polaroid camera. He then interviews each person to find out who they are and what they do. What a brilliant experience.

Meanwhile the film crew, technicians and producers discuss tactics and plans for how to shoot episode 2 of “On the Future of Species” which traces our progress from Plymouth to Tenerife.
And last, but far from least, is the twenty strong crew of sailors under the command of Captain Richard who constantly clean the decks, assess the weather conditions and adjust the sails, ready to catch every last wisp of useful wind to propel us along.

What an extraordinary assemblage of amazing people….

We're having a whale of a time!

4th September. 11. AM.

Things are looking up. Most of the sickies on board (of which I count myself one) are now starting to ripen into a pale shade of normal, except poor old Ester, the dutch camera-operator, who is still feeling terrible. I’m not sure if her current assignment, to film an item on sea-sickness, was itself a sick joke or not ….Lex?

Outside the sun in shining, which boosts all our spirits, and the wind blows us along at a steady 9 knots. The ship is in full sail.

Now comes an announcement in Dutch over the seldom used intercom. As I look up everyone rushes from their seats and disappears out of the long room at full speed. Is there a problem? an escape drill? Someone overboard?

I also rush outside, a little behind. People are crowded on the starboard side, peering into the horizon excitedly. A whale has been spotted shooting its load of sea water 20 feet high in to air. It is too far away to see its body, but the excitement on people’s faces was almost as good.

Whales are descended from hippopotamus-like ancestors which once roamed the land, about 50 million years ago. Some of them returned to the seas, their nostrils gradually migrating over the generations up their faces to become blowholes. Meanwhile their legs were lost in a process of evolutionary tidying up, now redundant for creatures that swim in the gravity lean environment of the seas.

Giant eagles, top predators of the Eocene period, are thought to have provided the motive, chasing these creatures that took refuge in the seas. Gradually evolution rewarded those best adapted to the safer environment, so that today, millions of years later, we share the world with whales.

When Darwin’s set off on his Beagle voyage (1831) whale hunting was just starting to become big business. Huge fleets set out from ports such as Whitby on the North Yorkshire coast, pioneered by entrepreneurs like The Rev William Scoresby the Younger (1789 - 1857), whose theology compelled him to hunt this animal to fulfill God’s purpose…

“Like the rest of the lower animals, the whale was designed by Him who “created great whales and every living creature that moveth” to be subject to man: and therefore when attacked by him it perishes by its simplicity. Instead of repelling his attacks it generally dives at once to an immense depth, where …. it becomes so exhausted that, on its return to the surface of the sea, it becomes an easy prey."

Hunting whales made men like Scoresby very rich. Every aspect of a whale’s anatomy seemed purpose built for use by humans – from the bones that were of an ideal elasticity for making women’s corsets to the waxy-white-jelly like substance found in a sperm whale’s head used for making soap and cosmetics. So sought after were these magnificent creatures that by 1880, thanks to the success of British and American whaling fleets, as many as 300,000 sperm whales had been slaughtered, more than 25% of all stocks estimated to be in the sea.

But Darwin’s revelations concerning the origin of species suggested that other creatures were not expressly put on the Earth by God for exploitation by man. Rather, humans have themselves evolved out of other lineages from species that come and go as environments change.
His theory has triggered a most powerful change of mind-sets in a relatively short space of time.

So revolutionary was this new philosophical framework that nowadays people’s admiration for the whale, as demonstrated by the rush to the deck by all those on board the Stad Amsterdam only a few minutes ago, has changed almost completely from subjugation to admiration.
Today’s final word goes to the leader of an Eskimo tribe in Siberia, a culture that has learned over time to live sustainably side by side with the glorious whale.

“There are many wonderful animals, but whales are best of all. As they pass by your skin boat, great and quiet, you immediately come to understand your place on the Earth, and you become warm inside."

Nikolai Gal Gaugye, Sireniki, (1994)

Play time....

Saturday, 5th September. 3.00 PM.

Perfection is often hard to place (especially for perfectionists). But as the sun settles over the horizon, its long glittering arm reflecting powerfully across the endless waters, and our boat tilts gently from side to side, the wind still filling its sails..... I reckon it must be here, or very close by, on the rear deck where I currently type, looking out westwards from the clipper Stad Amsterdam.

