Following the Footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace
from Class Afloat News, January 20, 1997In March 1996 a man named Tim Severin repeated history. He did not do this with the help of a time machine, but rather with a ship. Severin re-enacted the voyage of Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), an overlooked father of evolutionary theories, through the Spice Islands of Eastern Indonesia.
In 1854 after a disastrous ending to a long expedition in Brazil (Wallace's ship caught fire destroying all of his animal and plant specimens), Wallace began his voyage of natural discovery through the Malay Archipelago of Indonesia. This archipelago (a group of islands) consists of over 13,000 islands stretching for more than 3,000 miles east to west and about 1300 miles from north to south.
In 1858, Wallace, suffering from a fever, took time to consider all of his findings in Eastern Indonesia. All his studies revealed that the healthiest and strongest animals were the ones who survived to reproduce. From this observation he created his survival of the fittest theory, which he described in a letter to Charles Darwin days later. The Malay Archipelago (1869)- the account of his voyage-opened an entire new world to readers and gave scientists a full description of his natural selection theories. The account documented 125,600 different species Wallace discovered throughout the islands.
Tim Severin's five month voyage aboard the Alfred Wallace has similarities and differences to its predecessor. The twentieth century craft was built quite traditionally, but was equipped with modern communication equipment. The Alfred Wallace also dealt with Mother Nature, but could worry less about pirates, although they still are known to troll seas to the north.
The main goal of each voyage was quite different. Alfred Wallace wanted to describe and document the animal and plant life that inhabited the area; Severin wished to show how these lands have been altered due to an ever increasing human population.
In their efforts to educate children about the importance of conservation, Severin and his crew described their encounters with Birds of Paradise, tarsiers, pythons, black monkeys, hornbills and butterflies, while continuing along the same paths that Wallace traveled more than a century before.