Robert Baden-Powell

 

Aqui fica um pequeno excerto da sua história:

Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell (Londres, 22 de Fevereiro de 1857 — Nairobi, 8 de Janeiro de 1941) foi um tenente-general do Exército Britânico, fundador do escutismo.

O seu pai era o reverendo Baden Powell, professor catedrático em Oxford. A sua mãe era filha do almirante inglês W. T. Smyth. Seu bisavô, Joseph Brewer Smyth, tinha ido como colonizador para Nova Jersey (Estados Unidos) mas voltou para a Inglaterra e naufragou na viagem de regresso.

O pai morreu quando Robert tinha aproximadamente 3 anos, deixando a sua mãe com sete filhos, dos quais o mais velho não tinha ainda 14 anos. Robert viveu uma bela vida ao ar livre com seus quatro irmãos.

Em 1870 Baden-Powell (B-P) ingressou na Escola Chaterhouse em Londres com uma bolsa de estudos. Não era um estudante que se destacasse especialmente dos outros, mas era um dos mais vivos. Estava sempre metido em tudo que acontecia no pátio do colégio, e cedo se tornou popular pela sua perícia como guarda-redes da equipe de futebol de Charterhouse.

Aos 19 anos, Baden-Powel terminou os estudos na Escola Charterhouse e aceitou imediatamente uma oportunidade de ir à Índia como subtenente do regimento que formara a ala direita da cavalaria na célebre "Carga da Cavalaria Ligeira" da Guerra da Criméia.

Além de uma carreira excelente no serviço militar (chegou a capitão aos vinte e seis anos), ganhou o troféu desportivo mais desejado de toda a Índia, o troféu de "sangrar o porco", caça ao javali selvagem, a cavalo, tendo como única arma uma lança curta. Vocês compreenderão como este desporto é perigoso ao saber que o javali selvagem é habitualmente citado como "o único animal que se atreve a beber água no mesmo bebedouro com um tigre".

Em 1887, B-P participou da campanha contra os Zulus na África. Foi ascendido a Major em 1889, e em Abril de 1896 dirigiu uma expedição contra os matabele em Rodésia.

Dias depois de uma revolta de negros que massacraram 300 colonos britânicos, o coronel cercou o chefe dos guerreiros chamado Uwini com mais de 350 soldados.

Os ingleses prometeram poupar a vida aos guerreiros em troca da rendição. As autoridades civis pediram que ele fosse entregue para ser preso, porem Baden, recusou e mandou-o executar com o argumento de que ameaçava os britânicos. Em 2009, Robin Clay, neto de Baden-Powell, desculpou-o no Times: "Todos cometemos erros. Na guerra as emoções estão ao rubro. Faz-se o que se pensa estar certo."

Esta era um época formativa para B-P não só porque ele tinha a época da vida dirigindo missões como chefe do reconhecimento no território inimigo na Rodésia, mas também porque muitas das suas ideias mais recentes do escutismo se enraizaram aqui Foi nesta guerra que ele começou uma amizade com o escuteiro americano celebrado Frederick Russell Burnham, que o introduziu ao ponto de ebulição a maneira do Oeste americano e do woodcraft (escutismo), e aqui que ele usou seu chapéu Stetson pela primeira vez. Mais tarde B-P participou na campanha contra a tribo dos Ashantís. Os nativos temiam-no tanto que lhe davam o nome de "Impisa", o "lobo-que-nunca-dorme", devido à sua coragem, à sua perícia como explorador e à sua impressionante habilidade em seguir pistas.

As promoções de B-P na carreira militar eram quase automáticas tal a regularidade com que ocorriam até que, subitamente se tornou famoso.

Corria o ano de 1899 e Baden-Powell tinha sido promovido a Coronel. Na África do Sul começava uma agitação e as relações entre a Inglaterra e o governo da República de Transval tinham chegado ao ponto do rompimento. B-P recebeu ordens de organizar dois batalhões de carabineiros montados e marchar para Mafeking, uma cidade no coração da África do Sul. "Quem tem Mafeking tem as rédeas da África do Sul", era um dito corrente entre os nativos, que se verificou ser verdadeiro.

Veio a guerra dos Boers, e durante 217 dias (a partir de 13 de Outubro de 1899) B-P defendeu Mafeking cercada por forças esmagadoramente superiores do inimigo, até que tropas de socorro conseguiram finalmente abrir caminho lutando para auxiliá-lo, no dia 18 de Maio de 1900.

B-P, promovido agora ao posto de major-general, tornou-se um herói aos olhos de seus compatriotas. Foi como um herói dos adultos e das crianças que em 1901 ele regressou da África do Sul para a Inglaterra e descobriu, surpreso, que a sua popularidade pessoal dera popularidade ao livro que escrevera para militares: Aids to Scouting (Ajudas à Exploração Militar). O livro estava sendo usado como um compêndio nas escolas masculinas. B-P viu nisto um desafio. Compreendeu que estava aí a oportunidade de ajudar a juventude.

