In the Wake of the Phoenicians

In a cottage in the village of East Chaldon, Philip Beale is busy planning a big adventure. Two thousand miles away on the Syrian island of Arwad a local shipwright called Khalid Hammoud is putting the finishing touches to a near-replica Phoenician ship called Phoenicia whose design dates back some 2,500 years. It was Philip who commissioned Khalid to build the ship and it will be Philip who’ll skipper her on an expedition that seeks to re-create the first circumnavigation of Africa. ‘The ship’s design is based on evidence gleaned from relevant shipwrecks and archaeological finds of artefacts such as vases and coins, as well as advice from eminent scholars and shipwrights,’ Philip tells me.

Listening to Philip talk, I am struck by how very matter of fact he is. Here I am, sitting in an olde worlde cottage in sleepy East Chaldon listening to a chap talking about a potentially very dangerous voyage right round Africa in an unproven ship that’s powered only by a single sail and oars and crewed by largely untried volunteers, as if it were nothing out of the ordinary at all. Do all big adventures start this way with some dreamer making plans in deeply rural surroundings I ask myself, and just what sort of a man is this Philip Beale?

‘I was born in Salisbury Hospital in 1960,’ Philip says. ‘My dad had a small dairy farm near Shaftesbury in the 60s and I went to Stour Row Primary School. We moved to Devon in 1970 and I then went to West Buckland School, South Malton. It was an all-round sporting school and it was there that I got into adventure. Between school and university I won a place on Blashford-Snell’s ‘Operation Drake’ to go on the South Pacific leg of the voyage. It took me from Fiji to the Solomon Islands and on to Papua New Guinea. From that time on I would say that Blashford-Snell became something of a role model.’

Philip went to the University of Hull where he read Politics. After graduating, he obtained a grant to study the importance of trading to the people of the Indonesian Islands. Whilst visiting the Buddhist monument at Borobudur, not far from Yogyakarta, Philip saw a sculptural relief carved some 1,200 years ago. It depicted a two-masted sailing ship that looked quite capable of making voyages of considerable distances. Now, Philip had read that sailors from the Malay Archipelago regularly sailed across the Indian Ocean and had even established colonies in East Africa centuries before the boat in the carving had been built.

This chance coming face-to-face with a picture of a ship was, it seems, a moment of revelation for the newly graduated 22-year-old. The dream of some day re-creating the voyage to East Africa and even going on to round the Cape of Good Hope in a replica ship formed in Philip’s mind. ‘It is a matter of some debate in academic circles as to whether the ancient Indonesians got to the west coast of Africa,’ he says. ‘The case for saying that they did is shaky, it relies largely upon striking similarities in traditional African and Indonesian music. I vowed that one day I would show that such a voyage was possible.’

First though, there was the matter of getting a job to be attended to. The dream would have to wait. ‘I joined the Royal Navy and after Dartmouth I served on HMS Cardiff and HMS Shetland as a sublieutenant,’ says Philip. ‘It wasn’t for me though. I found it very restrictive and there was little or no chance of adventure. I would have had more of that in the army.’

Leaving the Navy, he went into the City where he was employed first by Robert Fleming & Co and then by Morley Fund Management. Slowly, over the years in the City, Philip planned. Then he hit 40. His mother died suddenly at the age of 71. ‘I realised that life is short and you can be cut down when you least expect it. I was unmarried, I had no ties. If I was going to do the voyage, now was the time.’ He resigned from Morley Fund Management and went in search of sponsors, of which Morley was the first to step forward.

Well, the rest, as they say, is history. The Borobudur Ship Expedition was successfully completed in late 2003-4. Philip’s replica sailing ship, Borobudur, made it to West Africa, a voyage of some 11,000 miles that lasted seven months, and Philip, as expedition leader, was awarded Indonesia’s highest honour by President Megawati for services to Indonesian Culture.

That was then. This is now. Philip departs on his latest adventure in August and this time he will not only lead the expedition, he will skipper the ship. ‘The Phoenicians were arguably the first ‘global’ civilisation,’ Philip tells me. ‘From around 1200BC they established a civilisation on the coast of Syria, Lebanon and Palestine which spread throughout the Mediterranean and lasted nearly 1,000 years. The Greek historian Herodotus wrote that the Egyptian King Necho asked a group of Phoenician seamen to attempt the first near-circumnavigation of Africa in 600BC. In pre-Christian times the Phoenicians were the only sailors with the navigational skills capable of making such a voyage. Put simply, they understood the stars and could sail at night. As to whether they actually made the circumnavigation, that is open to conjecture.

‘Like the Borobudur Ship Expedition, this one will show that such a voyage is possible – always assuming we make it, that is. It won’t be easy. We only have one square sail and we will not be able to sail into the wind. Then it will mean rowing.’

I end by asking him how he views leading 20 untried crew members on a voyage where so much is uncertain. ‘I don’t do shouting. It’s about team building and it’s about motivation,’ he explains.

Once again I am aware of Philip’s quiet, rather understated approach to the affair. Now though, I know more about the man. Far from being a dreamer, Philip Beale, adventurer, is a likeable, modest, get-things-done, determined sort of man with the courage of his convictions – a very English man, in fact.

There are still a few places left aboard the Phoenicia for several legs of the voyage. Go to www.phoenicia.org.uk to find out more.

You can follow Philip’s big adventure by checking out his monthly blog, starting in June, on our website www.dorsetmagazine.co.uk