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(Taken from Chapter 1, A Cabin Boy's Legacy)
In which we begin to see things the other way around.
I no longer stroll a tidal shore without thinking of the cabin boy. Without wondering about his fate and why that fate was to be swinging by his neck, from a yardarm, dead, when the British fleet struck the Isles of Scilly.
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That cabin boy has stuck in my head since 1974 when my young son Doug and I were part of a small crew bringing Samphire, a 39-foot sailboat, from Cork to Southampton. It is told that when the fleet was still some distance off the islands, a cabin boy came to the admiral’s stateroom to say, ‘Sir, I smell land. I think we should heave-to until the fog clears.’ Advice from a cabin boy to an admiral of the Royal Navy was neither expected nor welcome-especially not in 1707, and especially not to Admiral Cloudesley Shovell. The boy was reprimanded and sent away. Yet he must have gone on deck for another whiff, because soon he was back at the admiral’s door, no doubt apprehensive, but not enough to stop him repeating his warning: ‘Sir, I smell land. I think we should put about.’ And that is why he was swinging from the yardarm when the fleet crunched ashore on the land he had been smelling.
It’s an interesting tale of the era. But for me the intriguing part of this story is the question: What was the cabin boy smelling when he said he was smelling land? He was smelling life. Life in the intertidal zone, that marvellous jumble of seaweed and kelp, crabs and mollusks—all of whom make their home between the high and low watermark of tidal coasts. The cabin boy lived his life on the sea—in those days cabin boys were seldom allowed ashore even when in harbor—so a whiff of damp seaweed was a whiff of land. Yet what he was smelling, of course, is exactly what we smell when we say we are smelling the sea.
The cabin boy was correct, but his was unconventional whiffery.
So for me, ‘smelling land’ became a metaphor for seeing things the other way around. Sometimes smelling land is just raw fun. Sometimes it brings the exquisite and lonely joy of stumbling upon a new insight. Sometimes smelling land is helpful. And sometimes it is essential if a problem is to be resolved or an opportunity captured.
Taken as a parable, smelling land also warns of immediate dangers to the smellers, at least if they dare speak of what they have smelled, or worse, of the implications. Fortunately in modern times, at least in most places, the penalties have been reduced. We no longer swing people from yardarms. People may lose jobs, or promotions or the warm feeling of being taken seriously. Academics certainly lose research grants. Smellers-of-land on the corporate ladder are shunted off to staff positions—thought safe on the flanks, but dangerous to corporate stability when in positions of line responsibility.
The parable also warns of longer-term dangers to ships of state, corporations, or large institutions should they discourage the whiffers or trivialize what they say. And if we want to understand how civilization’s energy system is evolving, if we want to avoid dangers and capture opportunities—because the system and its future are rich in both—smelling land is essential.
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