The Explorers Read online

  VII. Palmerston’s palatial London home still looks out over Piccadilly and Green Park. However, it has fallen into disrepair, and sits in a pathetic shamble just a few blocks from the Duke of Wellington’s own monumental home, waiting for someone with a great deal of time and money to restore it.

  VIII. Now known as the Boothia Peninsula, it is in the Canadian Arctic, just south of Somerset Island. The northern portion of the Boothia Peninsula has also been renamed. It is now known as Murchison Promontory, in honor of Sir Roderick. There are fifteen geographical locations on Earth named in the RGS president’s honor. There is one other place named for the once-wastrel Scot. It is called simply “Murchison,” and is a crater next to the Sinus Medii on the moon.

  IX. The Fuller family still owns Neston Park. They are better known for brewing Fuller’s London Pride Cask Ale, which remains a staple at pubs throughout England.

  X. One has only to read Hamlet to understand the ageless stigma that would have accompanied Speke’s death if, indeed, it was suicide.

  XI. A coincidence that seems symbolically appropriate, given that explorers are often characterized as individuals unwilling or unable to grow up.

  XII. Speke’s crypt can be found at the Church of St. Andrew at Dowlish Wake.

  XIII. Apparently Murchison was quite fond of red Aberdeen granite. He directed that the same rock be used for his tombstone.

  XIV. Ironically, the Cook statue was unveiled by His Royal Highness Prince Arthur of Connaught on July 7, 1914—less than a month before the war that would begin the slow erosion of the empire first begun by Cook’s explorations and continued through the subtle guidance of Connaught’s grandmother, Queen Victoria. Worth noting is that one early and oft-overlooked battle of World War I took place on the shores of Bagamoyo, on the same flat, sandy beach where the Burton and Speke Expedition began.

  XV. The most intriguing use of an obelisk is the Herndon Monument on the grounds of the US Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. Named for Captain William Herndon, who went down with his ship in 1857, the obelisk is coated in lard each spring and scaled by the school’s freshman class as a sign that the rigors of their plebe year are behind them. This demanding and somewhat frustrating rite of passage can last as little as forty-five minutes or as long as several hours.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Many years ago, while I was writing a book on the life of Captain James Cook, the noted Australian writer and editor Graem Sims sent me a copy of Wilfrid Noyce’s The Springs of Adventure. Coincidentally, my good friend Toby Walker also sent me a copy of Noyce’s book at the exact same time, so it seemed that the cosmos was trying to tell me something. Noyce was a member of the British team that reached the summit of Everest in 1953, and died after falling 4,000 feet in a climbing accident nine years later.

  He writes most eloquently about why mankind feels the pull toward adventure. Noyce was wide-ranging in his examination, discerning the motives of not just mountain climbers, but also desert explorers, sailors, aviators, and pretty much every sort of outdoor adventure that forces mankind to push their mental, physical, and emotional limits. A great number of the quotes and anecdotes in The Explorers have been borrowed straight from Noyce’s pages, and the subject itself forms the backbone of this book. I began to wonder about not just the emotional motivations to pursue a life of adventure, but the specific character traits that went into being a successful explorer.

  These ruminations served as a guide through my trilogy of books about exploration (Cook—Stanley and Livingstone—Columbus), but I could never seem to find a way to blend those traits into a narrative. Lord knows I tried. Some of those earlier attempts to tell that particular story survived and can be seen in the pages of The Explorers, but for the most part it was too unwieldy to maintain a strong thread. So I set the idea aside for the better part of ten years as my writing wandered away from the world of exploration. But once I began work on what was originally meant to be a simple retelling of the Burton and Speke saga, it seemed like this book deserved more than just a rote piece of nonfiction exploration storytelling. As I began to write, the experiences of other explorers began noodling their way onto the page, shoving Burton and Speke to the side for paragraphs and pages. The influence of Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything told me that this should not be a cause for concern, and the neuroscience leanings of Seth Godin showed me that it was possible to use Burton and Speke as a linchpin for a much greater story. And so I began poking into not just the relevant sagas about other explorers to help flesh out the drama, but also to investigate their character traits.

