THE 19th-century British naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace never seemed to be in a hurry. He took eight years to travel through the Malay archipelago, often in a small sailboat. On returning home, Wallace took another seven years to publish his bestselling account of the journey.
But Irish explorer and author Tim Severin's adventures while retracing Wallace's journeys in eastern Indonesia are being read even as he sails the seas. Carrying a laptop computer and a satellite transmitter, he provides regular updates on the Internet.
"Tim is the first man on Earth to transmit text and images from a Kai perahu (a traditional fishing boat) something Alfred Wallace could not have imagined," says Robby Soebiakto, an IBM executive in Jakarta who is helping on the project.
After his journey ends in the middle of this month, Severin - a veteran of nine such re-creations and author of 10 books - will publish magazine articles as well as a book and make a video for television. But right now Internet users can see words and pictures of his latest journey, which are uploaded to his Web home page at Ireland OnLine (at http://www.iol.ie/spice/homepage. htm)
Schoolchildren even get to ask him questions and receive replies from Severin in his exotic location, far removed from home in Co Cork. In an interview by email, Severin admitted that the questions were often repetitive, the children's favourites being: "Have you seen dangerous animals? Where do you go to the bathroom? Does anybody snore and what do you do about it?"
"We've even received classroom poems back, so the (educational) programme seems to be exciting the children's imaginations," Severin wrote from somewhere in the Halmahera Sea west of Irian Jaya.
Wallace collected insects, animals and plants on his man& Journeys from 1854 until 1862 through what are now Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. He used his extensive samples as the basis for his groundbreaking work on natural selection, and his correspondence with Charles Darwin, is credited with helping Darwin develop his theory of evolution.
Wallace was the first to identify the zones where plants and, animals of Asian origin ended and those of Australasian origin began. This line, running north south and found east of the islands of Kalimantan and Bali, is known as the Wallace Line.
Wallace's division persists to a degree among modern scientists, but has never been much supported, as the archipelago shows no sharp breaks in the distribution of its 2,300 odd varieties of plants. But at the time Wallace earned a place in science as the world's first bio geographer. The zones of transition of these plants and animals are now known as "Wallacea" in his honour.
The task of keeping Severin's communication links open is handled by a team spread out across the world, working together with sponsors IBM and Telecom. Severin and a crew of five set out on their three month 1,200 mile journey on March 13th. They are sailing on a 48 foot long undecked two masted traditional sailing vessel, the Kai perahu, which was built earlier this year using age old methods on the Kai Islands.
Severin has linked a portable Inmarsat transmitter to a British Telecom electronic mailbox in Singapore, using two IBM: ThinkPad notebook computers equipped with a Video Capture program. This allows him to use a video camera to take and transmit still photographs.
"The deck leaks, there are frequent tropical downpours, and the general humidity is extremely high, so every bit of equipment, except when operating, stays sealed in watertight clam cases or heavy double sealed storage bags," he says. "Even when typing on the ThinkPad keyboard, pools of sweat can form in the hollows on the key tops and have to be scrupulously mopped off."
Severin says local islanders still using dugout canoes seem unfazed by the technology. "No one seems the least surprised when the satlink program is explained. Nearly every islander is familiar with the TV reception dishes which are a local status symbol," he says.