An environmental expedition led by renowned yachtsman Sir Peter Blake ended with his murder by pirates. Lorna Siggins, Marine Correspondent, reads his last logbooks
Sir Peter Blake, world-famous New Zealand yachtsman, appeared to have little more to achieve when he embarked on a challenge four years ago as leader of an expedition that aimed to highlight the impact of environmental degradation on the planet. He was twice winner of the Whitbread Round the World Race, twice national manager of a victorious Kiwi America's Cup team, skipper of a yacht that broke the Jules Verne round-the-world sailing record, and had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth. He was married to an artist, Pippa, with whom he had two children, Sarah Jane and Peter.
As his close friend, journalist Alan Sefton, says in his introduction to the publication of Blake's logbooks, the skipper "wasn't searching for a new world", as he was "patently in love with the only one we've got". Indeed, it had been good to him from the time he found an abandoned dinghy at the age of five in Auckland, and his mother made him a squaresail on her sewing machine.
However, he wanted to take "a fresh look" - Proust's definition of a true journey of discovery - when he embarked, on a French-built yacht, for the Antarctic peninsula, and for the Amazon and Negro rivers in Brazil, with the support of the UN. On December 6th, 2001, he was shot dead by pirates while trying to defend his boat and crew at Macapa, on the mouth of the Amazon. New Zealand went into mourning, many people donning red socks - Blake's trademark during the America's Cup campaign - in his memory.
"Our Hillary of the seas," New Zealand's prime minister, Helen Clark, described him in a reference to their compatriot, who had first climbed Mount Everest in 1953. The thieves took his life for little more than a few watches and a 15-horse-power Yamaha engine.
At that point, Blake had almost accomplished his mission. "We haven't hoisted sails for more than two months now, but this will soon be corrected when we turn left out of the mouth of the river and enter the Atlantic trade winds early next week - fingers crossed!" he had recorded in his last entry on December 4th, 2001.
"Again I raise the question - why are we here? What has been the point of leaving Antarctica in March, refitting in Buenos Aires over the southern winter, then undertaking the long haul north to spend some time in the Amazon? Why is part of our team off in the jungles of Venezuela?" he wrote.
"We want to restart people caring for the environment as it must be cared for, and we want to do this through adventure, through participation, through education and through enjoyment," he continued. Using technology, his crew had been "reporting on what we find", sharing their experiences and linking in by satellite phone to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
In fact, environment ministers from more than 80 states were gathered in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, when Blake put a call through to them on February 8th, 2001. At the time, he and his crew on Seamaster were alongside the sea ice in George VI Sound on the Antarctic Peninsula. They were in unexplored territory, having gone farther south than any other vessel to latitude 69.54 degrees - as a direct result of global warming.
Blake's conversation with the UN decision-makers is not recorded, but he and his crew had encountered humpback and minke whales, Antarctic fur seals, leopard seals feeding on Adelie and chinstrap penguins; and they had all marvelled at the wonderful ice-sculpted landscape of Antarctica - a landscape which, from my own experience of it for this newspaper in 1997, never quite leaves one's consciousness. On several occasions, members of the crew dived to examine the ice sculptures more closely.
"At first, in poor visibility, the berg appeared milky/bluish white," wrote Chris Coffin, a temporary crew member, in January 2001, off Half Moon Island, some 62 degrees south. "Then, as we approached the face of the berg at about six metres below the surface, the artwork was revealed. We were greeted with a smooth, concave, and almost dimpled surface. There were crystal-clear, almost completely transparent shafts of ice going right through the berg, and layers of blue ice where pressure had done its work. There were smooth cut-outs, like those created when you melt an ice cube under warm water. There were channel cracks that went deep into the ice, likely spots where the berg will break in later life."
The bergs "comprise billions of tonnes of frozen water being released into the oceans," Coffin's skipper, Peter Blake, wrote in the same log entry. "But first they will sail their ghostly paths through currents for a year or two, or more, gradually diminishing in size; very old water that was laid down as the snowfalls of millenniums ago, full of the nutrients and microscopic life that are so important to the beginning of the marine food chain."
"The view we have on this clear but freezing-cold evening, as the sun is heading for the horizon, is one of enormity - both in size and age," Blake continued. "Nature at her grandest in a form impossible for man to replicate." If Blake and his crew were shaken by the obvious impact of global warming in the deep south, they were further exercised by the extent of environmental exploitation in the rainforests of Amazonia. After an extensive conversion and another crew change, Seamaster sailed north up the coast of South America, and navigated 1,400 miles of the Amazon and Negro rivers to the very centre of the Amazon basin.
En route, the crew encountered otters, caiman crocodiles, thatch-roofed bongos or riverboats, toucans and green parrots, scarlet macaws, turtles and river dolphins; Blake's wife, Pippa, joined for part of the journey - the couple's two children had already been on board - and some of her paintings are reproduced in the logbook publication.
"The Amazonian landscape is daunting, vast and hauntingly beautiful," she wrote on the River Negro, shortly before she left, just a week before her husband's death. "What has struck me most is the depth of the dark, moody colours in the forests and river waters. Also the mirror-like reflections in the still tributaries - reminding me always of the 'ink-blot' butterfly images one makes as a child by folding paper. The colours are strange and different, but always with dashes of brilliance among the darkness." Stunning photographs taken by several of the crew illustrate the logbook extracts which Sefton has edited, and there are some interesting references, including an account of Irishman Ernest Shackleton's dramatic Antarctic rescue almost 90 years ago.
Throughout, Blake berates those responsible for pollution, overfishing, illegal logging, hunting - but stops short of analysing the problem in any detailed socio-economic context. Perhaps he was reluctant to point the finger at some of the multinationals who may have been associated with the international yachting events where he made his name? During the Amazonia leg, part of Blake's group went upriver on a 15-metre catamaran which they named Big Bongo. They were near the entrance to the Siapa river among the Yanomami community of Venezeula, when they were approached by several men carrying large bags of turtles and some birdlife. They also had a freshly killed and skinned large male jaguar, although it is listed as an endangered species.
The hunters would sell the jaguar skin for just US $300, while the head would be offered separately. The group declined, while well aware that there would be other purchasers - and that these men would never see the large sum paid for the skin which would eventually hang on a wall, or be spread on a livingroom floor.
The Last Great Adventure of Sir Peter Blake: from the Antarctic to the Amazon, Sir Peter Blake's logbooks edited by Alan Sefton, will be published on Tuesday by Adlard Coles Nautical. Price £25