FitzRoy's stormy reputation

Darwin's nose

It was his nose that led Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands on the second voyage of HMS Beagle, a survey ship captained by Robert FitzRoy. FitzRoy was a well-respected naval officer with a surname to match - George V considered it for the British royal family when changing the name from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in 1917.

FitzRoy believed facial features echoed a person’s characteristics, and thought Darwin’s nose let him down. He came close to barring the naturalist from the 1831 voyage, a trip that would further conceive Darwin’s thoughts on evolution.

The voyage saw Beagle brush past the islands of West Africa before circumnavigating almost the entire South American landmass across the stormy southern oceans. Darwin was only 22 as he scurried about the South American coastline dissecting earthworms and barnacles. At the same time, FitzRoy and his crew were busy recording hydrographical information for the Admiralty back in London, making measurements and taking samples along the way.

A stop-off in New Zealand

The ship’s return trip to England saw it crossing the Pacific Ocean to New Zealand. Beagle harboured in New Zealand’s Bay of Islands for 10 days. FitzRoy and Darwin went ashore at Paihia, now the Bay of Islands’ main tourist town. After so long away from home Darwin was pleased to find English flowers around the town, but soon found the countryside irritatingly impracticable for exploration. Much of the native vegetation of ferns has since been cleared. The rocky outcrops, waterways and hills that annoyed Darwin so much are now a major pull for tourists, as is the continued Englishness of Paihia. My lunch when there was a portion of fish and chips so fresh I burnt my mouth numerous times.

Paihia, New Zealand

Beagle continued to Sydney and on to Cape Town, before returning home. But New Zealand would feature further in FitzRoy’s career. He was appointed the second governor of the islands from December 1843 until 1845, juggling Maori and European demands in the aftermath of the Treaty of Waitangi signed three years earlier. Waitangi is a pleasant 30 minute walk from Paihia, where FitzRoy had landed with Beagle. The path leads north along the coastal road and over the wooden Waitangi River bridge. Beyond a shipwreck museum-cum-coffee shop are the Waitangi National Trust grounds. As well as the Treaty House, the grounds contain the centennial celebration whare runanga (meeting house), and the 35 metre long ngatokimatawhaorua waka. The war canoe is launched annually to mark the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the foundation document of New Zealand statehood.

Waitangi Treaty House, Waitangi, New Zealand

Inventing the weather

Returning to Britain in 1845 FitzRoy’s difficult governorship of the islands didn’t prevent him taking up several further senior positions within the British establishment. It was then that FitzRoy founded the forerunner to today’s Meteorological Office and instigated the first weather forecasting system.

Despite his varying successes FitzRoy’s story ends less than happily. FitzRoy committed suicide, having spent his entire fortune, much of it on philanthropic activities. While Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey beside Isaac Newton, FitzRoy was interned in the grounds of All Saints Church, Upper Norwood, South London.

I had rather hoped for a stormy day when I visited FitzRoy’s grave so I could liken it to the weather he would have encountered on the tip of South American continent with Beagle. Instead, all I could muster up was some heavy on-off drizzle that managed to soak me. The grave lies opposite an ugly block of flats, seemingly forgotten by everyone except the Meteorological Office. The organisation renovated his grave in 1981, attaching the following quote from the book of Ecclesiastes at its foot:

“The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about into the north, it turneth about continually, and the wind returneth again, according to his circuits.”

It’s almost a metaphor for FitzRoy’s life itself.

FitzRoy's grave, south London, 2012

Following Dias

All across Africa I was aware others had been there before me. This became increasingly apparent as I reached southern Africa – Angola, Namibia and South Africa. Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias reached Tombua, in the far south of modern day Angola in 1487. He had made his way along the Africa coast stopping off at Elmina, Ghana before Angola, which is more than I could do, forced to rush through Ghana in under 48 hours.