  As you can imagine, the investigation got complicated.

  It used to be that when I needed to do a lengthy piece of research, I hopped on a plane and flew to places like London to examine the British Newspaper Archive or the Royal Geographical Society’s records. At the very least I would drive to the nearby library at the University of California in Irvine to poke through the stacks. It was always a good excuse for a short adventure and did wonders for my frequent flyer mileage balances. But the onset of the digital age put an end to all that. Some very serious scholarly research can be done from right here in my home office. Thus, as I began to examine the character traits of the explorers, I consulted a number of online papers and research journals. When the academic world became too complex, I could always rely on Modern Psychology to explain it in simple terms.

  I read and greatly enjoyed the works of thinkers like Seth Godin, Susan Cain, and Michael Gelb. You can find their notions about the lizard brain, introversion, and Da Vinci’s creative process in these pages. I urge you to read them in greater detail. It’s really super stuff.

  I cribbed from those men and women who have spent their lives studying the brain and behavior, and have credited their theories throughout this book where applicable. My approach was to research about the mind and human behavior with the same in-depth focus I would give to unearthing nuggets of information about historical characters. Any conclusions that I have drawn about brain function, the inner workings of the brain, and anything else having to do with that most vital of all organs are the musings of a very fascinated layman. I do not for a second pretend to be the ultimate authority on these matters.

  Wandering through theories about Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Efficacy and many others has been a real treat, and I have the greatest admiration for those who pour their passion into it each day. The chapter on self-discipline turned out to be the most enlightening to build, and I found myself most inspired by the research. It should be noted that Mary Boyle, my Ph.D. friend in the Department of Cognitive Science at the University of California at San Diego, was particularly awesome about pointing me toward the latest findings about all aspects of brain function. Even as I write these words, another email just arrived from her directing me to a new study on the unconscious workings of the brain.

  As for the historical aspects of this story, there was the typical level of hands-on research, including the journey across Tanzania that I have mentioned in the story, finding the location of the Saturday Club’s first meeting, Burton’s grave, the Royal Geographical Society archives, and other sites that must be seen in person to be fully appreciated. There’s something about standing in a spot and seeing how the sun shines on it, or how the grass smells on an autumn day, that helps to write with greater clarity. There’s not a single time that I travel to London and don’t stand for a few quiet minutes at the Speke obelisk. It is transcendent, just as Sir Roderick must have hoped a century and a half ago.

  I also relied on the research of other writers to find facts that I overlooked or did not fully appreciate in my own wanderings. In particular, the writings of Tim Jeal (Explorers of the Nile), Anthony Sattin (The Gates of Africa), Alfred Lansing (Endurance), Apsley Cherry-Garrard (The Worst Journey in the World), Edward Rice (Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton),
Alan Moorehead (The White Nile and The Blue Nile), Jan Morris (Heaven’s Command), Patrick O’Brian (Joseph Banks), Julian Smith (Crossing the Heart of Africa), and J. C. Beaglehole (The Life of Captain James Cook), were all mined for insight. In addition, I relied on my own books (Into Africa, Last Voyage of Columbus, Farther Than Any Man) and the many explorers’ journals and notes that went into writing them. Not many people take the time to dig into the lives of Burton and Speke. So I should note that I was amused (and validated) to find that many of my own conclusions about Speke and Burton’s behavior and emotional connections to the respective lakes that they discovered were mirrored in Jeal’s excellent book.

  In addition to these works, and a handful of others that did not play as pivotal a role, I relied on the journals of various explorers when it was time to use their own words.