John sits behind me, strumming his banjo. This is the instrument that he took all the way around the USA and South America on his own 22 year voyage by foot, most of it spent without uttering a word. It was a homage, he told me, to the art of learning how to listen, mostly to the music of nature.

Now his strums gather into a rhythmic beat. Muffled voices on deck mingle with the chords, and a few birds overhead inspect the scene. I wonder what they make of us...

On the horizon, I can just make out a feint sketch of land. We are hugging the coast of northern Spain to catch what wind we can. Our first major landmark, Cape Fitzroy, the headland that juts out into the Atlantic, has just passed us by in the distance.

It was Dirk Draulans, the Flemmish biologist, who spotted our first pod of dolphins which approached from the west. As our crowd gathered excitedly around the boat’s railings, at least 10 of these playful mammals could be seen dancing at the bow, leaping through the surf thrown up by our pitching boat. You could even hear their clicks.

Other pods soon gathered, approaching us from every direction. At one point there must have been 50, maybe 100, dolphins – it was impossible to tell, so supple were their movements, with synchronized leaps, sliding this way, then that, before darting down, and backwards again, to experience the thrill of having another go. They surrounded us on all sides.

For me, this was symbiosis at its most exquisite – a union between humanity and a fellow mammal species, one of the few that grace the seas. These creatures were not here begging or expectant for food, like the pidgins of Trafalgar Square. They were simply here to play…..and to make their presence known. They came, I am sure, to enjoy the thrill of a crowd. To celebrate being alive and to revel in the pleasure of knowing that they, too, were not alone.

Redmond was standing beside me as we watched the playful scene below. “Instead of the sea being terrifying, empty and nasty, they make you feel like you have friends,” he said. It was the perfect statement for a perfect moment.

***

The arrival of the playful dolphins coincided with another game we have been playing on board today. The Evolution Game goes alongside a new history of the life on Earth I have written called What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World, (to be published by Bloomsbury next month).

The game is a blend of snakes and ladders and trivial pursuit (although I discovered to day, to my great surprise, that no-one in Holland seems to have heard of snakes and ladders, can that be right?).

Each square on a 100 square-grid represents one of the species featured in the book. Roll a die, move along to the appropriate square and you will be asked a multiple-choice question about that species. Get it right and the reward is a second die for your next turn. Get it wrong and you’re stuck with just the one.

Some squares have ladders (symbolized by strands of DNA) that shoot upwards allowing you to beam up the board – but only, of course, if you get the answer to the appropriate question right. But land on a square at the top of a worm, get the answer wrong and whoooosh….. down you slide. The aim of the game is to see how high up the list of the 100 species you can reach after 10 straight questions.

So we are having a little competition. Which of the guests / experts on board (Sarah Darwin , John Francis, Redmond O’Hanlan, Dirk Draulans, Katja Phillipart, plus the ship’s doctor Everhard) can reach highest up the board? It’s a mixture of luck and skill. Each attempt has been filmed by Hans (chief cameraman) and Charles (Chief sound engineer). I am told that the winner will be revealed in episode two of the series “On the Future of Species”.

Sarah reckons she’s got about 3% of Charles Darwin’s genes. The question we are all wondering, then, is when it comes to winning the Evolution Game will they be the fittest?

The wonderful world of Wim

Sunday, 6th September. 11.00 AM.

You must meet Wim. He’s a Dutch museum curator who has single-handedly conceived of and created one of the most fascinating biological collections in the world. There is just one criteria for inclusion into Wim’s hallowed institution – you have to be less than 1mm big.

I started getting to know Wim properly soon after emerging from the trauma of sea-sickness (now wonderfully set to music by our on-board musical / acrobatic quartet The Ashton Brothers with their new, original hit: “The Long-Room Blues… with vomit all over my shoes….”).

Wim is an obsessive, determined, sensitive and hugely skillful perfectionist. He is also my room-mate. Wim is excellent company, with a GSOH and, I can vouch, he comes completely snore-free.

