Bartolome Island
In the movie “Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World,” the doctor of the M/S Surprise dreams about the Galápagos Islands. The doctor’s name is Stephen Maturin, a role played by Paul Betanny. The ship gets really close to a Galápagos island, the idyllic one, with almost all of the Galápagos species living on it, but the ship has to keep going in pursuit of the enemy.
It is not surprising that the doctor is so eager to collect specimens and make new entries in his journal. In the eighteen hundreds, doctors were also the naturalists of the expeditions. Even during the voyage of the Beagle, the famous ship that brought Charles Darwin to the Galápagos Islands, it was the doctor McCormack, who was the official naturalist for the first part of the journey. However, the doctor resigned after a year, feeling frustrated about the fact that most of the specimens were brought to Darwin rather than to himself. But that’s another story. Let’s go back to Bartolome, and to the movie “Master and Commander.”
The doctor of the M/S Surprise finally lands on a Galápagos island. He is thrilled by the new species he finds there. He discovers that there is a species of cormorant that cannot fly, and that iguanas swim and dive. He is like a Darwin, and in the analogy, the doctor of the movie also loves collecting beetles, just like Darwin did.
Most of the footage for the movie was taken here, on Bartolome Island. They probably chose this place because it is the one with the most dramatic landscapes. The insignia of Galápagos is the pinnacle rock; therefore I have chosen this same island and landscape to tell you one more story about the Enchanted Islands.
In the movie “Master and Commander, The Far Side of the World,” the doctor of the M/S Surprise dreams about the Galápagos Islands. The doctor’s name is Stephen Maturin, a role played by Paul Betanny. The ship gets really close to a Galápagos island, the idyllic one, with almost all of the Galápagos species living on it, but the ship has to keep going in pursuit of the enemy.
It is not surprising that the doctor is so eager to collect specimens and make new entries in his journal. In the eighteen hundreds, doctors were also the naturalists of the expeditions. Even during the voyage of the Beagle, the famous ship that brought Charles Darwin to the Galápagos Islands, it was the doctor McCormack, who was the official naturalist for the first part of the journey. However, the doctor resigned after a year, feeling frustrated about the fact that most of the specimens were brought to Darwin rather than to himself. But that’s another story. Let’s go back to Bartolome, and to the movie “Master and Commander.”
The doctor of the M/S Surprise finally lands on a Galápagos island. He is thrilled by the new species he finds there. He discovers that there is a species of cormorant that cannot fly, and that iguanas swim and dive. He is like a Darwin, and in the analogy, the doctor of the movie also loves collecting beetles, just like Darwin did.
Most of the footage for the movie was taken here, on Bartolome Island. They probably chose this place because it is the one with the most dramatic landscapes. The insignia of Galápagos is the pinnacle rock; therefore I have chosen this same island and landscape to tell you one more story about the Enchanted Islands.
