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H O U S T O N, Nov. 4, 2000 -- The great British explorers of the second millennium have landed in Texas.
Whether it’s Sir Hans Sloane’s study of early colonial Jamaica, Capt. James Cook and Sir Joseph Banks’ rendering of pristine Australia or the body of work that led to Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, the “Voyages of Discovery” exhibit details them all.
The exhibit, considered by its presenters to be the first dedicated to British sea voyages of the 18th and 19th centuries, originated at London’s Natural History Museum last year. It debuted in North America last month at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where it will remain until Jan. 7, when it heads for the Smithsonian Institution.
“We’re reaching a new audience, an international audience,” London exhibition researcher Paul Bowers said. “It’s just multiplying the number of people who are going to see it.”
Nancy Kreig, curator of the exhibit’s Houston stop, is thrilled to host the U.S. premiere.
“It’s what museums are all about, really,” she said. “Just a chance to have these artifacts here. ... These paintings and specimens are really inspiring.”
Amid the art and artifacts spanning 200 years are two finches, collected on the Galapagos Islands during Darwin’s voyage aboard the Beagle in 1831-36. Darwin initially was baffled by how essentially the same birds developed different characteristics living on separate islands; his hypothesis on the subject years later was the basis for his theories of evolution and natural selection.
Fortunately, he had kept the finches, and almost everything else he came across.
“One of the reasons we keep collections is because you have no idea how significant and precious something might be,” said Neil Chalmers, director of the London museum.
Said Bowers: “It proves the point you’ve got to look after your stuff.”
An 1859 first edition of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species,which caused a firestorm upon publication that continues to rage today, is part of the display.
Chronologically, the exhibit begins with the work of Sloane, a wealthy doctor and patron of the sciences who assisted the colonial governor of Jamaica in 1687-89.
By Sloane’s death in 1753, his personal library featured nearly 50,000 volumes filled with specimens and journal entries detailing his 15 months of research on the Caribbean island. His exhaustive collection became the foundation of The Natural History Museum, London.
But enough about science. For most, Sloane’s true contribution was much sweeter.
“He noticed local people boiling this bean in water and drinking it,” Bowers explained. “He found it quite bitter and nauseous, so he thought to add other things that were nice. So he boiled it in milk and added some sugar.
Although Sloane suggested using the mixture to relieve stomach ailments, his extemporaneous recipe actually was the first milk chocolate.
“Cadbury’s started marketing it, then started making it into solid bars, and it sort of took off,” Bowers said.
A cocoa bean from Sloane’s collection is on display.
From Sloane the exhibit moves to the Endeavor, the ship Cook sailed around Australia in 1768-71. The voyage included the first European sighting of the kangaroo.
Banks was the voyage’s chief scientist. The wealthy botanist brought along four servants and two artists. One artist died early in the voyage, leaving 23-year-old Sydney Parkinson responsible for drawing specimens, people and landscapes.
The ship charted more than 2,000 miles along Australia’s east coast. Its travelers were responsible for naming Botany Bay, south of Sydney, because of its rich wildlife.
Meanwhile, Parkinson frantically painted and sketched. Unfortunately, a homeward-bound stop in Indonesia proved deadly for Parkinson and 26 other crew members who contracted dysentery or malaria. Other painters had to finish many of Parkinson’s 900 works.
Chalmers’ favorite items on display are the elaborate paintings of Australian wildlife by artist Ferdinand Bauer, who sketched the specimens using an elaborate memorized paint-by-numbers system. Photography was not available when Bauer made his 2,000 works in 1801-05.
Pointing to Bauer’s seahorses, Chalmers joked, “When I retire and you find this missing from the collection, you’ll know where it is.”
Other scientifically priceless works on display are fish painted by Alfred Russel Wallace, who explored the Amazon in the mid-1800s. While most of his work was destroyed by fire before his return, a few pieces survived and became critical to research.
The museum journey ends with the Challenger, whose 1872-76 voyage was the first deep-sea exploration and among the first to feature a cadre of specialized scientists.
“You had a chemist, a geologist and so on,” Bowers said. “Thirty years before, you wouldn’t think to have been that specialized.”
The Challenger’s investigations gave birth to modern oceanography and voided the widely held belief that the ocean floor was a dead zone. Scientists now know that a handful of sea-bottom soil contains more species than a square yard of Amazon rain forest.
“Far from being dead, they found 14,200 species in 3½ years,” Bowers said.
Jars of sediment collected on the historic journey are part of the exhibit.
A locally developed exhibit tells the story of English carpenter John Harrison’s struggle to convince the haughty 18th century scientific community that he had created a timepiece that effectively solved the problem of determining longitude at sea.
Astronomers knocked his work for more than 30 years before grudgingly accepting that a mere craftsman essentially invented the modern timepiece, allowing voyagers to better calculate their location.
An accompanying presentation at the museum’s Burke Baker Planetarium explains how time is crucial to understanding the Earth’s rotation and determining longitude.