His self-styled title of curator – not artist or scientist - is significant. Wim is not interested in personal interpretations or rational measurements. He simply wants to reveal the extraordinary hidden world hidden from us by the parameters of the naked eye.

Following in the steps of fellow countryman Antonie Van Leeuwenhoek (1632 – 1723), Wim spends most his daylight hours peering down a microscope. Unlike Leeuwenhoek Wim is able to take advantage of the most up to date techniques in digital and 3D photography to bring this magical microscopic world into view.

His studio, just below deck, is cram packed with myriad microscopes, lenses, cameras and video recorders. There he works diligently, most hours of the day, collecting samples from the oceans, taking pictures and adding to his collections for the benefit of anyone curious enough to want to see what it’s really like in the ‘less than 1mm big’ league of life.

“Just because something’s less than 1mm big doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful….” says Wim.
His pictures more than prove the point. Small really is beautiful. Each image is exquisitely detailed and some are even available in 3D through a stereoscopic viewer. After seeing them I came away feeling far more familiar with the anatomy of an almost invisible acorn weevil with its lunging proboscis, complete with tiny jaws, than I have ever felt about something large, like a dolphin or a whale.

His aptly named Micropolitan Museum is open to anyone to visit on the web (see www.micropolitanmuseum.com). So, over the last few days, I have had the enormous pleasure not only of getting to know Wim, but also of getting visually familiar with a whole dimension of life I have never properly met before.

The museum is divided into a series of rooms. Fancy a bit of fun? Then pop into the waterflea circus. Looking for a life at its most primitive? You’ll find in the bacteria basement. Fancy a breath of fresh air? Try out the botanical garden…. Oh, and Wim’s also constructed a handy floor-plan if ever you get lost.

Every image is a feast for the eye. Some are composites, made from as many as 50 separate photos, digitally stitched together to make a most detailed canvass of microscopic life. As you zoom in, far closer than the naked eye can see, the details get even more intricate, not less.

“Everytime I see these pictures”, says Wim, “I find something in them I never spotted before”.

They are, quite literally, entire microscopic ecosystems painstakingly captured and made visible to an almost infinite resolution. They make you lose yourself in wonder.

During the trip, Wim has been catching plankton from the sea using a special silk net. Yesterday, as the rest of us feasted our attention on the dolphins, Wim was busily analyzing his latest catch of creatures below the 1 mm threshold.

Coming into focus under his microscope were the most incredibly beautiful and fascinating forms of life which, I found out later, were easily as impressive as the flirtatious dolphins above deck.
My favourite was Larvacea. This creature has special significance for me because it belongs to the Sea Squirt family, ranked 12th place in What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World.

These tiny marine creatures are unique in building their own mucus houses, some of which can grow as large as 1 metre square. They use their powerful notochord tails to beat water through these membrane-like structures, netting tiny particles of food.

Once their mucus construction gets clogged up, they then abandon it, and swim off to build a new one – a process that occurs about once every four hours. The old mucus house then descends like a parachute, providing much needed nutrients to creatures that live on the sea floor.

Such house-building habits are thought to have a quantifiable impact on the global climate. Researchers at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), California, have been measuring the effect of Larvacea on the oceans. They believe substantial quantities of carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere as a result of this parachuting process, which pumps dead organic matter to the sea floor.

Such research is currently being used by oceanographers and climatologists to help puzzle out what impact a rise in global sea temperatures may have on this natural biological process.
The specimen under Wim’s microscope looked like a giant question mark, with its head tucked up into a coil and its tail curing around beneath.

Last night, after dinner, he grabbed me excitedly “I have found another one, and this time you can see the mucus house…..!”

There it was, crystal clear, with its latest mucus construct bobbing up and down, surrounded by what seemed like an enormous ocean filled with other magnified travelers that variously passed by. There they were, dancing within an almost invisible blob of ocean fluid on a microscopic slide, an enlightened perspective on life for anyone curious enough to want to peer inside the Wonderful World of Wim.

Deep depression

Monday, 7th September. 10.00 AM.

It is extraordinary to think that Charles Darwin may never have ventured on the Beagle, nor would he have had the opportunity to develop his theory on the origin of species, were it not for the ship’s captain, Robert Fitzroy’s, fear of manic depression.

