FFB - This Thing of Darkness

This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson is a novel about Robert Fitzroy; it also sheds light on race, religion, science and colonialism of the time. Based upon real events that took place between 1828 and 1865, it includes an account of the voyage of HMS Beagle and naturally involves the friendship and later enmity between Fitzroy and Charles Darwin. It was listed as a contender for the Booker Prize but didn’t win, which is a shame as it’s an excellent book from beginning to end.

 

It begins with the suicide of the captain of HMS Beagle, Captain Pringle Stokes, following a bout of depression. Being the skipper of a naval vessel can be lonely at the best of times, but considering that the Beagle was at sea for freezing and stormy months on end while the crew was carrying out a hydrographic survey of Tierra del Fuego, depression is not so surprising. Young Fitzroy took over the Beagle in Rio and quickly made the ship his own, impressing his crew with his seamanship and bravery.

On more than one occasion Fitzroy’s seamanship and his reliance on barometers saved his ship and the crew from devastating storms. One winter, he lost two toes through frostbite but never complained. His men would follow him anywhere, it seems. Very early on it was apparent that Fitzroy had an enquiring mind and really believed that weather could be predicted providing enough knowledge of the air currents was available.

To stave off loneliness and ever-hovering depression, Fitzroy offered a place on the ship to a gentleman who would serve as a naturalist. Charles Darwin applied when others had turned down the position. They got on very well most of the time and Darwin admired Fitzroy’s seamanship and leadership.

At some ports, Darwin was put ashore to study the geology and flora. Darwin’s travelled inland across plains and lived with gauchos and climbed mountains, up to a height of 13,000 feet where water boils at a lower temperature. He encountered blood-sucking beetles and vampire bats.

Of course it was during the voyage of the Beagle that Darwin conceived his theory of evolution, which essentially denied the Biblical creation of the world espoused at the time. Fitzroy believed in the truth of the Old Testament and the Flood, even pointing to the evidence of sea-shells and sea-creature fossils in the mountains. On this point they argued vociferously.

Fitzroy suffered severe bouts of depression; indeed, though the ailment wasn’t diagnosed at the time, he was believed to be a manic depressive. Fitzroy’s uncle, Lord Castlereagh, had suffered from depression and killed himself while in office.

Thompson’s description of Fitzroy’s depression is eloquent and haunting: ‘... a shapeless, nameless dread that had removed him to its lair, a place more terrifying than any nightmare he had ever endured...’ The book’s title is from The Tempest and refers to this dark depression.

Yet despite this hovering darkness, he achieved so much and earned the unswerving loyalty of his officers and crew. As Fitzroy said, ‘A gentleman should always place duty and public service ahead of all other things.’

 
When the Beagle returned to England, Fitzroy carried with him three natives from Tierra del Fuego, intending that they be taught English and a Christian outlook. He promised to return them to their homeland to act as missionaries. The girl was Fuegia Basket, the men were Jemmy Button and York Minster. Their story at times proves very moving.
 
The voyage lasted five years and Darwin had collected 1,529 specimens preserved in spirits, and 3,907 labelled skins, bones and other dried specimens. The men of the Beagle had produced 202 charts and plans.

Thompson has captured the time and place very well indeed. Some phrases ring bells, too. ‘And the Tories, of course, seem quite incapable of winning an election.’ In 1841 Fitzroy was elected the Tory MP for Durham and earned the enmity of unscrupulous selfish politicians. Income tax was running at a staggering three per cent. The British Isles was considered to be overcrowded, so it was put forward that New Zealand should be populated. Fitzroy took over from the deceased first Governor. But commercial interests succeeded in getting Fitzroy removed from his post for political expediency and the massacre of the Maoris began shortly afterwards.

 
He was appointed as the chief of a new department that collected weather data at sea, fine-tuning the British Meteorological Register. He even invented the Fitzroy barometer and thousands were mass-produced and distributed, all helping him to build up a weather history. In due course he hoped to use the statistics to foretell the weather, though he was up against ignorant men in power.

Unlike the political pygmies of today, Fitzroy gave selflessly. He never sought glory or riches. Despite his serious illness that could descend without warning, he achieved so much. He believed that sunspot activity affects the weather and, besides inventing the weather forecast, his contribution to nautical history was considerable. His charts were so precise that they continued to be used until recently, finally being usurped by aerial photography. He saved hundreds if not thousands of lives with the forecasts and introduced the system of masters’ certificates for ship’s officers. He pioneered the use of the lightning conductor and the Beaufort scale. He introduced the terms ‘port’ (as opposed to ‘larboard’) and ‘dinghy’ instead of jolly-boat into the Royal Navy.

