Sponsored Swim THE. The Arctic Circle CROCODILE WHALE THE September 2017

Transcription

1 THE Sponsored Swim The Arctic Circle CROCODILE & THE 6 10 September 2017 WHALE

2 Dear Supporter I am writing to ask for your support of a fourth and, I promise, final Sponsored Swim in support of the Museum development. On 6 September I plan to swim 30 kilometres within the Arctic Circle to raise money to display two objects of natural history and complete our recreation of John Tradescant s Ark with a crocodile from the River Nile and the skeleton of a 17th century whale. The swim will retrace part of his expedition to Russia in 1618 that is, 400 years ago and I hope to raise the 75,000 required to put on display these two specimens of natural history, which would be on loan from The Natural History Museum, London. Each will give to the Museum visitor the wonder, amazement, and education in the natural world that visitors to the Ark experienced 350 years ago. The two John Tradescants and their tomb, 1793, engraving Tradescant s Ark was divided between the natural and the artificial. Thanks to a generous loan by The Ashmolean Museum to which Tradescant s son bequeathed The Ark, there are more than twenty objects on display at the Museum which were made by man whether a weapon, a shoe, or a work of art. But it was the specimens of natural history which most caught the imagination of 17th century London. The Trustees of The Natural History Museum, London The crocodile in the stores of The Natural History Museum, London The right whale skeleton in the stores of The Natural History Museum, London Tradescant s Ark was entered through the ribs of a whale (long vanished) and had a stuffed crocodile, which has also perished, but was sufficiently precious for it to be sculpted on his tomb. The generous curators at The Natural History Museum have identified a similar specimen. And they also revealed one of the great discoveries of modern London: in 2010, the fifty-foot skeleton of a whale was discovered when digging foundations of a building on the shore at Greenwich. It has since been dated to the 17th century so, it swum up the Thames in the century in which the Tradescants lived. We do not know the species of whale in his Ark, but the right whale was together with the sperm whale the most common species spotted by sailors at sea. In the summer of 1618 Tradescant sailed in an expedition round Norway to Archangel, as recorded in a diary in The Bodleian Library which in an ink-blotted, heaving scrawl describes castles in the fog of the North Cape, the midnight sun, a bird which landed on deck and whose skeleton he preserved, when it failed to be nursed and a tribe whose heads grew in their chests. He also spotted whales three times. I had begun to think of a swim during the construction project, feeling quite low after a year of cash-flow diagrams

3 Original design of the Garden Museum s recreation of Tradescant s Ark by Alec Cobbe The Garden Museum s recreation of Tradescant s Ark, 2017 (Photo John Chase)

4 showing red numbers ahead, technical reports on sewers, planning conditions, archaeologists warnings of bones, mud, and delays, and so on Why not the Arctic, suggested my friend John Coyningham-Rolls, founder of Swimquest (swimquest.uk.com), Vice President of the International Cold Water Swimming Association (and once upon a time a gardener). Christopher after his swim across Hellespont, 2010 With John to watch over me, I ll swim thirty kilometres along the Lofoten Islands for five days, north of Narvik, just within the Arctic Circle, and on Tradescant s route 400 years ago. The challenge is not the distance for I d happily swim a hundred miles in the Mediterranean but the cold water. Which I hate. I began acclimatising in the Serpentine in March; the water is eight degrees, as it will be in Norway. The first few seconds is like a dentist s drill in your forehead. Then, even in a wetsuit, the cold slices through your ribs until you squeal. A few minutes later you cannot feel hands or feet. The target is three hours per day. Swim location, detail from map (opposite) The cost of 75,000 is in conservation, transportation of the loans, environmental controls, and interpretation, and, above all, in showcases designed by Alec Cobbe in a recreation of 17th century joinery. We met our original target of 300,000 to build The Ark thanks to The Wolfson Foundation, and the donors to my swim of the 110 miles of the Thames from Oxford to London three years ago, retracing the route of the barge which sailed from Lambeth to Oxford in What will buoy me up is the thought of whales swimming, of Tradescant s spirit in boarding that expedition, and how the Garden Museum is, at heart, a materialisation of Tradescant s wish to share his wonder at the natural world with others. Orcas swimming by the Lofoten Islands, Norway Everyone who receives this letter will have supported the Museum s 8 million redevelopment project and we are very grateful for what you have done. A Life Patron has funded the expenses of this expedition, and I hope that this last swim will raise the money to finish The Ark, and do justice to Tradescant s vision. Christopher Woodward Director Garden Museum

5 Scandinavia, imagined by Antonio Lafreri ( ) in 1572 at the time of Tradescant s childhood. Charmet/Bridgeman Images

6 Garden Museum 5 Lambeth Palace Road London SE1 7LB T info@gardenmuseum.org.uk gardenmuseum.org.uk Whaling, after a woodcut in Cosmographie Universelle of Munster, pub.1552, German School, (16th century), Stapleton Collection