  And finally, the footnotes that I have sprinkled so liberally throughout the text are an offshoot of nightly conversations I had with my family at the dinner table. In most households, this is a time of sharing about events of the day. But writing a history book is more about time travel into the events of a day that happened years or centuries ago. So I would invariably wander back inside the house after hours of writing, my head awhirl with crazy nuggets of knowledge and thoughts still pondering Victorian exploration. I would “regale”—my word—my wife and sons with the fascinating bits of historical trivia that had made the time so pleasurable. For the most part, however, they could not be wedged into whichever book I was writing, for fear of weighing down the narrative.

  My boys would invariably roll their eyes at my endless parade of “fun facts,” but it became a playful tradition of sorts. This is the first book where sharing that tradition with the reader seems to make sense. This is a random collection of facts and factoids, to be sure, destined to clog up the filing cabinets of your gray matter in ways that only become useful when amusing your friends at a cocktail party, playing Trivial Pursuit or watching Jeopardy! I hope that you have enjoyed them.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Over the course of my career I’ve had the great honor of working with some of the best editors in publishing: Jason Kaufman, Geoff Shandler, Gillian Blake, and now Jofie Ferrari-Adler and Alessandra Bastagli. Thanks to each of you for your insights and pearls of wisdom.

  Special thanks to Alessandra for seeing the merit in the original idea for this book, and to Jofie for enduring its mutations on the path from concept to completed work. It took a very long while, but we got it done.

  To super-agent Eric Simonoff, a heartfelt thanks for all you do. You’re amazing.

  To Bill O’Reilly, a very cool guy from whom I’ve learned so much about storytelling, thank you for pushing me to dig deeper and deeper into the research to flesh out a better story.

  Thanks to my Mom and Dad. I love you both very much.

  Thanks to Ann Butler, the high school English teacher who changed my life by suggesting that I become a writer. And to Chris Noonan, who reminds me that Mrs. Butler’s first name is spelled without an “e.”

  To my sons: Devin, Connor, and Liam, who endured my frequent travels and those countless nights of historical trivia at the dinner table. Thanks for letting me riff.

  And to Calene: You are my sunshine.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  © RICH CRUSE

  Martin Dugard is the New York Times bestselling author of Into Africa, The Training Ground, and Last Voyage of Columbus. He is also the co-author, with political commentator Bill O’Reilly, of Killing Lincoln, Killing Kennedy, and Killing Jesus; and with James Patterson, The Murder of King Tut. Dugard was the executive producer and writer of A Warrior’s Heart, a feature film released in December 2011. He lives in Southern California.

  MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT

  SimonandSchuster.com

  authors.simonandschuster.com/Martin-Dugard

  ALSO BY MARTIN DUGARD

  To Be a Runner

  The Training Ground

  Chasing Lance

  The Last Voyage of Columbus

  Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone

  Farther Than Any Man

  Knockdown

  Surviving the Toughest Race on Earth

  INDEX

  Abbai River, 194n

  abominable snowman, 142, 142n

  Aden, 19–20, 22, 24, 49, 59, 108

  adrenal glands, 161

  Africa, 5, 29, 34, 37–38, 39, 48, 64, 68, 84, 233–34

  Arabs and Indians in, 110

  British presence in, 23

  Burton’s first expedition to, 49–55

  dangers of, 22–23, 69, 114–15

  early expeditions to, 38, 47, 48–49

  heat in, 111

  Necho’s circumnavigation of, 60

  Speke’s knowledge of, 222

  Victorian era of exploration in, 111–12

  African Association, 38–39, 41, 45, 46, 47–48, 81

  African driver ants, 116

  African green broadbill, 192n

  African horse flies, 116

  African rock pythons, 118

  Age of Discovery, 12, 33

  end of, 246

  Age of Enlightenment, 61

  Age of Polar Exploration, 168–69

  Age of Reason, 39, 70

  airplanes, 205–6

  Alaska, 248n

  “Albertine Rift,” 198

  Aldabra Atoll, 11, 11n

  Alexander the Great, 80, 132

  Alpine Club, 127

  Amazon River, 72–73, 75, 77, 77n, 175, 176, 177, 246

  Amundsen, Roald, 99, 99n, 142–43, 167, 168, 170, 206, 248n

  amygdala, 89

  Andes mountain range, 72, 73, 178–79

  Andoas, 74–75

  Angostura, 178

  Annapurna, 135–36

  Annapurna (Herzog), 137

  Antarctic, 32, 97–98, 141–42, 168

  Cherry-Garrard expedition in, 9

  Antarctic blizzard, 172

  Antarctic Circumpolar Current, 101n

  Apollo 11, 201

  Apollo lunar missions, 206

  apoplexy, 25

  Apostle Paul, 225

  Appalachian Mountains, 30–31

  Aqua-Lung, 247

  Arabia, 112

  Arabs, 110

  Arab slave traders, 109

  Arctic, 168

  Aristotle, 159–60, 168

  Armstrong, Neil, 7, 11, 101, 210n

  arrogance, 224

  Arundel, Isabel, 83, 151, 215

  Ascend the Nile, 192

  athletes, 250–51

  Australia, 31, 40n–41n, 169, 194, 246

  penal colonies in, 36

  automobiles, 238n

  autonomy, 27

  aviation, 205–10

  Bagomoyo, 109

  Balboa, Vasco Núñez de, 67n

  Baltic Sea, 44

  baluchis, 110

  Bandura, Albert, 222, 224–25

  Banks, Joseph, 35–37, 38, 39–42, 45, 46, 47–48, 81

  Barbary pirates, 47

  Barrie, J. M., 266

  Barry, Charles, 237

  Bath Chronicle, 262

  beads, 184

  Beardmore Glacier, 170, 171

  Beatson, W. F., 82, 86

  Beaufoy, Henry, 35, 39

  Bell, Gertrude, 27

  Benz, Karl, 238n

  Billings, Joseph, 45

  bin Laden, Osama, 165

  black mambas, 118

  Bligh, William, 36

  Blue Nile, 31, 32, 194

  Board on Geographic Names, 248n

  Bobonaza River, 74

  Bogota, 178

  boma, 117
<
br />   Bombay, 27

  Bombay, Sidi Mubarak, 109, 153, 153n, 220, 231

  Bonpland, Aimé, 175–79

  boomslang, 118

  Boone, Daniel, 30–31, 32

  Booth, Felix, 254

  Boothia Peninsula, 255n

  Borman, Frank, 18

  Boston Watch Company, 120

  Botany Bay, 40n–41n

  Bounty, 36

  Bowers, Henry, 173, 174

  Brendan the Navigator, St., 58–59, 60–61, 66, 75, 91, 102, 210

  death of, 62

  Prayer of, 57–58

  Briga (St. Brendan’s sister), 62

  British Admiralty, 93

  British Association for the Advancement of Science, 84, 256, 262

  British Empire, 34, 84, 85, 122

  British Foreign Office, 255

  British Special Air Service (SAS), 162–63

  brothels, 24–25

  Bruce, James, 31, 32, 38

  buffalo hunters, 21–22

  buffalo hunting, 21–22

  Burke, Edmund, 38

  Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 113

  Burton, Richard Francis, 2, 12, 23, 24–26, 42, 46, 50–51, 55–56, 59, 64, 76–77, 80, 81–82, 85, 86, 87–88, 103, 104–5, 106, 107, 115, 140, 146–47, 148, 180–81, 183, 195, 197–98, 201, 212–13, 215, 221, 231, 236, 240, 249, 252, 257, 260, 261–62, 263, 267

  army career of, 24–25

  in attempts to discredit Speke, 213

  Barbera attack on, 52–53

  Beatson affair and, 82

  character assassination against, 82

  cloud of shame over, 82–83

  cult of, 263

  curiosity of, 28–29, 85

  as diplomat, 235

  first African expedition of, 49–55

  as hedonist, 25, 82–83

  illness of, 185–86