Fitzroy set an example of honour and sacrifice which greatly influenced men who sailed with him. And in 2002, the shipping area previously known as Finisterre was renamed Fitzroy, the only sea area named after a person.
 
There are four maps – South America, Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, Galapagos Islands and the Falkland Islands - all of which prove helpful.
 
An outstanding book about a remarkable man.

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Tragically, Thompson died the same year that his book was published, 2005; he was 45. He had never smoked yet died of lung cancer. He was widely regarded as one of the most successful television producers and comedy writers of his generation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Thompson

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Before we moved to Spain in 2003, we’d lived in Lee-on-the-Solent in Fitzroy Close, which was named after Robert Fitzroy.

 

 

 

Make a Date - 3, 15 and 26 September

Again, linking dates through history, showing only the day in brackets to avoid repetition of the month. Another section from the book in progress. This time, the random dates are:

3, 15 and 26 September

At a time when the Royal Navy is shrinking, and when UK’s political masters would rather have Britain’s naval heritage as a dim memory, if at all, let’s begin this month’s article by looking back on some great seagoing events.

In 1580 Francis Drake completed his circumnavigation of the globe in his ship ‘The Golden Hind’ (26) and was knighted by Elizabeth I.

A mere forty years later (15) the ‘Mayflower’ departed from Plymouth to settle permanently its puritan passengers in New England to discover new food, drinks and people.

And a voyage of discovery of a different kind - two hundred and fifteen years later to the day, 1835 - laid the foundations of the Theory of Evolution, when HMS ‘Beagle’ brought Charles Darwin to the Galapagos Islands (15).

 

Ninety-nine years later, the steamship RMS ‘Queen Mary’ was launched (26) into the Clyde.

Scotland also witnessed a somewhat less illustrious nautical event in 1931: the infamous Invergordon Mutiny began (15) against the Royal Navy pay cuts and lasted two days. Although mutiny then carried the death penalty, the sailors’ strike was considered to be industrial action and while it was admitted that they had a good grievance - many liable to a 25% pay-cut, when they were poorly paid anyway - the ringleaders were jailed and some two hundred were dismissed from the Navy.

While the sea can be attractive and fickle, it can be treacherous and deadly too. No less deadly are rivers. The River Thames has been linked to our history for millennia and in 1878 over 640 passengers died when the crowded pleasure cruiser ‘Princess Alice’ collided with the ‘Bywell Castle’ (3).

Before moving on from boats and ships, mention should be made of Sir Malcolm Campbell. Lake Maggiore in Italy and Lake Hailwil in Switzerland respectively in September (2)1937 and (17)1938 saw him break the speed record on water in his boat ‘Bluebird’.

He was a true speed king and broke the land speed record (3) on the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah, the first person to drive an automobile over 300mph (attaining 304.331mph).

This month we can also commemorate two men famously associated with the motor industry. Born (3) in 1875, Ferdinand Porsche was an automobile engineer whose name can still be seen on vehicles, just like another engineer and designer, Ettore Bugatti, who was born (15) in 1881.

Civil engineer Sir Donald Bailey designed the Bailey Bridge while working in the War Office and was later knighted for that; he was born (15) in 1901.

One of the world's greatest engineers was Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who died (15) in 1859.

Kingdoms wax and wane and even though he was king for ten years, being crowned (3) in Westminster in 1189, Richard I, the Lionheart, only spent about six months of his reign in England, because he considered it ‘cold and always raining’ and didn’t particularly like rusty chain-mail.

Charles II was made King of the Scots but his army of Scots and Royalists was decisively beaten (3) at Worcester in 1651.

Then there are those who depose kings. Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England, changed the face of politics, royalty and Ireland and died (3) in 1658.

After his death his body was exhumed from Westminster Abbey and posthumously ‘executed’ on the anniversary of the beheading of Charles I. Cromwell’s head was placed on a pole outside Westminster then changed hands several times before finally being buried in a Cambridge college in 1960.

Near another county’s college is the spiritual centre of the Church of England, Canterbury Cathedral. My surname-sake, John Morton was Archbishop of Canterbury and a great builder. The central tower of Canterbury Cathedral, known both as the ‘Angel Steeple’ and as ‘Bell Harry’ was erected with Morton’s help and at his expense.

The Gateway Tower of Lambeth Palace, where he lived and where Sir Thomas More served him as page, bears Morton’s name and remains as a monument of his taste and generosity. He died (15) in 1500, the same day that Thomas Wolsey was made Archbishop of York (15) fourteen years later.

