Nature Blog Network

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Grand Opening of the Beagle Project Shop!


The Beagle Project Shop is having its grand opening! Come one come all and gear up. I plan on putting my order in soon. I think I'm going for the white golf tee. For every t-shirt and mug purchase, $10 goes towards the Beagle Project ($2 for the buttons). This goes to support the amazing work of building a replica Beagle ship to sail in Darwin's footsteps between 2009-2011. Not content with that they plan to do real science along the way, including metagenomics and DNA barcoding as well as other smaller individual project TBD. This is all in addition to providing opportunities for teachers and students to carry out classroom projects using the ship and its resources.

Science, education, and Darwin. Do I need to say anymore?? I will provide a link in my sidebar to support this worthy cause.

4 comments:

  1. Oooh, it'll be like the Cook's boat recreation, very nice. Do you know if the technical conditions will be kept the same is during Darwin's time like in the Cook ship?

    (BTW, I changed the comment thingie so people can now see my profile. How do I reply to people's comments on this thing?)

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  2. Meirav, smaller than the replica Endeavour, but every bit as charismatic.

    Seeing the Australian built replica Endeavour sailing into Whitby where the young James Cook learned his sailing and where all his ships were built drove me into a frenzy of dismay at the Brits not celebrating their heroes properly, which is why I founded this mad beagle project.

    To be legal, we need to carry modern navigation, communications and safety equipment, and we'll have about 450hp of diesel engines for when we hit the doldrums, or are beating into a gale. The crew will have more creature comforts than in FitzRoy and Darwin's time, and of course to run modern science and comms equipment there'll be ac generators. But people will still have to climb the rigging and reef the sails by hand as in Darwin's day, we will still need helmspeople who can steer good courses, splice lines and navigate by the stars. The modern stuff will be able to be concealed so that when visitors come aboard they'll still be able to get a good flavour of life on a 19th century square rigger. We'll have tea and cake, too.

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  3. Aw, well, as long as the kids boarding it will get the feel of the times and excitement it's all good (tea and cake's never bad, either)

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