The Captain’s uncle committed suicide in 1822, so depression was in his blood. What’s more the sea is a notorious protagonist for anyone inclined to morbidity. Captain Stokes, captain of the Beagle before Fitzroy took over in 1828, shot himself while surveying the coast of Argentina, an event that led to Fitzroy taking over temporary command.

Fitzroy’s solution was to have a companion on board whose chief function was to keep his spirits from flagging. This captain’s mate was to be considered an equal, sharing the captain’s cabin, eating at his table, and providing stimulating conversation about nature, the world and creation. This was the job of Charles Darwin on the Beagle’s second voyage around the world.

By any measure he did it well. The two men struck up a fondness for each other that survived Fitzroy’s occasional fits of temper. One day, in March 1831, they clashed over the issue of slavery in Brazil. It resulted in Fitzroy angrily banning Darwin from his cabin….. although he soon withdrew the order once his temper had cooled. The two companions avoided the topic for the rest of the voyage.

Sadly, temperamental volatility got to Fiztroy in the end, although it was many years after Fitzroy and Darwin had gone their separate ways.

Seeing the hugely talented Ashton brothers stage the suicide of Fitzroy on the foredeck last night, under a stormy sky, was a scene I will never forget. Picture the ship’s ropes hanging ominously beneath the foremast sails, one of which is suspended beneath the main sail. It is tied into a noose.

Friso, the group’s guitarist, climbs high up into the rigging. Sarah Darwin, sitting next to me, remarked that he looked like a Greek god with his long hair occasionally being tossed across his beard by the stiff sea-breeze.

Joost, the star of the scene, climbs into a white sheet which is attached by a ship’s rope at the top, ready to hoist him skywards. He wraps himself up into a tight cocoon and then lies down, limp, on the deck.

Long shadows fall from the stage lights. The ship dips, cutting a bright white surf into the sea, as she sails on steadily southwards towards Tenerife.

Camera rolling, Action!

With a clap of Lex’s hands, the scene was cast.

Now the rope begins to pull Joost upwards, until the cocoon is suspended, 15 feet off the ground, swinging in the wind.

The sound of the sails and rigging accompany Frisco’s first faltering notes.

Then out of the cocoon a human hand spreads, slowly at first ….. now an arm appears, reaching, stretching outwards – two arms – then suddenly, with a burst of acrobatic genius, Joost is suspended in mid air. Meanwhile, the sheet has somehow wrapped itself around his legs and arms to form a perfect white crucifix.

Friso jerks into a feverish strumming, Joost wails with the desperate cries of something just being born, but destined too soon to die. The song rises in pitch, with an Islamic flair that defies tonality. Projected images of boiling larvae flows turn the main sails blood red, slowly revealing the haunting image of Captain Fitzroy himself.

Joost bursts into a climactic, high-pitched Bosnian chant: “How can your heart be without mine for a minute, if my soul can’t be without yours for a second?”. Then, with a final jerk, he grabs the rope, and threads his head through the noose. His body falls limp. Swinging.

Friso’s strumming falters, fading into the loneliness of the oceans, leaving behind just the smallness of humanity, the chattering of the rigging and the constant hissing of the surfy seas.
Hans pans his camera away from the leaden body, mopping up the last televisual drippings from the scene.

CUT!

OK – Let’s try that one more time……..

http://www.ashtonbrothers.nl/

Don't call me Shirley....

Tuesday, 8th September 10.00 AM.

A pitched battle of sorts was waged yesterday on the high seas somewhere between Madeira and Tenerife, our first port of call (and my departure point from the project).

It wasn’t anything as dramatic as a physical duel, not a below deck female wrestling match. It was more a battle of minds, a clash of instinct, perspective and personal experience.

The protagonist was Dirk Draulans, a Flemish scientist-cum-TV presenter. He trained as an evolutionary biologist in Belgium before applying for a job as a science correspondent on a weekly news magazine. For the last 22 years, Dirk has written about advances in scientific progress translating academic jibberish into something more palatable for the popular gut. His hope, he told me over breakfast today, is that when people sit drinking at a bar they will some day “talk about science with the same passion that they discuss their favourite football team or the size of the barmaid’s breasts”.