Wolsey, the pope’s representative, went on to become powerful, shaping England’s power at home and abroad for over ten years; he advocated the dissolution of the monasteries which Henry VIII completed. Then he fell into disfavour with Henry, when the king wanted to be rid of Catherine of Aragon, and was summoned to London for treason but died on the way. Wolsey fancied becoming pope but this was denied him because his arrogance and greed were too obvious to all. He’d never make a saint, unlike More who was beheaded by Henry VIII and canonized in 1935.

In 608 AD Saint Boniface IV became Pope (15). He was responsible for making the Pantheon - the temple to Mars, Jupiter and Venus, built by Agrippa and Hadrian - into a Christian church and thus preserving this remarkable building for posterity. He took great interest in the fledgling church in England and had dealings with the Irish monk Saint Columban.

Three hundred and thirteen years to the day later (15), Saint Ludmilla was murdered at the command of her daughter-in-law, Drahomira who secretly favoured paganism over Christianity.

Jealous of her mother-in-law’s influence over her young son and heir, Saint Wenceslaus (Father Christmas), Drahomira hired two not so noblemen to strangle Ludmilla with her veil.

Ludmilla’s remains finally ended up in the church of Saint George in Prague and she is one of the patrons of Bohemia and her feast is celebrated on 16 September.

A saint of stone rather than flesh is the San Lorenzo del Escorial Palace near Madrid, which was finished (15) in 1584.

An intriguing mixture of royal grandeur and monastic austerity, it’s the gilded resting place of twenty-six kings and queens of Spain. It was built to commemorate Spain’s victory over the French at San Quentin in 1557.

In 1687 a building of even greater antiquity - the Parthenon - was partially destroyed (26) after an explosion caused by the bombing from Venetian forces while besieging the Ottoman Turks situated in Athens.

Greek film actress Irene Papas, star of about eighty-three films, including ‘The Guns of Navarone’, ‘Zorba the Greek’, ‘Yerma’ and ‘Captain Corelli's Mandolin’, was born (3) in 1926.

 

Talking of Captain Corelli, another string musician was Frenchman Charles Munch, who was born (26) in 1891. He was the conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra for thirteen years. Born in 1898 on the same day (26) was George Gershwin, the composer of such classics as ‘Rhapsody in Blue’ and ‘Porgy and Bess’. Still on the same day (26) but in 1957, Leonard Bernstein’s ‘West Side Story’ opened in Broadway.

This is the same day (26) that the Third World War was averted in 1983. At the height of the Cold War, only weeks after Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by Soviet aircraft, Early-warning Commander Stanislav Petrov was facing a crisis when his Soviet computer system told him that the US had launched five missiles at Russia.

Petrov had seconds to make a decision. He came to the conclusion that if the West was going to attack it would do so in massive numbers of missiles, not just five. He declared it was a false alarm - which it was, caused by the satellite interpreting sun shining off the tops of clouds as a missile launch. Having avoided all-out nuclear war, Petrov was neither punished nor rewarded but essentially his career was over and he retired to live in poverty outside Moscow. This was all kept secret until 1999.

The other moment when the world stood on the brink of nuclear holocaust was in 1962. The Soviet ship ‘Poltava’ headed towards Cuba (15), one of the events setting in train the Cuban Missile Crisis. Krushchev backed down. He actually was the first Soviet leader to visit the United States (15) - in 1959 when things were not so tense with America.

American novelist James Fennimore Cooper was born (15) in 1789, the same day as namesake actor and director Jackie Cooper (1922). Fennimore Cooper’s ‘Deerslayer’ series, including ‘The Last of the Mohicans’ were surprisingly popular, probably influenced by the life story of Daniel Boone, frontiersman, who died (26) in 1820. Cooper’s stories defined much of the bravery and pioneering spirit of the Old West.

A pioneer of a different kind was Sir Alexander Fleming who noticed in 1928 a bacteria-killing mold growing in his laboratory and thus discovered penicillin (15).

Besides medicine and new frontiers, there were pioneers in transport systems too. In 1830 the Liverpool to Manchester railway line was opened - though the event was marred by death. The Liverpool MP William Huskisson alighted from the train to chat to the Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, and misjudged the speed of the approaching locomotive The Rocket. He died shortly afterwards (15).

Another casualty, hit by a train on the same day (15) though in 1885, was P. T. Barnum’s Jumbo, the circus elephant, while crossing the railroad tracks. The train was derailed and it took 150 men to haul the body off the line. Twenty-four-year-old Jumbo was later stuffed and featured as an exhibit.

I think I’ve stuffed enough linked facts and dates for now.