Food for Thought
by Patrick Field
On the morning of March 19th, 1790, HMS Sirrius, a warship of 520 tons, was driven onto a reef off Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. Most of the island's human inhabitants had only just arrived, while the rest had been there less than two years. The shipwreck occasioned no loss of life but most of the provisions and livestock on board the Sirrius were lost. For the 498 Norfolk Islanders -- convicts of both sexes, civil and military staff, shipwrecked sailors, some children and a handful of freemen -- this was a disaster. Stores were low, and the gardens and fishery of the small island could not support them all. The long-awaited Second Fleet from Britain was overdue. Starvation loomed. Lieutenant-General of Norfolk Island, Major Robert Ross of the Royal Marines, declared martial law so that anyone caught stealing or hoarding food could be executed.
This drastic measure proved unnecessary. There was to be no food shortage. Flocks of seabirds came to lay their eggs in burrows on Mount Pitt, the island's highest peak. Unfamiliar with humans, these pigeon-sized birds showed no fear and were very easy to catch and kill. Between the wreck of the Sirrius and July 10th, 171,362 birds were brought into the settlement's stores, where the quartermaster named them 'birds of providence'. Much was made of the parallel with the biblical story in which the Jews, wandering in the wilderness, are fed on quails blown in from the sea.
'Very interesting... but what's the point?' cry the jolly readers. Well, this magazine [Cycling & Mountain Biking Today] used to carry the subtitle 'The magazine for all cyclists', an ambition at once laudable and laughable. A publication that can cater for, and appeal to, the bunny-hopping headscarf wearer; the shaven-legged hard rider; the Pashley-pushing Sloane ranger; the leathery tourist -- all the weird and wonderful sub-sub-sub-cultures of the cycling universe, seems about as elusive as a successful publication called Air-Breathing Today or New Shoe-Wearer. But if there is common ground among all of us who travel by pedal cycle, I think it may be found in a love of food.
Look at the numbers. In less than five months the castaways of Norfolk Island had accounted for around 350 birds each. The Lord had clearly provided this flying fodder to keep his Christians not just alive but well fed. Within ten years, the bird of providence (Pterodroma melanopus), which nested only on Norfolk Island, was extinct.
As they watched ocean surf smash the hull of HMS Sirrius on jagged coral the new residents of Norfolk Island felt a fear that is unfamiliar to most citizens of our corner of the world. The unalloyed joy that they must have felt as they sank their teeth into the Pterodroma menanopus is something that most modern residents of the overdeveloped world can never expect to experience.
One of cycling's greatest pleasures is the way that it gives you an appetite for food. Not the effete 'it's lunchtime-so-I-must-be-hungry' appetite of the bureaucrat, but the voluptuous hunger of the ditch digger, food not as a diversion but as a fuel for life. There is no light that will not cast a shadow, and most of us are familiar with the desperate shiver of terror on finding the store, pub or cafe, on which you were relying for an urgent feed, if not empty then at least closed. A sensation strangely similar to standing on a beach in the South Pacific watching your rations drown.
In our world of blunted appetites, more people worry about eating too many calories than where their next meal will come from. Did the Norfolk Islanders worry about obesity? I think not. You can never eat too much, only ride your bike too little.
© Patrick Field
Cycling & Mountain Biking Today, December
1995