Dirk later segued into becoming a war correspondent, specializing in the Congo – which, I guess, is still a pretty hot topic for the folks of Belgium.

Another unplanned career development followed an invitation to participate in a TV panel. Since then Dirk has taken to becoming a leading TV presenter on scientific issues in the Dutch-speaking world.

That’s why, for the next year, Dirk has been co-opted onto this extraordinary project retracting the voyage of Charles Darwin, 200 years after his birth.

So, it was inevitable that at some point during my 12-day voyage I would find myself face to face in a televised duel with Dirk. These things are always a bit contrived, since Hans the cameraman and Charley the soundman were always only inches away. As was Lex, editor in chief, who hovered close by, keen to ensure that the questions and answers were sufficiently brief to avoid endless editing.

With the equivalent of what must be a week’s worth of video already filmed for episode 2 of On the Future of Species, that’s something about which I can readily sympathise.
Dirk and I have fairly diametrically opposed views on what’s to be done about addressing the ailments of the modern world. There is no denial that we’re in a mess – at least we didn’t spend time disputing that during the 10 minute interview. The two-fold question really was this:

Is science the cause or the solution to the environmental problems of the modern world?

And

What’s to be done about it?

In fact Dirk was surprisingly willing to acknowledge that many of the most pressing issues we face today – both as a species and as constituent parts of the global ecosystem – have been provoked or at least exacerbated by western science. It would be impossible to conceive of a modern world, with its carrying capacity of 7 billion humans, without everything from Norman Borlag’s Norin 10 wheat to the successful eradication of smallpox.

But what’s to be done now?

Dirk’s view is that humanity’s best chance comes from making the benefits and comforts enjoyed by developed countries (as a result of scientific progress) available as widely as possible to the less developed world.

Sounds like sense – lots of delicious new markets for the western world’s myriad products. Governments of less well developed areas equally keen to please their swollen populations by promising the prospect of westernized lifestyles within the span of a single generation. The partnership is bound together by democratic dynamics that consign societies to pursue not what’s sensible or even rational in the longer term, but whatever can be sold through the media and made to sound motivational and popular within a 5 year timeframe.

To my mind this is the modus operandi driving everything from today’s sixth mass extinction, the destruction of habitats, rainforests, to the desertification and acidification of the rising oceans and atmospheric asphyxiation.

The only alternative, I admit, is to change our lifestyles – to make some compromise in which the reduction of our ecological footprints takes priority over the habits of westernized living.
A skeptical, frustrated frown draws across Dirk’s brow.

“But isn’t that just naïve to expect people to change their way the life?”

NAÏVE?

Dirk had, inadvertently, pulled my emergency cord.

By all means tell someone they are just plain wrong, or challenge them to backup their views with robust evidence. Even walk off and terminate an interview in disgust, if you have to….. BUT, PLEASE, NEVER CALL SOMEONE NAÏVE!

I momentarily flipped.

That’s so RUDE! It’s so patronizing, it’s so disrespectful…. I thought.

Even if you fundamentally disagree with someone, to say to them that, despite years of research and consideration about an impossibly difficult, complex issue….. their opinions are naïve is to say simply that they have the thoughts of a child whereas you have the sophisticated mind of an adult. ……. Ugh! Yuk!

I rallied, a little slowly at first, from that below-the-belt moment, and Dirk and I could be seen continuing to debate the potential for humans to change their ways, sitting on deck just in front of the ship’s bridge.

I continued.

Imagine that one day a scientist discovered a six mile wide meteorite careering towards the Earth and that impact was 21 years away. The giant lump of rock and ice was traveling at an estimated speed of 17,000 miles per hour. No-one could predict exactly where it would land, because it may break up into pieces in its final moments as it cuts through the thick Earth atmosphere…..

Would humans rally round to try to find a solution? Would people put aside their parochial differences, at least while the common threat existed, and put their best collective endeavours into finding a solution?

I believe they might.

Is that naïve?

When countries mobilize for war, people sign up to fight for a cause they believe in – for a flag, a feeling, a belief or a song - regardless of the personal risks. They even leave their families behind, the feeling of patriotism overruling the most powerful of instinctive urges to protect one’s genetic progeny.