Dias' and my route

Angola and the northern reaches of Namibia had already been visited by explorers of Europe’s Age of Discovery; Diogo Cao having landed at Cape Cross in Namibia five years before. Indeed, Cao left a navigational aid, a padrão. The slim column of Lisbon limestone topped with a cross is carved with the words: “the most excellent and serene king Dom John II of Portugal ordered this land to be discovered and this padrão to be placed by Diogo Cao”.

From Cape Cross Dias was entering the true unknown. I reached Walvis Bay, Namibia in February 2011, 523 years after Dias was the first European to do so. While he approached by sea in his 3 tiny caravels, I approached overland. I took a combi minibus from Swakopmund along the wild desert coast, dunes rolling inland to echo the Atlantic’s waves on the opposite side of the road. The outskirts of Walvis Bay host a monument to Dias’ visit: sail-like triangles of granite rise out of the sandy earth carved with images of Dias’ ships.

Dias monument, Walvis Bay

Continuing south, the coast as much his guide as it was mine, Dias’ men became the first Europeans to round the Cape of Good Hope, and its less famous more southerly neighbour Cape Point. Today it remains a blustery yet beautiful place, the winds and waters coming straight from Antarctica.

Cape Point, South Africa

Dias was reaching his journey’s end. For me it marked the halfway point, after six months of coastal travel. Dias ended his exploration, with his crew refusing to go any further, in Kwaaihoek on 14^th March 1488, where he positioned the last of his padrãos before returning to Portugal. Even so, Dias was perhaps the Portuguese explorer who knew Africa best. It was his exploration that led to the opening of a sea route to India, the colonisation of Africa by European powers, and my own circumnavigation of Africa.

An more in-depth article discussing the voyages of Cao, Dias, and da Gama can be viewed here http://www.travelthruhistory.com/html/exotic60.html

To Agulhas and back

Spending the weekend in the Royal Geographical Society’s Ondaatje Theatre at their London headquarters for the annual ‘Explore’ weekend (see last blog) got me to thinking of those adventurers who predated me. The theatre’s wood-panelled walls are marked out in gilding with the names of the world’s most important explorers. Nothing can bring perspective on adventure as being looked down on by names like Bruce, Livingstone, Shackleton, and Everest.

This is the first of an ‘interesting people’ series of blogs. The subjects of future posts will not all be explorers, and not all visitors of Africa’s continental mass, but they will be people who I find interesting and deserving of mention in one way or another.

In April 1934 a man in South Africa took the decision to cycle to Europe. More astonishingly, he had already cycled down the entire length of the continent. Kazimierz Nowak, a man from Stryj in Poland, a town I hadn’t heard of, ended up travelling 40,000 kilometres (25,000 miles).

I first bumped into Nowak in Poznan, Poland in 2010. It was completely by accident. I was at the train station, where a small new memorial to Nowak in the form of a bicycle took up some space on a wall behind a florist’s stand. The man himself died on 31^st October 1937, less than a year after having returned home. Five years of exhaustive travel in Africa with little money proved too much.

Though not all his epic trip ended up being by bicycle, Nowak managed to reach the southernmost tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas on two wheels. I reached Agulhas on four wheels, having already visited Cape Town.

The southernmost point is marked by a cairn, as the cold winds from Antarctica whip at hair and clothing. It’s an unforgiving environment. Vegetation remains low to keep out of the wind. The waves on even the calmest days can be rough, driving ships ashore. A shipwreck lies within sight of the cairn, and the lighthouse built in 1849.

Cairn, Cape Agulhas, South Africa

Nowak’s bike was incurably wrecked soon after he left Cape Town. The next 3,000 kilometres were made on horseback, until the rivers of the Democratic Republic of Congo, where he swapped from horses to sailing. After many months of riding down Congolese rivers in locally made vessels and walking through virgin rainforest he reached Leopoldville (modern Kinshasa) in September 1935.

