Tag: boats

The Kew Gardens Archive Brought to Life: The SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition at the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court

ss Great Britain Botanist.

11.07.2024
Dr. Suneel Mehmi

There were many unique characteristics of the RHS Flower Show at Hampton Court which I observed as a novice to the event. The variety of our relationships to plants and flowers in art, culture and food. The friendliness of the people there. The almost overwhelming enthusiasm. One such characteristic was that they had plant porters and also that many of the public that did without the plant porters were struggling with the structures of the plants as they flowed within the spaces. The plant structures – so beautiful to behold and so suitable to evolution and adaptation – seemed particularly unwieldy and cumbersome, and their fragility in transit was worrying. I was particularly surprised that at the very start of the morning, people were buying the plants so that they had to carry them around for the whole event, although I suppose that was so that they could get their first choice.

ss Great Britain Botanist.

It was in this context that I came across the SS Great Britain Wardian Cases Exhibition. I had already seen the Wardian case at Kew Gardens for our volunteer training there, so it was not an unfamiliar sight, and I even knew some of the history behind this construction. The Wardian case is what I would describe as a life box that protects plants in a microclimate where they only need to be watered once during a two-month crossing.

ss Great Britain Botanist.

Something akin to a miniature Victorian glasshouse, although made out of wood, the Wardian case has been described as a revolution in the long distance transportation of plants. Patently, the construction was where the sciences of botany and biology found their sanctuary and spring as the living plants could be studied in Europe rather than grown from seeds in a foreign land. Again, the case allowed the transportation of economically important plants and is thus one of the most significant relics in the history of modern capitalism and global development. One of the most noteworthy connections with Kew gardens is with the exportation of seedlings from our glasshouses to Ceylon and Malaya in the 1870s to begin the rubber plantations. However, Kew Gardens also habitually used Wardian cases to transport plants until 1962.

The display at the RHS Flower show was a preview of the exhibition at the SS Great Britain which is Bristol’s number one visitor attraction. On the ship’s weather deck, six reconstructed Wardian cases are on display for visitors to explore. Each is a replica of the last surviving ship-board example designs which are to be found in the Kew Gardens archive. Based on research from the Brunel Institute, studies of the ship’s cargo manifests, each case is planted with a true-to-life ‘order’. The cases will celebrate the inbound and outbound plant species that the ship transported across the world between 1859 and 1875. The exhibition highlights the role of steamships in the transportation of plants and the making of the modern world.

ss Great Britain Botanist.

Along with the exhibition of the Wardian cases, there is other horticultural interest. There is a botany-themed ‘discovery talk’ and horticultural workshops. A ‘botanist’s cabin’ has also been added to the ship’s museum in which you are to become immersed in the sights, sounds and smells of life onboard – a lived experience and introduction to the important work and research of Victorian botanists and ‘plant hunters’.

ss Great Britain Botanist.

The exhibition at the RHS Flower Show was an exciting and stimulating moment in time travel to a monumental period in the history of plants and in the makings of a globalised world. Looking at those fairly small boxes with such a colossal impact was a message that just a little thought and a few materials can change reality. The resourcefulness and ingenuity of the human mind can reshape everything. As we try to combat the mass extinction event that is threatening all plant life and diversity, the Wardian case stands as a symbol that improvement can be wrought to transform botany, biology, the life sciences – and the future. And the Wardian case is also a symbol of connection across the world through transport. The future is about more connection across cultures through science and study enabled through constructions like the Wardian case. And more connections with Kew Gardens, its science and its archives and knowledge to inspire the understanding of this living planet and the foundations on which it has been built.

Acknowledgements
Thank you to the SS Great Britain for allowing me to share the photographs and especially to Emily France there who was so helpful with the research and the permissions.

The Refugee Boat – Some Thoughts on an Alternative History of Transport

The Refugee Boat – Some Thoughts on an Alternative History of Transport

10.03.2022

If you go to a transport museum, the likelihood is that you will see ultra-expensive vehicles which were at the cutting edge of technology. These cars, buses, trains and trams would have had all the modern conveniences and would have been fairly safe, even if safety standards in the past were laxer. In terms of production, an entire army of workers would have been involved in the construction, probably an ‘international’ team (by which I mean white Europeans).

The history you would find in such museums would be progressive, a story of increasing rationality, efficiency, cost-effectiveness, capitalism, big business. A story the rich tell themselves to celebrate the world that they have created: the globalised, interlinked world of transport convenience. Where, theoretically, there are no physical barriers to community, commuting, connection.

Standing out in stark contrast to this ‘Whig’ version of history is the humble refugee boat.

The refugee boat is fairly inexpensive. It is the mode of transport of the poor, the desperately oppressed seeking a better life in the only way that they can given their losses in the lottery of life and birth. The refugee boat, while not the worst piece of technology ever invented, is still pretty primitive. The standard image is the unpretentious dinghy, clearly unfit for the purpose of a long journey by the sea in dangerous waters. Travel by sea is itself one of the longest, most inconvenient, inefficient and deadly forms of travel, where you are seemingly at the utmost mercy of nature. There are no modern conveniences. Hardly any water to drink, hardly any room for food. No toilet. There is no safety. There is probably more than a 50:50 chance of death. What about the production? The workers that made these products were probably exploited in sweatshops in economically less dominant countries around the globe.

The history of the refugee boat is the unadulterated, unpolished history of transport in our times. History is not always written by the victors. It is also written by the losers. The refugee boat is the testament to the fact that our modes of travel are not objectively the best. They are merely fit for the types of people and the societies that use them. The transport history in museums is the product of capitalism and the reign of the rich. The transport history of the undocumented migrants is the product of those that power has missed out, those that capitalism has downtrodden.

The unvarnished history of the refugee boat – which the media presents as a horrible throwback to primitive times, a history which is now culminating in government interception of such travellers and their lives being thrown away like trash somewhere else, as someone else’s problem – is the real history of travel beyond propaganda, advertisement, embellishment, cultural narcissism. This is the real story of the world that the ultra-rich have created: a world where you can’t even travel from one country to another to try and better your life. A world in which you are tied to the place you were born and the lack of opportunities there. Why can’t anyone tell this history?