So potent is the human capacity, through reason and culture, to overrule nature’s genetically driven evolutionary short-termism, that people will even blow themselves to bits as suicide bombers because the cause they believe in, however misguided it appears to the outside world, has such a powerful grip. Is that madness? Or is that just about being human?

How does this apply to striving for global ecological balance? What could individuals do collectively to really make a difference?

I proposed that, for a start, people could give up eating red meat and consuming dairy products to relieve the world of its 1 billion cows, which, with the associated agricultural practices that support them, are the cause of as much as 18% of greenhouse gas emissions? Eat chicken and pork instead – at least these are creatures that feed off waste.

I also suggested that it could become a modern taboo to have more than two children since I cannot see how could any number of headline-grabbing carbon emission reducing initiatives possibly work if the population keeps on growing by 211,000 people a day (as it currently does).
I know….. you can see the objections come flying over – political, economic, cultural, religious, racial, civil liberties… Just think: No more burgers, no more cornflakes with milk... fondue without meat or cheese and loads of contraceptive pills.

To achieve such a change means it must be explained, by politicians, journalists, ecologists and, most importantly, by scientists, too, that this IS an emergency only resolvable by collective action. That the equivalent of a meteorite will strike, sometime within the next 100 – 500 years, in the form of sea levels that will rise as much as 25 metres and countries that were once fertile being reduced to sterile, wasteland scrub.

It is possible, I am sure, for humans to make collective adjustments in their habits and lifestyles (who knows, perhaps it will even increase our “well-being”?). We have it in our natures. It’s this thing called reason whose evolutionary function is to override instinct. We have even proved our potential already by removing genetically selfish action – for example rape and slavery– from some, if not yet all, human societies.

Of course, we didn’t / couldn’t get all that on camera. Lex, Hans and Charley would have long packed up and gone.

As for Dirk, I wasn’t really sure what he felt or thought by the end.

But I have learned one thing for sure. Next time I shall be better prepared to be typecast (aka dismissed!) by the cynically scientific as just another one of life’s naive dreamers…

Can 1 person really make a difference?

Wednesday, 9th September 10.00 AM.

You will have heard of John Francis, by now. He’s the guy who gave up talking and walked for 22 years as a silent protest against the damage we humans are doing to our environment. It was triggered by an oil spillage in the San Francisco bay Area in 1972. John gave an inspirational talk to everyone on board the Stad Amsterdam two nights ago, telling his tale of how a silent, spontaneous personal protest helped him learn to walk a new path.

It’s extraordinary to think that a 26-year old half Afro, half Native-American hippie could simply walk out of his village one day in 1972 and spend the next 22 years out on the road. Along the way he took a master’s degree in environmental studies and a PhD on oil slicks (all whilst maintaining his silence). Then, having inspired so may people, he was invited to become a UN Ambassador for the Environment – that was after he took up talking again, 17 years after first giving it up.

A Hollywood movie studio is now on the cusp of turning John’s humble story into a major league film. Planet Walker, the film’s working name and the title of John’s book, means John, with his wife and family, will be spending the next year accompanying the film crew and advising them on the shoot.

Charles Darwin was another person who single-handedly made a big difference. What ramifications were made by the six-year voyage of an unsettled 22-year old who ran away from establishing a conventional career in either medicine or the church! Only thanks to his single-minded courage and curiosity did humanity wake up to a new level of consciousness in which the true place of humans in nature finally began to reveal itself. Still, 150 years after his theories were first published, the relevance of Darin’s awakening continues to play out.

So when people say – Ahh well, what can one person possibly do to make a difference to the problems of the world today? – it is really just a cover for inaction, a moral comfort blanket. What difference can I possibly make? is a false logic. Human history is pock-marked with examples of single people whose lives have profoundly diverted the rivers of fate from Jesus Christ to Genghis Khan.

John and Charles also belong to that list of people – as, potentially, do all of us – if only we have the courage to realize that single-mindedness can potentially conquer all. Stubbornly to say, while sitting on the sidelines with a shrug of the shoulders, that today’s issues are such that no one person can possibly make a difference flies in the face of history, and pitifully puffs out a person’s potential to be the change.

