Exploring
Why do the British do it?
John Blashford-Snell
The golden orb was settling on the darkening waters of the Atlantic, off the West African coast on Sunday, January 19, 1975. It was a peaceful scene and had you been there, sitting on the palm-fringed beach, you might have described it as idyllic. But for the commander of the Portuguese coast guard vessel riding at anchor off the turbulent colony of Angola it was a disturbed evening. As he watched the sun go down he noticed a fleet of strange craft emerge from the mouth of the Zaire River. The captain of a giant tanker Waiting for a pilot to take him up the river also saw the curious flotilla and being closer he noticed that the crews of the boats appeared to be bare headed and were singing. In fact they were singing a hymn, for standing on the leading craft was an army padre in cassock and surplice. Above him an improvised cross was silhouetted against the evening sky. All the boats carried flags, but one flag, a huge Union Jack, flew slightly higher than the rest. Suddenly a rousing cheer went up and rockets and flares roared skyward. The Portuguese coast guard vessel rushed out, fearing some terrible calamity. But as it neared the scene the captain met a Belgian river pilot. "What on earth's happening?" shouted the Portuguese. "Don't worry," replied the pilot, "it's only some mad British explorers who have just sailed from the source of the Zaire, they're celebrating!" The Portuguese shook his head sadly. "Exploring, exploring," he groaned, "why are the British always exploring?"
My purpose is not to discuss the 2,700 mile voyage across Africa that I have just completed but to answer the Portuguese sailor's question. What is it that makes the British explore, especially at a time of such economic gloom, and when our quality of life is daily being eroded? What is it that causes more people to go out each year from our islands to conquer new frontiers for science or as a sheer physical challenge? Why is it that Great Britain in spite of all her difficulties still produces more explorers than any other land and continues to lead the world in this field?
Naturally in any group of relatively small islands, with a high density of population, there is a tendency to expand and the inhabitants have more incentive to go abroad to seek their' fortunes. But coupled with this desire to travel, our climate and our seas have given us a heritage of hardy seagoing people. Originally it was these people who pioneered the expansion of our trade areas and I believe it was this that led to our political expansion, from which we acquired an empire, almost by mistake.
But I feel there is still more to the British character that fosters the adventurous, questing spirit. There seems to be something indefinable in our make-up. I have often wondered if we are a nation of masochists. Our explorers seem to delight in partings, leaving their friends and family and going off to lead what is often a socially and sexually lonely existence.
It has been suggested that in the past wars gave us an opportunity for individual achievement, in a sporting sort of way, but war is no longer sporting. Britain is at peace, and it may be that it is the atmosphere of this uneasy peace. that has given rise to a feeling of national frustration which also encourages people to seek some other form of excitement. Very often I have felt that we are a people who must endure hardship to achieve real satisfaction. The great explorer Shackleton's family motto
was "By Endurance I Conquer" but was it the ground, the sea, the ice or himself that he wished to conquer? Indeed how strong is the cult of those who constantly seek danger? I am sure there are still many in Britain whose ideal overlap from the days of empire when a spirit of adventure and the healthy contempt for difficulties and dangers was part of the required make-up of an explorer like Livingstone.
For others exploration may be a form of escapism. Many of us are resisting the spirit of the time which suggests that the welfare state will make life easy for all. In fact I have noticed that the easier life becomes the more young people want to go out and pit themselves against hardships. There are others who do it for pleasure and we have only to note the recent increase in underwater activities, ballooning and mountaineering in Britain to see this happening. Travel magazines are full of offers for cut-price world tours by bus, Landrover or converted ex-Army trucks.
In December last year I had just returned to my camp in a small pygmy village in the Ituri Forest Region of Eastern Zaire after an exciting day's camera hunt for the rare okapi (a relative of the giraffe that is peculiar to Zaire). Suddenly two Army three-tonners appeared on the track. Old coach seats had been installed in the trucks and there sat an incredible collection of Britons, men and women, young, middleaged and old, in every imaginable form of dress. They told me that they had each paid £450 for a few months' roughing it away from the British winter, strikes and dismay. All they wanted, they said, was to get away from it all, see the world, meet different people and "recharge their batteries", before returning to the frustrations of civilisation.
In other lands I have met young British businessmen seeking to conquer new markets. I have heard them talk of Captain Cook, whose backers, they point out, were inspired by both the material and imperial advantages that might be gained by Cook's discoveries. One young salesman told me that the history of British trade in West Africa could be traced back to the explorer, Mungo Park, whose aim was the extension of British commerce and the enlargement of our geographical knowledge. Others have pointed to the examples of the Hudson Bay Company and the merchant venturers. Nevertheless there are, or there certainly have been those who are driven to explore by a sense of conquest and competition and not for any particular commercial reason. Patriotism can also be a motive and it certainly played an important part in the justification for Captain Scott's ill-fated journey to the South Pole. Everest, a mountain climbed "Because it's there", has yet to have a Briton on its summit. Howeverin the next two years we shall see two well-organised expeditions, one civilian and one from the British army, attempting to set this right. Even if early adventurers may have taken scientists along to add respectability to their expeditions it was soon realised that in the end it would be the discoveries that really justified the project. Scott was careful to describe his last venture as "primarily a great scientific expedition with the Pole as our bait for public support." There were certainly dangers and difficulties to be overcome in Polar regions in the quest for knowledge, This was found to be true of Apsley Cherry-Garrard and his colleagues who trekked for five weeks across the polar ice to discover and bring home the first eggs of the Emperor penguin.
Today the scientific teams go hand in hand with the adventurers and on the recent Zaire River Expedition we had a perfect example of this. The scientists need the transportation and the back-up. The soldiers welcome the chance to practise movement and administration in a difficult region. The lovers of machines can test their equipment. Altogether these specialists must be welded into a team if the expedition is to succee,d. However the machine lovers are often themselves adventurous as one mightsee in some of the early exploits of the late Sir Francis Chichester, the flights of that intrepid woman, Amy Johnson, and more recently the hovercraft expeditions. Was it their love 01 flying, their spirit of adventure or their curiosity that drove them on?
I cannot guess but I do know that curiositY a pretty strong motive and we can readily fin° many British explorers who were consumed by it: Sir Samuel Baker aboUt the source of the Nile, Sir Richard Burton about Mecca, Str Francis Younghusband about Peking, an", Colonel Fawcett about the lost City of Xingu' Similar men, of whom Livingstone is an example, combine the passion to satisfy their curiosity with a burning desire to do good and it was these missionary explorers who were in the forefront of the field in the last century. As far as the future is concerned it it prettY plain to me that as we can only use apprOXirnately one quarter of the earth's surface we must expand or die. We must go up into space or down, and that means beneath the sea. Although the space race is beyond our pockets at the moment our interests in the North Sea should encourage our undersea explorers. But in truth I do not know one single reason why the British go on exploring. My guess is that it's partly as Wilfred Noyce said, "It's n°t the end but the journey that matters," PartlY,, the challenge, partly the sheer joy, partly dr need to prove an idea or a machine, and Part Y curiosity, partly the quest for knowledge, or the need to provide an ideal or a machine, and partly the will to win. Perhaps it all makes a recipe for being a Briton.
Lieutenant Colonel Blashford-Snell was the leader of the recent Zaire River expedition. Las," month he was awarded the Livingstone Mecic".
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