— Lake
Thirty or so years earlier, Robinson Crusoe had a similarly profound effect on the great naturalist Henry Nottidge Moseley (1844—1891), who was born and grew up in a house where Heathfield Road meets West Side and Allfarthing Lane.
This voyage of exploration will lay the foundations of oceanography and lead to what John Murray called "the greatest advance in the knowledge of our planet since the celebrated discoveries of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries".
On his return, HNM will soon be made a Fellow of the Royal Society and Linacre Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Oxford University.
Here is a section of a short memoir by G.C. Bourne:
Brought up in the country [!], young Moseley had ample opportunities for indulging his inherent taste for natural history and field sports, and he did not fail to take advantage of them; but in other respects he does not appear to have shown any promise of future intellectual eminence, and was certainly not a bookish boy in any sense of the word.
He has said that his favourite reading was Robinson Crusoe, and that he first acquired from Defoe's story the desire to see foreign countries and study their inhabitants and productions; a desire which was much strengthened when he subsequently read Darwin's Voyage of a Naturalist on the 'Beagle.'
[From a new introduction to Moseley's Notes by a Naturalist, second edition 1892.]
This not the time to go into more detail about his five-year journey and incredible achievements, but one accolade is the naming of Tristan da Cunha's Rockhopper Penguin after him:
I wonder if any other residents of Battersea and Wandsworth have had species named after them, or feature on stamps? Any ideas, anybody?
For more on HNM and the expedition, you can start with e.g.
One day I'll get round to adding a link to HNM's wonderful description of his encounters with this penguin from his Notes by a Naturalist on the "Challenger" (1879).
Incidentally, a young Henry Nottidge Moseley was for a while tutored by John Buckmaster, as JCB records in his splendid autobiography, A Village Politician (1st edition 1897).
Even as a student teacher in Battersea in the 1840s, JCB found himself in demand as a lecturer and tutor. (And he was so impecunious that he had to take every opportunity to earn money.) One of his informal classes was with a group of children on the edge of the Common, at the home of the first School Inspector of Science, Henry Moseley.
The Government Inspector, who resided not far off, made arrangements for me to attend his house twice a week and give lessons to his two boys with half a dozen others. I took this class for twelve months, when a piece of Church patronage removed him.
More than 30 years after I met one of his sons at the Society of Arts. He was then Linacre professor at Oxford. When my name was mentioned he looked at me. I hesitated as to who ought to speak first, as our positions in life we are now very different; but I resolved on making myself known.
He took me warmly by the hand, and said, "I should never have been where I am but for your teaching, which gave me a love for science I have ever since cultivated." [p.247].
HNM is not named, but it was he who became the Linacre professor.
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