Apologies for the lack of posts (2)

but the power problems straggled on over four days, and computing while the local power company played blackout roulette was topped only when blogger went on the blink. Normal service will be resumed shortly: another descendent of the Beagle crew has got in touch with fulsome support.

Apologies for the lack of posts...

but an 18-hour powercut followed by generator-power that cuts out three times an hour makes for very intermittent computing. And a bad temper. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

More attention...

the life sciences editor of New Scientist magazine has contacted us asking to be kept up to date with Beagle developments. We certainly will, and in exchange recommend a daily glance at their Short Sharp Science Blog. A third TV production company is in discussion with us about proposing six half hour TV programmes centred about the Beagle, and we have been put in touch with a wine-maker in the island of Madeira. Their wine used to be matured in barrels stored in the holds of square riggers, and M. di Silva is keen to maintain the tradition. He'll give us a few barrels to cart around the world in Beagle's auspicious bowels. Once the barrels are returned to Funchal, the circumnavigatorial Beagle vintage (I like the sound of that) will be bottled and we'll get half to give away, sell or auction. And sample.

Carbon offset Beagle

Quite a few oak and larch will be used to build the replica, so we're doing our bit to replace them. Land has already been set aside in Pembrokeshire for a mixed plantation of oaks, and the New Forest is offering space for oaks to be planted in a Beagle plantation: a great way of helping the project, of commemorating Charles Darwin (himself a botanist of no mean achievement) and sucking a little of that troublesome carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Oaks are also a great home for our indigenous bugs, home to about 270 species. The Forest of Dean has also offered wood to make Beagle's belaying pins (used for securing ropes, or in crash-bang napoloeonic naval warfare novels for knocking out rebellious crew members), for which many thanks to Terry O'Shaughnessy. Drawings and dimensions for the pins are on their way. We will only use belaying pins for their intended purpose.

We think that this is a great fundraising idea, and intend that communities all over Britain (and elsewhere) will set aside some land for a Beagle wood, plant trees and make a £5 donation to the rebuild with each tree planted.

The Friends of Charles Darwin

now has 791 members from 41 countries. Some come on, eight more of you who want those coveted letters FCD after your name join up and we'll break the 800 ceiling. For those of us running projects around the 200th anniversary on 12th February 2009 (200 AD, and we FCDs call it) Richard Carter FOFCD (Founder of Friends of Charles Darwin) helpfully includes a countdown of the days remaining. Richard was a leading light in having Charles Darwin's portrait grace the £10 note and if that doesn't qualify him for a place on the first voyage I don't know what does.

Progress...

OK, I wish there was something big to report, but right now it's a series of small steps:

• Company formation - we have one more director whose signature we need then the papers go off to companies house, then we're legit, we'll have a registered office and can start fundraising. Thatll be the something big.
• David Lort-Phillips spent Monday spreading the word at the Institute of Welsh Affairs gathering to discuss science policy in Wales. One genuinely interesting contact came from this, an academic with links to business and an interest in finding new biologically active compounds for use in medicines. We will be circumnavigating the globe and putting science students and academics ashore at the same landfalls made by Darwin, so will have ample opportunity to sample for new species and coompounds.
• And we've got a new filing cabinet for the office. That's quite big.
• Visits to the Beagle Project website are rising month by month, within a few days we'll be able to give visitors something to do: donate towards the build.

Genius in the raw

The Complete Work Of Charles Darwin Darwin Online website is launched today. 50,000 text paqes and 40,000 images, which is about 50% of the great man's output. More will be added daily and the work should be complete by 2009. Huge congratulations to Dr John van der Wyhe who has spent the last four years tracking down material for inclusion. Randal Keynes, great great grandson of Chalres Darwin (and Beagle prject supporter said: "The family has always wanted Darwin's papers and manuscripts available to anyone who wants to read them. That everyone around the world can now see them on the web is simply fantastic."

Darwin: the complete works online:

the new website goes live in two days: bookmark the Darwin Online site and in future refer to it first for all original writings and correspondence Darwinian.

Sea Fever

I must go down to the seas again, to the lonely sea and the sky,
And all I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by;
And the wheel's kick and the wind's song and the white sail's shaking,
And a gray mist on the sea's face, and a gray dawn breaking.


I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide
Is a wild call and a clear call that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds flying,
And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying.


I must go down to the seas again, to the vagrant gypsy life,
To the gull's way and the whale's way, where the wind's like
a whetted knife;
And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laughing fellow-rover,
And quiet sleep and a sweet dream when the long trick's over.