A Ideia do escotismo

Se um livro para adultos sobre as actividades dos exploradores podia exercer tal atracção sobre os rapazes e servir-lhes de fonte de inspiração, outro livro, escrito especialmente para rapazes, poderia despertar muito maior interesse.

Pôs-se então a trabalhar, aproveitando e adaptando sua experiência na Índia e na África entre os Zulus e outras tribos selvagens. Reuniu uma biblioteca especial e estudou nestes livros os métodos usados em todas as épocas para a educação e o adestramento dos rapazes, desde jovens espartanos, os antigos bretões, os peles-vermelhas, até os nossos dias. Lenta e cuidadosamente, B-P foi desenvolvendo a ideia do escutismo. Queria estar certo de que a ideia podia ser posta em prática, e por isso, no verão de 1907 foi com um grupo de 20 rapazes separados por 4 patrulhas (Maçarico- Real, Corvo, Lobo, Touro) para a Ilha de Brownsea, no Canal da Mancha, para realizar o primeiro acampamento escuteiro que o mundo presenciou. O acampamento teve um completo êxito.

Nos primeiros meses de 1908, lançou em seis fascículos quinzenais o seu manual de adestramento, o "Escutismo para Rapazes" sem sequer sonhar que este livro iria por em acção um movimento que afectaria a juventude do mundo inteiro.

Mal tinha começado a aparecer nas livrarias e nas bancas de jornais e já surgiram patrulhas e tropas de escuteiros não apenas na Inglaterra, mas em muitos outros países. O movimento cresceu tanto que em 1910, B-P compreendeu que o Escutismo seria a obra a que dedicaria a sua vida. Teve a visão e a fé de reconhecer que podia fazer mais pelo seu país adestrando a nova geração para a boa cidadania do que preparando meia-dúzia de homens para uma possível futura guerra.

Pediu então demissão do Exército onde havia chegado a tenente-general e ingressou na sua "segunda vida", como costumava chamá-la, sua vida de serviço ao mundo por meio do Escutismo.

Em 1912, fez uma viagem à volta do mundo para contactar os escuteiros de muitos outros países. Foi este o primeiro passo para fazer do Escutismo uma fraternidade mundial.

A Primeira Guerra Mundial momentaneamente interrompeu este trabalho, mas com o fim das hostilidades foi recomeçado, e em 1920 escuteiros de todas as partes do mundo reuniram-se em Londres para a primeira concentração internacional de escuteiros: o Primeiro Jamboree Mundial. Na última noite deste Jamboree, a 6 de Agosto, B-P foi proclamado "Escuteiro-Chefe-Mundial" sob os aplausos da multidão de rapazes.

O Movimento Escuteiro continuou a crescer. No dia em que atingiu a "maioridade" completando 21 anos contava com mais de 2 milhões de membros em praticamente todos os países do mundo. Nesta ocasião, B-P recebeu do rei Jorge V a honra de ser elevado a barão, sob o nome de Lord Baden-Powell of Gilwell. Mas apesar deste título, para todos os escuteiros ele continuou e continuará sempre sendo B-P, o Escuteiro-Chefe-Mundial.

Quando suas forças afinal começaram a declinar, depois de completar 80 anos de idade, regressou à sua amada África com a sua esposa, Lady Olave Baden-Powell, que fora uma entusiástica colaboradora em todos os seus esforços, e que era a Chefe-Mundial das "Girl Guides" (Guias), movimento também iniciado por Baden-Powell.

On the research we conducted about this place nothing comes up so we decided to talk about the name of the person in the square

Robert Baden-Powell

Baden-Powell was born as Robert Stephenson Smyth Powell, or more familiarly as Stephe Powell, at 6 Stanhope Street (now 11 Stanhope Terrace), Paddington in London, on 22 February 1857. Robert Stephenson, the railway and civil engineer being his godfather and namesake.  His father Reverend Baden Powell, a Savilian Professor of Geometry  at Oxford University, already had four teenage children from the second of his two previous marriages. On 10 March 1846 at St Luke's Church, Chelsea, Reverend Powell married Henrietta Grace Smyth (3 September 1824 – 13 October 1914), eldest daughter of Admiral William Henry Smyth and 28 years his junior. Quickly they had Warington (early 1847), George (late 1847), Augustus  (1849) and Francis  (1850). After three further children who died when very young, they had Stephe, Agnes (1858) and Baden (1860). The three youngest children and the often ill Augustus were close friends. Reverend Powell died when Stephe was three, and as tribute to his father and to set her own children apart from their half-siblings and cousins, the mother changed the family name to Baden-Powell. Subsequently, Stephe was raised by his mother, a strong woman who was determined that her children would succeed. Baden-Powell would say of her in 1933 "The whole secret of my getting on, lay with my mother."