Homo medlesomosis

Thursday, 10th September 1.00 PM.

The anchor is up and a gentle breeze blows us south for the final push to Tenerife. We should arrive sometime tomorrow. Soon it will be time for my departure from this grand endeavour, leaving behind various semi-autonomous components of VRPO (Dutch) Television, and the crew of the Stad Amsterdam who will spend two days preparing for the second leg, starting on Sunday, which takes them 5 days further south to Cape Verde.

Last night we sheltered close by two small barren volcanic islands - the Selvagens. Just one guard lives there, in a tiny hut, to look after the lighthouse. A team of scientists is also resident, usually for a month at a time, to monitor and manage the wildlife.

Islands like these have suffered miserably at the hands of myriad sailors over the last few centuries. Being strategically positioned for both European and Muslim explorers (either heading west across the Atlantic or south down the coast of Africa) has led to the introduction of a number of invasive species, either as a source of fresh meat to restock a passing ship’s larder (rabbits) or inadvertently from within the ships stores (mice).The combined effect of these creatures has been all but to destroy these islands’ ecosystem. They especially enjoy feasting off the chicks and eggs of the islands' native birds. At least they did - until a few years ago, when the Portuguese government declared these places a national park.

Hanneke Meijer is a biologist with Naturalis, the Natural History Museum of Holland. She set out from Madeira four days ago, accompanied by another scientist, a paleontologist called Burt, and, of course, a VPRO film crew. Their mission was to try to find the fossilized eggs of an extinct species of island bird.

The seas were mighty rough when they set off –a stiff Force 8. Nine people traveling for 19 hours on a 30ft sailing boat (equipped to sleep four) sounded like a pretty harsh start to me. Hanneka arrived exhausted. She never got to sleep. Instead, she spent the whole journey throwing up, triggering within me the deepest sympathy. It must have been ghastly.

But the trip was a great success. Incredibly, the team found a 15 million year-old fossilised bird egg of some (as yet to be identified) species. It is now safely stowed aboard the Stad Amsterdam, carefully packaged up one of Burt’s old T-shirts inside a plastic box. It represents the first real nature treasure recovered so far on the voyage (apart from Wim’s plankton, of course…).

Meanwhile, the fortunes of the island other species continue to gyrate wildly, thanks to the ongoing intervention of Homo meddlesomosis. Two years ago these habitats were finally declared mice and rabbit free after a hefty war was waged using rat poison in a bid to protect the islands’ populations of native birds. Imagine, I thought, having the task of trying to rid an island of rodents…

But other problems have emerged as a consequence. Hanneka tells me that the islands are now infested with so many native lizards - now gaily enjoying a rodent free future - that it is almost impossible to put a bag on the ground before at least 10 little beasts leap inside to explore its contents. Leave it unattended for five minutes and the number jumps well into the hundreds.
And, guess what? Now the mice are gone, these lizards have themselves developed a taste for eating the chicks of the indigenous birds.... Agh!

It made me wonder whether trying to restore an island ecosystem to its pre-human evolutionary equilibrium is really worth the effort. Darwin’s theory suggests to me that a simple combination of time and isolation is the best remedy for restoring to health a damaged ecosystem. I believe that nature will eventually rebalance (heal) itself, if simply left alone.

Tell me: why do we people always feel the need to intervene, even if it’s to ‘restore’ a place to a state it once was before we intervened in the first place?

My Last Post

Saturday, 12th September 11.00 AM, Tenerife Airport

The 12-day voyage, comprising the first leg in an epic journey retracing the journey of Darwin’s Beagle, is now at an end. The industrial port of Santa Cruz came into view early on Friday morning. Oversized petroleum vats lined the coast, while lorry ferries busily emptied and refilled their cavernous interiors with freight. The city itself, mostly a concrete carbuncle, rises up from the shoreline, infesting the volcanic rock with asymmetrical tentacles that reach upwards into what seems like a mostly barren, mountainous core.

How different must this place have been in Darwin’s day! Captain Fitzroy rightly ordered the Beagle to set its sails immediately for the islands of Cape Verde without stopping to take a look. A cholera outbreak meant either suffering a 12-day period of quarantine or abandoning the islands to their fate. It was too great a delay and the disappointment of not seeing Tenerife stayed with the ship’s young on-board naturalist for the rest of his life.

