Alright, alright.
Several people have got in touch and said, yeah, but who are the people behind all this blather? Pics, please. So let's get the pain out of the way first: on the right me Peter McGrath at the helm of the 70 foot (21 metre) sail training ketch James Cook. I'm a zoology graduate from Liverpool University where one of my final year courses was history of the idea of evolution taught by Prof A.J.Cain. That made me read The Voyage of the Beagle which is one of the reasons why I'm here - his time aboard the Beagle is crucial to Darwin's story. I'm an RYA commercial yachtmaster (professional yacht skipper) and during my time in youth sail training I've seen the inspirational effect tall ships can have on young minds. I live two miles from Staithes in Yorkshire, England where the young James Cook fell in love with the sea, and eight miles from Whitby where he learned his seamanship. It was on Whitby-built ships that Cook circumnavigated the globe, so it really got my dander up when an Australian-built replica of his first command HM Bark Endeavour sailed into Whitby harbour, welcomed by 20,000 cheering spectators. (Nothing against the Australians, good for them for doing such a magnificent job on the Endeavour.) The British are so utterly rubbish at celebrating their heroes, true heroes like Cook and Darwin and so negative at supporting and executing ambitious, celebratory projects. Several attempts to build a replica HMS Resolution here in Whitby have failed amid British torpor and indifference.
Well, this one ain't going to: there are a lot of scientists, teachers, Darwin fans, students and sailors the world around who have contacted us, inspired to sail with us, make TV programmes about Beagle and Darwin, do science aboard, have their youngsters sail with us or just have the joy of seeing a replica HMS Beagle grace their port or harbour.
Pic: The Australian built replica Endeavour sailing into Whitby harbour © me, may be used in exchange for a link to The Beagle Project, unless you are a millionaire philanthropist in which case the fee is $2 million.
5 Comments:
You don't look at all like how I imagined you, but I'm not sure quite how I imagined you
Nobody looks like themselves (or indeed a member of the human race) after five days on a boat.
You're a fine, strapping young fellow. You look exactly the way I imagined you, although I didn't realize I had imagined you until I realized you looked the way I had imagined you.
That's it! That's what I meant to say: You don't look at all like how I imagined you, but I imagine you do look just like how Free Range Academy imagined you.
I've got this...you look EXACTLY the way Richard Carter, FCD failed to imagine you, but absolutely nothing like he imagined imagining you, while you look precisely the way I failed to fail imagining you, had either of us ever imagined you, which of course, we did not.
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