After attending Rose Hill School, Tunbridge Wells, during which his favourite brother Augustus died, Stephe Baden-Powell was awarded a scholarship to Charterhouse, a prestigious public school. His first introduction to Scouting skills was through stalking and cooking game while avoiding teachers in the nearby woods, which were strictly out-of-bounds. He also played the piano and violin, was an ambidextrous artist, and enjoyed acting. Holidays were spent on yachting or canoeing expeditions with his brothers.

In 1876, R.S.S. Baden-Powell, as he styled himself then, joined the 13th Hussars in India with the rank of lieutenant. He enhanced and honed his military scouting skills amidst the Zulu in the early 1880s in the Natal province of South Africa, where his regiment had been posted, and where he was Mentioned in Despatches. During one of his travels, he came across a large string of wooden beads, worn by the Zulu king Dinizulu, which was later incorporated into the Wood Badge training programme he started after he founded the Scouting Movement. Baden-Powell's skills impressed his superiors and he was Brevetted Major as Military Secretary and senior Aide-de-camp  of the Commander-in-Chief and Governor of Malta, his uncle General Sir Henry Augustus Smyth.  He was posted in Malta for three years, also working as intelligence officer for the Mediterranean for the Director of Military Intelligence.  He frequently travelled disguised as a butterfly collector, incorporating plans of military installations into his drawings of butterfly wings.

Baden-Powell returned to Africa in 1896 to aid the British South Africa Company colonials under siege in Bulawayo during the Second Matabele War. This was a formative experience for him not only because he had the time of his life commanding reconnaissance missions into enemy territory in Matobo Hills, but because many of his later Boy Scout ideas took hold here.[13] It was during this campaign that he first met and befriended the American scout Frederick Russell Burnham, who introduced Baden-Powell to the American Old West and woodcraft (i.e., scoutcraft), and here that he wore his signature Stetson campaign hat and kerchief for the first time. After Rhodesia, Baden-Powell took part in a successful British invasion of Ashanti, West Africa in the Fourth Ashanti War, and at the age of 40 was promoted to lead the 5th Dragoon Guards in 1897 in India. A few years later he wrote a small manual, entitled Aids to Scouting, a summary of lectures he had given on the subject of military scouting, to help train recruits. Using this and other methods he was able to train them to think independently, use their initiative, and survive in the wilderness.

Baden-Powell was accused of illegally executing a prisoner of war, Matabele chief Uwini, in 1896, who had been promised his life would be spared if he surrendered. Uwini was shot by firing squad under Baden-Powell's instructions. Baden-Powell was cleared by an inquiry, and later claimed he was "released without a stain on my character". Robin Clay, Baden-Powell's grandson, commented in 2009, "We all make mistakes."

He returned to South Africa prior to the Second Boer War and was engaged in further military actions against the Zulus. By this time, he had been promoted to be the youngest colonel in the British Army. He was responsible for the organisation of a force of frontiersmen to assist the regular army. While arranging this, he was trapped in the Siege of Mafeking, and surrounded by a Boer army, at times in excess of 8,000 men. Although wholly outnumbered, the garrison withstood the siege for 217 days. Much of this is attributable to cunning military deceptions instituted at Baden-Powell's behest as commander of the garrison. Fake minefields were planted and his soldiers were ordered to simulate avoiding non-existent barbed wire while moving between trenches. Baden-Powell did most of the reconnaissance work himself.

Contrary views of Baden-Powell's actions during the Siege of Mafeking pointed out that his success in resisting the Boers was secured at the expense of the lives of African soldiers and civilians, including members of his own African garrison. Pakenham stated that Baden-Powell drastically reduced the rations to the natives' garrison. However, Pakenham decidedly retreated from this position.

During the siege, a cadet corps, consisting of white boys below fighting age, was used to stand guard, carry messages, assist in hospitals and so on, freeing the men for military service. Although Baden-Powell did not form this cadet corps himself, and there is no evidence that he took much notice of them during the Siege, he was sufficiently impressed with both their courage and the equanimity with which they performed their tasks to use them later as an object lesson in the first chapter of Scouting for Boys. The siege was lifted in the Relief of Mafeking on 16 May 1900. Promoted to major-general, Baden-Powell became a national hero.[22] After organising the South African Constabulary, the national police force, he returned to England to take up a post as Inspector General of Cavalry in 1903. In 1907 he was appointed to command a division in the newly-formed Territorial Force.[23]

In 1910 Lieutenant-General Baden-Powell decided to retire from the Army reputedly on the advice of King Edward VII, who suggested that he could better serve his country by promoting Scouting.

