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History On Air
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WEDNESDAY 7, 14, 21 JUNE 9.OOpm Wilderness Men BBC2 ALEXANDER
VON Humboldt is today an elusive figure. But his five-year scientific
expedition to South America and the Caribbean, ending in 1804, was to
his contemporaries the equivalent of Edmund Hillary's conquest of
Everest and The Origin of The
Species rolled into one. Not
only had he climbed a 19,286ft volcano in the Andes, then thought to be
the world’s highest mountain, but, aged 29, this Prussian aristocrat
had found a channel linking the watersheds of the Amazon and the
Orinoco, described thousands of species new to science and befriended
the American president, Thomas Jefferson, who took a keen interest in
science. The
extraordinary effect that Von Humboldt’s journey had upon science and
exploration can be measured by the fact that 1,000 |
His reputation seems to be on the up again, and he is the most challenging figure tackled by BBC2’s three drama-documentaries, Wilderness Men. Peter
Nicholson’s programme struggles to show how Von Humboldt (played by
Christopher Eccleston) fits in to the history of science, but reaps
rewards from the adventurous elements and tropical locations, though
some will be disappointed that not more is made of some of his
discoveries such as the electric eel. Mary Summerill's film about Lewis and Clark's two-and-a-half year expedition across the continental United States has an easier task because its subject is one of the worlds greatest adventures. In
1803, the aforesaid Jefferson commissioned his 29-year-old personal
secretary, Meriwether Lewis, to explore along with Captain William
Clark, the uncharted western territories the
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The
story’s poignancy is the greater because Lewis, a depressive, suffered
from one of the worst recorded cases of writer’s block and failed to
write up the account of his travels after his triumphant return. After
his suicide, publication of Lewis and Clark's journals was to wait 100
years. Equally
remarkable is the story of Ernest Shackleton’s 800-mile journey in an
open boat in the Antarctic winter of 1916 to fetch help for his stranded
expedition. Susan McMillan’s film follows in the wake of mooted
Hollywood interest and a rash of books. The story is here enriched by
its normal-speed original film footage, by the expedition cameraman —
but not always by David Yelland’s face-tocamera ShackLeton. Charles Clover, Environment Correspondent, The Daily Telegraph BBC History Magazine - June 2000 |
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