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To Party, Or Don the Anorak? book reviews on half-pay. Even the fighting Téméraire was Canning, on to Queen Victoria. Barrow’s part afoot: “I am aware that soon the world will towed up the Thames to be broken up, as in establishing the Royal Geographical Soci- celebrate the start of a new millennium.” But depicted by J. M. W. Turner. Barrow’s solu- ety is scarcely touched on, nor is his baronetcy it is hard not to imagine that, at least as far as tion was to send them exploring — up the in 1835. Other voyages of a similarly dramatic the publishers are concerned, the big M has Congo, down the Niger, even to Timbuctoo, nature were sent out by Francis Beaufort of influenced these publications, aimed as they and most especially to the far north in search the Hydrographer’s Office, most notably the are at the popular market. of the fabled north-west passage, the mys- Beagle. And more could be said, no doubt, Mapping Time is reliable in its factual terious link between Europe and the Pacific about the exploitative, self-aggrandizing content, but not very analytical, and the facts Ocean that would open new trading routes territorial thrust of the British during this are dispensed with little sense of historical or and halve the time taken to reach desirable period. Science, exploration and national cultural context. It reads rather like an ency8- eastern ports. Barrow’s boys were the great desires were closely intermeshed. The Ad- clopaedia, without adopting that format. naval explorers William Parry, Edward miralty’s skill in distributing these coiling Each category is treated in turn in successive Belcher, John and James Ross, John Franklin, economic threads across the nineteenth- chapters without there being a strong narra- Richard Lander, John Rae and many, many century globe is indisputable. tive structure. It is not a book to be read, but more. One by one, they set out to fulfil Bar- But it would be churlish to go on. Bar- to be consulted on particular topics. row’s obsession with filling in blank parts on row’s Boys is a wonderful story, vividly told. The Calendar, although written in too the Admiralty maps. Every amateur yachtsman of my acquain- uncritical a style to be taken seriously as his- The folly of the expeditions described tance will be getting a copy for Christmas. tory, has a stronger chronological organiza- here was extraordinary, the heroism quite Janet Browne is at the Wellcome Institute for the tion and relies on historical anecdote to keep stunning. John Ross took a small steamship History of Medicine, 183 Euston Road, London the narrative moving. Consequently, it is into Prince Regent Inlet and was stuck in the NW1 2BE, UK. easier to read. It tells the story from the Stone ice for four winters, spending one season Age to the Gregorian reform of the sixteenth moving no more than 300 yards. Belcher set century, and then steps nimbly on to con- out with four ships and returned with one. clude with the atomic clock. It offers a romp Half of Franklin’s first expedition starved to To party, or don through history with calendars as the con- death. George Back went north to save Ross necting thread. only to discover that, while he iced over at the anorak? Neither book has very seriously scholarly Great Slave Lake, Ross had arrived home. Mapping Time: The Calendar and Its pretensions, although Richards’s ency- Franklin’s third voyage ended with all hands History clopaedic approach makes it more strongly perishing. James Tuckey died in the Congo, by E. G. Richards weighted with facts and it has a stronger Hugh Clapperton died in the Niger, Gordon Oxford University Press: 1998. 438 pp. £20, guide to the literature. Both seem to sub- Laing was murdered in Timbuctoo. Barrow’s $33.49 scribe to a forward, progressive dynamic of explorers showed astonishing stoicism and The Calendar: The 5000-Year science overcoming dogma and superstition courage in the face of adversity. Struggle To Align the Clock and the with observation and rational thought. This Fleming describes some 26 expeditions Heavens — and What Happened to makes their link to the coming millennium master-minded by Barrow, including African, the Missing Ten Days somewhat ironic, or perhaps the authors’ Arctic and Antarctic voyages, ranging from by David E. Duncan coyness about any link understandable. Tuckey’s inland explorations in 1816 to the Fourth Estate: 1998. 306 pp. £12.99 Jim Bennett is at the Museum of the History of final polar voyage in search of Franklin’s body, Jim Bennett Science, Broad Street, Oxford OX1 3AZ, UK. whose death was at last confirmed by Leopold Y McClintock in 1857. He writes in a thorough- If there is any sensible focus for the millenni- AR ly readable style, full of telling anecdotes, half- um, it has to be the calendar, perhaps linked amused by the ingenuity of his travellers, to our interest in what we take to be ‘round’ T LIBR critical of their follies and deeply conscious of numbers. Yet deconstructing the foundation the extreme rigours they experienced. These for millennium fever has to go further, for GEMAN AR stories have been told often enough before, the event occurs in only one particular calen- but the strength of Fleming’s account is his dar. Even then, the beginning of the millen- ON/BRID colourful interlacing of the individual trav- nium will be identified only according to the UD A ellers’ personal stories. Each voyage spills current adjustment or finer tuning of that GIR into the next, with young lieutenants on one calendar; and all of those doubts come before expedition ascending the ranks to command we might begin to be troubled over which another, and with the motif of the solitary, year marks the real beginning. driven, Admiralty man behind them. Has there ever been so much fuss over What is gained by the personal, however, what is, in the end, a social convention? One is partly lost for the domain of science. Few of reasonable prognostication might be that the scientific achievements of the voyages are the vague notion that the millennium will described in any detail. It would be hard to somehow mark the beginning of something unpack the role of the Royal Society of Lon- more than a different-looking set of num- don from these adventurous chapters, for bers is bound to lead to disappointment and example, in supplying instructions for mag- disillusion. A harmless response to the hype netic and astronomical observations, natural might be to exchange the party clothes for history collections, directives for anthropo- the anorak, and become surprisingly knowl- logical encounters and geographical prob- edgeable about the calendar. These books lems to resolve. It would be equally hard to get offer alternative ways to begin. a clear grasp of the political situation which Neither work really admits to a strong took Britain from the Napoleonic Wars to millennial mission, although E. G. Richards Marking time: Boar hunting was a December William IV (the sailor king) and George reassures us that he has noticed something pastime in the fifteeenth century. 328 Nature © Macmillan Publishers Ltd 1998 NATURE | VOL 396 | 26 NOVEMBER 1998 | www.nature.com.
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