John Masefield

Given that we're building a square rigger to circumnavigate the globe, David Lort Phillips thought this appropriate. In my experience, un warmed zephyrs are more than than a wind 'like a whetted knife'.

The Beagle Project goes to the IWA

The Beagle Project will the be at the Institute of Welsh Affairs on Monday. The IWA is considering science policy in Wales and will be addressed by Baroness Susan Greenfield. The Beagle Project's co-founder David Lort Phillips will be there, distributing literature and giving a brief talk on how a replica HMS Beagle (which will be built in Milford Haven, south west Wales) could benefit science and education.

British newspaper The Observer gets it:

with a crunchy report that industry chiefs are demanding that school science teacher make science lessons more exciting so that we have a good pool of larval scientists to mature into B.Sc.s, Ph.D.s and fully fledged scientists.

When I was at school, Mr Cooper put sodium in water and lit the resulting hydrogen with an ear-splitting pop. No safety screen, just 'move back kids'. None killed, a few jumped. Now they're shown a video on health and safety grounds and because 'most state schools can't afford a well-stocked lab.'

FOR CRYING OUT LOUD. CAN"T AFFORD A WELL STOCKED LAB? Health and safety neutering the science curriculum? Well, we intend to put a bit of excitement back into it: trans-oceanic voyages, climbing the ratlines to reef sails in advance of a blow, making sampling expeditions ashore in rainforests with unknown and known species, some carnivorous, some poisonous. The way Darwin, Wallace, FitzRoy, Huxley et al did it in less comfortable and more enterprising days when science was in its infancy and struggling to become and established, independent discipline.

The Observer says more in its leader, let's take a little risk for science.

Yesterday's meeting with Andrew Davies AM

..the Welsh Minister for Enterprise, Innovation and Networks was much as we expected. A letter of support has been promised and we have been assigned one of his officials to help us with the European funding maze, so thanks to the Minister for his time and to Tamsin Dunwoody AM for arranging and attending the meeting.

Welcome...

to the Beagle Project to our friends Eric Karsenti and Russ Hodge from the European Molecular Biology Lab in Heidelberg, Germany.

This week...

we're off to see the Welsh minister for Innovation, Networks and Competitiveness. We hope to persuade him that building a replica of HMS Beagle in Milford Haven is A Good Thing that will put money into the local economy, provide training and sailing opportunities for local people and show off the area through the media interest that seems to be growing (burgeoning, even) around the project.

The Voyage of the Beagle is an astonishingly good book.

Over the past few days I've been helping a TV production company put together its pitch for the BBC about our Voyage restaged and have been re-reading the Voyage of the Beagle. A a result, I've been reminded just what a great, prolific and inspired scientist and humanitarian Charles Darwin was. Most pages have enough observations and discoveries to keep an average scientist in work for months, and his work covered geology, marine biology, botany, macro- and microscopic zoology, ecology, animal behaviour, human behaviour, geography, climate. He did much of it working in 10 x11 foot cabin with instruments and conditions that would make a modern scientist scream, often seasick and more than once at risk of being killed. Science was in its infancy, and the world was wide open for 'natural historians', especially those lucky enough to have a wealthy father prepared to fund them on a round-the-world naturalizing and rock-bashing voyage. But it wa a hell of an achievement, and the Voyage is still a great read.

Yet more media...

...another TV production company reports the BBC (another branch) in talks over an hour long programme about the replica rebuild. That's 9 hours of primetime TV under consideration.

Planning a Darwin Day event for 12 February 2007?

If so, register it with the Darwin Day website. If not, organize one.

Extract: The Voyage of the Beagle

October 3 & 4 1832, on these days 174 years ago Charles Darwin wrote (read to the end it's worth it): "I was confined to my bed by a headach (sic). A good natured old woman who attended me wished me to try many odd remedies. A common practice is to bind an orange leaf or a bit of black plaster to each temple: and a still more general plan is to split a bean into halves, moisten them and place one on each temple where they will readily adhere. It is not thought proper ever to remove the beans or plaster but to allow them to drop off; and sometimes if a man with patches on his head is asked what is the matter? he will answer, "I had a headach the day before yesterday." Many of the remedies used by the people of this country are ludicrously strange, but too disgusting to be mentioned.'

'One of the least nasty is to kill and cut open two puppies and bind them on each side of a broken limb. Little hairless dogs are in great request to sleep at the feet of invalids.'

Website version 1.5...

click over to our Beagle Project homepage and check out the new look website. The site's currently a hybrid of old and new, the unevolved pages will be getting their knuckles off the ground later today. Any feedback and contributions (website articles or financial) welcome.