“IT WAS AN EMOTIONAL moment,” says Stewart McPherson, describing the historic tall ship Oosterschelde’s early-morning departure from Plymouth for the start of its extraordinary two-year voyage. Plymouth is the same port Charles Darwin set sail from on HMS Beagle nearly two centuries before, on his way to becoming the world’s most famous and influential naturalist. “I could sense an echo of what it must have been like for Darwin, because he was so desperate to set sail, and so were we,” McPherson tells me. “It was a joy. People were crying on the Plymouth docks when the ship pulled away.”
Ever since setting sail from the English port on 15th August 2023, the Oosterschelde has been following Darwin’s route around the world and will cover more than 40,000 nautical miles and span four continents, taking in tropical islands, lush rainforests, smouldering volcanoes, glacial fjords and coral atolls before arriving, if all goes to plan, in Falmouth on 19th July, 2025. Along the way, the ship is stopping at every major port where the young scientist came to shore between 1831 and 1836 (plus a few more), exploring many of the greatest wildlife locations on the planet, including the Galápagos Islands.
Known as. It’s supported by the likes of Jane Goodall, Sylvia Earle and Sarah Darwin (Charles Darwin’s great-great-grand-daughter). The goal is to explore how the natural world has changed in the two centuries since Darwin’s voyage and work on practical solutions to the biodiversity crisis and other conservation issues.
