In a new series for BBC One, made in partnership with the National Maritime Museum, David Dimbleby sets out on his boat Rocket to explore Britain’s relationship with the sea – and discover how the waters around our shores have inspired art and literature for centuries.
As an island nation, Britain’s seas have shaped our history and defined our culture and our national identity. In Britain And The Sea, across four hour-long episodes, David will journey around Britain to examine the art, uncover the artefacts and meet the people that tell the story of our island nation – from the raging seascapes of Turner and Constable, the music of Britten, the literature and poetry of writers inspired by the sea, to the essential role of the ports and forts that have defended Britain for centuries.
Adventure and Exploration
The first episode sees David sail along the Cornwall and Devon coast, home to one of the UK’s most beautiful and exciting coastlines, from the Helford Estuary – hidden away on the southern tip of the country – to the Britannia Royal Naval College, standing majestic on a hill above Dartmouth. David explores how a small island off the northwest coast of continental Europe came to dominate the world as the sea forced us to explore beyond our borders.
David travels to a childhood home of Daphne du Maurier, who spent holidays in Fowey and credited the grand house and its surrounding seas with making her a novelist. He also visits a tattoo parlour to see how the Polynesian art of tribal tattoos – discovered by Captain James Cook on one of his many explorations of the 18th century – remain popular today. In Dartmouth, David climbs aboard Gipsy Moth IV, the boat in which Sir Francis Chichester single-handedly circled the globe in 1966, and meets Dame Ellen Macarthur to talk about her love of adventure on the water – and reflect on her own momentous achievement completing the same journey single-handedly in 2005.
Invasion and Defence
The second episode explores how Britain’s seas have protected against invasion and threat from abroad throughout history. Sailing along the southern shore of England, David sets out to explore how we kept our frontier safe for a thousand years. From Lymington, past the Isle of Wight and Portsmouth, along the Sussex coast, past Brighton and Beachy Head, David and his crew will end the second leg of their journey at the gateway to Britain – the white cliffs of Dover.
David takes a tour of HMS Victory, Nelson’s flagship vessel from the Battle of Trafalgar, lovingly preserved in dry dock at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, and meets a carpenter who still makes wooden figureheads– objects that once ensured ships conveyed an aura of power and success, but slowly fell out of fashion. With the industrial age of steam power in the 1830s, shipbuilding was modified to demonstrate Britain’s industrial might, and David heads to HMS Warrior – one of the most powerful ships of its day. This 400-foot-long, all-iron battleship was the first of its kind to be delivered to the Royal Navy, and to appreciate its engineering might, David abseils its great iron side to take it all in, up close. On his travels, David also reveals how pottery of the early 19th century – including an imaginatively designed chamber pot – acted as propaganda in the battle against Napoleon. And David reveals how, as the First World War progressed, artist Edward Wadsworth was engaged in ‘Dazzle Painting’, where astonishing abstract, surreal designs were applied to British ships to deceive German submarines and prevent them from focusing and firing torpedoes accurately.
Trade and Romance
The third episode traces the crucial importance of the sea to both Britain’s trade and to individual livelihoods of coastal communities. Joined on this leg of his epic sail by his son Fred, David follows the trade routes of the west coast of Scotland along the monumental channels that cut through the Romantic Highlands and brought wealth and prosperity to the heart of Scotland. The journey starts at Craobh Haven, takes David along the Crinan Canal, around the Isle of Bute and up the River Clyde towards Glasgow.
The crew sails along the Crinan Canal – a waterway designed by Scottish Civil Engineer John Rennie to take 120 miles off the journey from the West Coast to Glasgow, safely avoiding the turbulent waters around the Mull of Kintyre. David takes a break from sailing Rocket to climb aboard VIC32, the last working sea-going Clyde Puffer, and earns his keep shoveling coal in the steam room to keep the boat moving at its leisurely pace. And, reflecting on the beauty of the rugged Scottish scenery, David revisits the often-forgotten poetry of James MacPherson, who romanticised the drama of Scotland in 1761 with his epic poem Ossian. Popular across the globe, Ossian tells the story of a mighty Gaelic warrior who overcame the giants and demons of the Highlands.
Sailing up the Clyde, David reflects on this waterway as a crucial artery of trade during the 18th and 19th centuries, drawing on the atmospheric canvases of John Atkinson Grimshaw. And he considers its once-vital role as a global centre of shipbuilding, looking at the remarkable wartime paintings of Stanley Spencer, before arriving at his final destination, the second city of Empire: Glasgow.
Pleasure and Escape
Although for centuries the sea protected and provided for Britain, in the last 200 years our view of the sea has changed dramatically. This final episode explores how the sea – and the seaside – became a playground for the nation, a place of pleasure and relaxation.
Sailing Rocket along the coast of East Anglia, David charts the transformation of attitudes towards the sea and explores how it became an irresistible subject for artists, transformed our coastal architecture, and created a seaside culture that remains uniquely British. Starting at Gorleston-on-Sea, sailing down the Suffolk and Essex coasts and into the Thames, David’s final port of call is the very heart of British maritime power: Greenwich.
Along the way, David discovers some of the works of art and artefacts that reflect Britain’s evolving relationship with the sea, from Lowestoft Porcelain, or William Powell Frith’s enormous painting Ramsgate Sands: Life At The Seaside – which captured the collision of social classes at the sea front and caused a stir in Victorian England – to the paintings of Phillip Wilson Steer, which saw British Impressionism burst on the art scene with a flash of brilliance – despite being criticized by the establishment.
David meets a sand sculptor at Frinton-on-Sea, whose transient works are a modern take on seaside entertainment that sit somewhere between a child’s sandcastle and high art. And, as the series draws to a close, David’s final visit is to The Queen’s House in Greenwich. Built in 1616 by celebrated architect Inigo Jones, it was originally designed to be a house of leisure – a waterside retreat for Queen Anne, where she could escape the rigours of court life. It is now home to Britain’s greatest collection of maritime art – that of the National Maritime Museum – and David discovers the intricate detail of the gilded brass Cole Compendium. A navigational dial, reportedly made for Sir Francis Drake, it contains, in a single object, the tools – and the knowledge – that underpinned our mastery of the seas, and transformed Britain into one of the richest and most powerful nations on Earth.
Filed under: http://www.theleader.info/article/41350/
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