Armchair Explorations #3
(by Learn for Pleasure on 19th April 2020)
Here at Learn for Pleasure we’re thinking about all things nautical. For example, did you know that nautical twilight is one of three commonly accepted forms of twilight? They are civil twilight which is the brightest, nautical twilight which is when sailors can take reliable sightings of stars, and astronomical twilight which is the darkest and followed by night. In some locations at some times of year, for example at Learn for Pleasure head office in Exeter, Devon, UK, from late May to early July, it doesn’t get to true night, only as far as astronomical twilight.
While we’d love to be down by the sea right now we are, like a majority of people, self isolating. That does’t stop us from thinking about art, literature, the sea and sailing though. In the next county along from us, Cornwall, is one of our favourite sea side destinations, St. Ives. St. Ives is renowned for the quality of its light, and there was an artists’ colony founded there in the early 20th century which gave rise to the group of artists known as the “St. Ives School”, which includes Alfred Wallis and Dame Barbara Hepworth, and St. Ives hosts the “Barbara Hepworth Museum”. You can check out some of the webcams of St. Ives . Our favourite is the view of the harbour and Porthmeor beach which at the time of writing has a little boat in the centre of the shot with the slogan “Wish you were here” written on its side. While we do wish we could be there, that will have to wait for a while. In the mean time we’ve been thinking about art, literature and sailing.
The folks at Boating International have put together a list of the “Best Boat Books and Sailing Novels to Read in Self-Isolation”, so we can visit via our imagination. Some of them we’ve read, like “The Voyage of the Beagle” by Charles Darwin, and many of them are available as free eBooks in various formats, including Kindle and EPUB, from Project Gutenberg and you can download a copy of “The Voyage of the Beagle” – Charles Darwin from there.
Some other classics from the list that are available to download are:
- “Moby Dick; Or, The Whale” – Herman Melville
- “The Count of Monte Cristo” – Alexandre Dumas
- “The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe” – Daniel Defoe (what better place to be isolated than on a desert island?)
- “Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea” – Jules Verne
- And, not on the list, but “Around the world in Eighty Days” – Jules Verne also caught our eye for some armchair adventuring.
You can view the full list of the “Best Boat Books and Sailing Novels to Read in Self-Isolation” and after you’ve picked out a book or two, why not check out some of our related courses:
- The days of sail and steaming ships are covered in The Lost World of the Sailing Ships 1780-1880 and Steaming Ahead: British Merchant Shipping c.1810-1914 respectively.
- Our art history courses for this term are Art of Ancient Greece and Rome and Introduction to Early Twentieth-Century European Art, 1900-1945.
- A perfect accompaniment to “The Voyage of the Beagle” is Darwin and the Battle of Beliefs
- And if you want to delve deeper in to literature there’s Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Crimes in Historical Context