Thursday 17th March; 18th day at sea
St. Patrick’s day, so the chef provided Guinness with breakfast – this is not a joke. As it was free I felt obliged to have a glass – probably the first and last time I shall have anything alcoholic at that time of the morning.
Obviously we were at sea all day, and the weather was wonderful – a smooth sea, the sun was shining, and it was mild enough not to need a jacket on out on the aft decks. We had a talk in the morning by Gary, a retired American university lecturer, on the Jemmy Button story. I knew the basic story, but it was good to hear some of the details. Very roughly, he was one of four Indians from Tierra del Fuego who were brought back to Britain by Fitzroy, the commander of the Beagle and then sent back via Keppel island in the Falklands, as part of an Anglican missionary scheme to convert the 7,000 or so Fuegan Indians to Christianity. You can almost guess what happened; the missionary scheme was a failure and by the late 19th century most of the Indians had died of diseases imported by convicts and settlers from Argentina. The only European who comes out of the story with any credit was a Thomas Bridges who compiled a dictionary of one of the four Indian languages, and set up an estancia down the Beagle Channel at a place called Harberton, where some of the surviving Indians lived. His descendants apparently still live there.
We had slides of Svalbard (or Spitzbergen) in the afternoon and then had the final briefing, complete with most of the crew. All of the expedition staff got to have a little talk about their highlights and Simon did his award to the most entertaining passenger . For a moment I thought this was going to be John Peacock, but then realised that Big Ron was the obvious choice. The award named his as a pipit spotter for his discovery of the hitherto unknown South Georgia Diving Pipit – a joke that had been running since Prion Island. Apparently Ron was with Simon’s group on Prion Island, and Simon had been blethering on for ages about these birds called South Georgia Pipits which he’d only seen very rarely. Ron was unusually silent whilst they were on the Island, but had been the first person to spot these birds and quite a lot of them as well, even though he wasn’t really interested.
The evening was spent at dinner, some time at the bar, plus packing up. I did find out a little about the fuel we’d taken on in Stanley. Apparently we spent about $250,000 for 450 tons of diesel, and given the average use of about 20 tons per day, that supply wouldn’t last a month. It brings the cost of the trip home.
Obviously we were at sea all day, and the weather was wonderful – a smooth sea, the sun was shining, and it was mild enough not to need a jacket on out on the aft decks. We had a talk in the morning by Gary, a retired American university lecturer, on the Jemmy Button story. I knew the basic story, but it was good to hear some of the details. Very roughly, he was one of four Indians from Tierra del Fuego who were brought back to Britain by Fitzroy, the commander of the Beagle and then sent back via Keppel island in the Falklands, as part of an Anglican missionary scheme to convert the 7,000 or so Fuegan Indians to Christianity. You can almost guess what happened; the missionary scheme was a failure and by the late 19th century most of the Indians had died of diseases imported by convicts and settlers from Argentina. The only European who comes out of the story with any credit was a Thomas Bridges who compiled a dictionary of one of the four Indian languages, and set up an estancia down the Beagle Channel at a place called Harberton, where some of the surviving Indians lived. His descendants apparently still live there.
We had slides of Svalbard (or Spitzbergen) in the afternoon and then had the final briefing, complete with most of the crew. All of the expedition staff got to have a little talk about their highlights and Simon did his award to the most entertaining passenger . For a moment I thought this was going to be John Peacock, but then realised that Big Ron was the obvious choice. The award named his as a pipit spotter for his discovery of the hitherto unknown South Georgia Diving Pipit – a joke that had been running since Prion Island. Apparently Ron was with Simon’s group on Prion Island, and Simon had been blethering on for ages about these birds called South Georgia Pipits which he’d only seen very rarely. Ron was unusually silent whilst they were on the Island, but had been the first person to spot these birds and quite a lot of them as well, even though he wasn’t really interested.
The evening was spent at dinner, some time at the bar, plus packing up. I did find out a little about the fuel we’d taken on in Stanley. Apparently we spent about $250,000 for 450 tons of diesel, and given the average use of about 20 tons per day, that supply wouldn’t last a month. It brings the cost of the trip home.
posted by Iain Burke at 30.1.06
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