Obtaining a bicycle in the city he set of towards Lake Chad, 2,000 kilometres away on the limits of the Sahara desert. He spent much of the next six months crossing the desert with a camel called Ueli, finally returning to the Mediterranean coast at Algiers.

My own travels along Africa’s Mediterranean coast began in Port Said, Egypt, sitting at one end of the Suez Canal. My entrance and travels into Libya had some similarity with Nowak’s. We were both forced to alter our plans as a result of the situation in the country.

 Free Libya flags, Tripoli medina

While I was forced to fly into Tripoli from Alexandria in Egypt, bypassing the troubled eastern city of Bengazi, Nowak was ordered by the Italian colonial government to travel through Bengazi to Alexandria, after having already pedalled 1,000 kilometres into the Sahara from Tripoli.

As I followed the Nile north from the Blue Nile’s source at Lake Tana in Ethiopia, Nowak followed the river south. He followed the great lakes of the Rift Valley in East Africa into the very heart of the continent, before reaching Cape Agulhas in April 1934.

The River Nile, from Rosetta, Egypt

Sadly, very little is known about Nowak in the English speaking world. His book, By bicycle and on foot across the black continent, has yet to be translated from the Polish.

The watchword is Explore

British reserve and the sense of being completed overwhelmed by what lay ahead soon broke down into an excited buzz as delegates made new friends and probed speakers like myself for information. I was at the Royal Geographical Society’s annual Explore expedition and fieldwork planning weekend at their London headquarters in Kensington.

Settled into one of the deep black leather armchair-like seats in the 350 seat Ondaatje Theatre as Explore began on Saturday morning I had already spoken to several people planning expeditions across the globe, from Greenland to Papua New Guinea. The Society’s illustrious past members and fellows, the likes of Livingstone and Shackleton, cast a dark shadow of expectation over the 200 delegates and 50 or so speakers, as did the photographs of David Attenborough in the corridor leading to lunch.

Some delegates were planning expeditions with specific scientific objectives, while others just had the desire to travel sometime in the future. The weekend quickly brought a dose of reality to anyone with designs at being the next Michael Palin. Explorer and television presenter Paul Rose (the Society’s vice president) introduced the weekend by mentioning just how hard he had had to work to turn his dreams into reality. It’s easy to panic about the future in such circumstances. Delegates have to match the desire for exploration with the very real need to earn a living. Through the morning it became clear that though hard it is definitely possible, often with just a touch of luck along the way. Luck, we are told again and again, is a combination of hard work and circumstance.

The talks continued with a mix of reports on completed expeditions and how to plan future expeditions. Professor David Warrell’s discussion on health in the field was received well by delegates, combining humour with the very serious issue of preventing life-threatening disease.

Saturday afternoon saw the first workshops of the weekend, where delegates divided into smaller groups to discuss issues more relevant to particular forms of expedition. I joined the vehicle dependent expeditions workshop, though it was tempting to attend those dealing with cycling, river, and polar journeys too.

The official part of the first day of Explore ended with a fantastic hour talk by Ed Stafford. His talk on being the first man to walk the length of the River Amazon was staggering and inspirational in achievement. Ed, a former army captain, can be seen as arrogant and immodest, but in fact he was thoughtful and caring, telling the delegates he wasn’t interested in a bigger expedition. Instead, he ‘just wanted a family’.

Day two of the weekend saw talks on funding opportunities and communication, before delegates broke for more workshops. More than once I heard phrases like ‘it’s great to be among like-minded people, who don’t think I’m crazy’, as delegates approached others with required expertise. The day seemed a little calmer and less frantic than day one, perhaps as delegates began to realise the weekend was not about competing with one another for funding and publicity, but was a ‘unifying factor’ – a key phrase from the weekend. A weekend I was happy to be asked to contribute to.

P.S., you can see the remainder of my chosen Encircle Africa photographs on flickr now:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ian_packham/sets/72157632044880927/show/