On the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Baden-Powell put himself at the disposal of the War Office. No command, however, was given him, for, as Lord Kitchener said: "he could lay his hand on several competent divisional generals but could find no one who could carry on the invaluable work of the Boy Scouts." It was widely rumored that Baden-Powell was engaged in spying, and intelligence officers took great care to inculcate the myth.

 
On his return from Africa in 1903, Baden-Powell found that his military training manual, Aids to Scouting, had become a best-seller, and was being used by teachers and youth organisations.  Following his involvement in the Boys' Brigade as Brigade Secretary and Officer in charge of its scouting section, with encouragement from his friend, William Alexander Smith, Baden-Powell decided to re-write Aids to Scouting to suit a youth readership. In August 1907 he held a camp on Brownsea Island for twenty-two boys from local Boys Brigade companies and sons of friends of Baden-Powell's from public schools Eton and Harrow to test out the applicability of his ideas. Baden-Powell was also influenced by Ernest Thompson Seton, who founded the Woodcraft Indians. Seton gave Baden-Powell a copy of his book The Birch Bark Roll of the Woodcraft Indians and they met in 1906. The first book on the Scout Movement, Baden-Powell's Scouting for Boys was published in six instalments in 1908, and has sold approximately 150 million copies as the fourth bestselling book of the 20th century.

Boys and girls spontaneously formed Scout troops and the Scouting Movement had inadvertently started, first as a national, and soon an international obsession. The Scouting Movement was to grow up in friendly parallel relations with the Boys' Brigade. A rally for all Scouts was held at Crystal Palace in London in 1909, at which Baden-Powell discovered the first Girl Scouts. The Girl Guide Movement was subsequently founded in 1910 under the auspices of Baden-Powell's sister, Agnes Baden-Powell. Baden-Powell's friend, Juliette Gordon Low, was encouraged by him to bring the Movement to America, where she founded the Girl Scouts of the USA.

In 1920, the 1st World Scout Jamboree took place in Olympia, and Baden-Powell was acclaimed Chief Scout of the World. Baden-Powell was created a Baronet in the 1921 New Year Honours and Baron Baden-Powell, of Gilwell, in the County of Essex, on 17 September 1929, Gilwell Park being the International Scout Leader training centre. After receiving this honour, Baden-Powell mostly styled himself "Baden-Powell of Gilwell".

In 1929, during the 3rd World Scout Jamboree, he received as a present a new 20 horse power Rolls-Royce car (chassis number GVO-40, registration OU 2938) and an Eccles Caravan.[33] This combination well served the Baden-Powells in their further travels around Europe. The caravan was nicknamed Eccles and is now on display at Gilwell Park. The car, nicknamed Jam Roll, was sold after his death by Olave Baden-Powell in 1945. Jam Roll and Eccles were reunited at Gilwell for the 21st World Scout Jamboree in 2007. Recently it has been purchased on behalf of Scouting and is owned by a charity, B-P Jam Roll Ltd. Funds are being raised to repay the loan that was used to purchase the car.[33][34] Baden-Powell also had a positive impact on improvements in youth education.[35] Under his dedicated command the world Scouting Movement grew. By 1922 there were more than a million Scouts in 32 countries; by 1939 the number of Scouts was in excess of 3.3 million.

A Cache

Resolvemos fazer uma multi-cache levando os nossos geocachers a conhecerem um bocadinho da praça.

1º Dirijam-se ao ponto inicial

    Aqui deverão contar o número de degraus que levam ao escorrega (o piso de cima também conta) [A e B]

    Juntem também o número de bancos de jardim que se encontram à entrada do parquinho das crianças [C]

2º Desloquem-se ao 2º ponto [N 37º02.666 / W 7º58.056] e procurem uma data [formato DE-FG-HI]

3º Efectuem os cálculos:

        A cache final encontra-se em: N 37º FB.(I!-4341) W0Iº[C+3][I+A].[F][G][C+E+A]

Soma de Controlo

A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+I= 23

The Cache

This is a multi-cache to take our geocachers to know a little bit of this square.

1st go to initial point

    Here you must count the number of steps to the swing/slide (the upstairs count either) [A and B]

    Now count the number of garden benches on the entrance [C]

2nd Go to second point [N 37º02.666 / W 7º58.056] and find a date [format DE-FG-HI]

3rd do the calculations:

        The final cache is in: N 37º FB.(I!-4341) W0Iº[C+3][I+A].[F][G][C+E+A]

Control:

A+B+C+D+E+F+G+H+I= 23

Pode verificar a solução deste puzzle no Geochecker.com.