Although I’m a few weeks late, I’d like to wish Charles Darwin a belated happy birthday. Semester at Sea Voyagers spent yesterday in Mauritius, which was one of Darwin’s stops on his five-year circumnavigation of the globe aboard the HMS Beagle. During that time, a young Darwin, who was a recent graduate and just a few years older than most of the students aboard the MV Explorer, made the observations that would become the foundation for this evolutionary theory. Darwin then went from Mauritius to spend a few weeks in Cape Town, our previous port of call. Although that is the extent of our shared itinerary, the themes of our voyages, separated by about 178 years, are very similar.Both Darwin and the students of Semester at Sea set out on a worldwide journey of discovery and academic pursuit. As our own Voyagers seek to compare the countries and people that we encounter to gain a better globalized perspective of the world, so too did Darwin build upon his findings in each stop that he made and compare the results to build a greater unified theory.
Our voyage’s academic theme, Migrations, also finds common ground with Darwin. Our Academic Dean, Reg Garrett, wrote the following in a letter to Voyagers. “As we travel, we will consider the myriad consequences following upon the early migration of humans out of Africa and their dispersal to all corners of the globe…we will see how migration has influenced art, music, language, culture, social structure, economics, history, and politics.” All of these facets of society are constantly evolving and in an ever-shrinking world, migrations play a fundamental role in the global exchange of ideas. So, we say thank you to Charles Darwin for making that not only evolutionary, but also revolutionary voyage so long ago, and wish him a happy birthday.
Photos by SAS Photographer John Weakley
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