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There is a cold clear lonely lake in northern Alberta named Patricia. Take one of the two rowboats that lie there, row into the middle of the lake, lean over the side, open your eyes in the clear water and before your eyeballs freeze you will see the twisted metal skeletal remains that supported the body of Habakkuk, a battleship made of ice. Habbakuk of Ice |
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Steve Walker's radioplay HABBAKUK OF ICE, first broadcast by BBC Radio 4 in 2001, is the dramatic story of an idea - Project Habbakuk - from its conception to its demise. It is the story of a forgotten man who was one of the greatest geniuses of the last century, the wonderfully eccentric 'Professor' Geoffrey Pyke, whose scheme it was to make immense berg-ships out of ice. The prototypes were built in Canada, at Lake Louise and then at Patricia Lake near Jasper, in the latter years of the Second World War. But in the end military bureacracy prevailed: the plug was pulled on Project Habbakuk, and it melted away. A plaque at the edge of Patricia Lake commemorates it, and that is where this radioplay began. |
Geoffrey Pyke |
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Geoffrey Pyke had an unshakeable belief that a human being could reason his way through any problem. He applied his unique mind to many different fields, from education (he said all children be should treated as if they were guests from another world) to the stock market (needing money for his projects he spent six months studying its workings and then neatly monopolised the tin market.) With his glasses, goatee, habitual sloppy dress, he was a Hollywood idea of an eccentric professor. Habbakuk was his most ambitious project, and watching it being built in the lake here was the greatest time of his life. Its eventual abandonment contributed to his death, but he has left a legacy which comes to fruition in HABBAKUK OF ICE. |
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"The play gives us something beyond value: |
Steve Walker at Patricia Lake |