Quite whether Darwin would have been so keen to visit this place today is a mute point. Even to my contemporary eyes, accustomed as they are to the realities of modern industrial cityscapes, it was a real shock.

For twelve days we saw nothing solid in the distance except the occasional remote coastline (Spain and Portugal) and the brief, isolated charm of the Selvagens. Close up I had grown accustomed to the view of twisted ropes and rigging, the intricate wooden craftsmanship on desk and those three awe-inspiring masts, towering upwards like giant pencils gently etching indecipherable spirographs on the pale blue canvass above.

This journey had clearly reset my mental horizons, reminding me of how wonderfully plastic is the human mind.

From a distance, the sight of the volcanic island of Tenerife looked majestic enough, rising out of the calm, still sea. But then, as the ship got closer, ugliness quickly intervened. My spirits sank. What’s that – a car? Well, of course! Traffic, lorries, containers, rusty steel hulls…. concrete – nothing natural to se been at all.

I determined to spend the day trying to find something beautiful that could redeem this ruined place. Burt and Hanneke, the paleontologist heroes of the fossil hunting expedition, volunteered to lead a trip to the city’s Natural History Museum. John Francis, Marten, from Dutch radio, and I tagged along. At lunch John introduced us to Moquitos, a Cuban lime and rum cocktail. It tasted divine. We ordered more… Despite the ugliness all around, my spirits, literally, began to rise…. I guess that’s one type of fix.

The museum was big – but sterile. Stuffed animals and drawers of lanced insects complimented an endless array of large, bleached backlit photos interspersed with various noisy, jiggling videos. There was also a lot of writing – which may have redeemed the displays - but it was all in Spanish. Burt was impressed, though, because, he said, “the data was good”. Somehow, I needed more. For me, museums must excel at telling stories. My best bit was a piece of sliced but petrified wood – the colours and the texture reminding me of what that ever so powerful collaboration of nature and time can achieve.

The museum did help me get orientated, though. I discovered that these Canary Islands rose from the seas between 20 and 5 million years ago. Volcanic eruptions provoked by the shifting of tectonic plates (Africa moving north, I believe) was their Earth mother. Human settlements only appeared in about 1,500 BC – before which time, these were places untouched by human hands.
Later I realized that the beauty I craved for was back on the boat. The ship's masts stood in tall defiance of all that modern ugliness. The sails, carefully tied up by the dedicated crew, were all ready to be unfurled for a future wind. Such an intricate symbiosis of wind, sails and seas seemed like a tiny piece of a long-lost jigsaw puzzle, one that truly belonged to Darwin’s world…

The inner beauty was in our friendships, sculpted within the intimacy of such a small space, surrounded by the infinity of the seas. My great uncle Christo used to tell me how easy it can be to make old friends quickly. We certainly did that. Goodbye all you “wet” Beagles, too many to mention all by name. What fun it was (once the sea-sickness passed….).

We were not quite complete, though. The Ashton Brothers had already departed, flying back to Holland to prepare for their new European tour that starts this Monday. Sarah was missing, too, having been co-opted with a film crew to spend the night half way up Humboldt’s volcano on a pilgrimage to the place where her great great grandfather so wanted to go, but could not, owing to all that disruption caused by the invisible, microscopic world (of Wim).

It was a brave but genius choice of hers to bring Leo and Joss - her 3 and 5 year old children - who were such wonderful company for us all. Talk about a tonic to raise the spirits! Better than any number of Moquitos. Priceless impressions and unique memories will be theirs to treasure forever.

But now I long to see my wife and family again! I’m not sure if it was the endlessness of the seas or the lack of a telephone connection, but somehow I have missed them these last two weeks as if I have been away for twenty years.

A final picture, if you please. That’s the one of me at the departure gate in the airport looking somewhat bizarre in a bright orange waterproof coat. You remember? The one that got me the free train ride on my way to Plymouth because the ticket inspector thought I must be a maintenance worker…

Wow! What a remarkable 12 days. Thank you all……