Charles
Darwin:
The Beagle Years
(1831-36)
by Harry
Wistrand
In an earlier article, in the Spring
2018 issue of The Torch, we
saw that Charles Darwin had several
characteristics that hinted at his
future success: his upbringing, his
gentle nature, his intelligence, and
some serendipitous events and
friendships (Wistrand). At the
end of the article, the 22-year-old
Charles had just accompanied Professor
Adam Sedgwick on a geological
expedition to Wales, a responsibility
he had taken on at the urging of his
Cambridge mentor, the Reverend John
Stevens Henslow. It was late summer,
1831.
Back in Shrewsbury, his hometown,
Darwin had to deal with a father
impatient at his lack of progress
towards ordination as a clergyman in
the Church of England—the goal,
supposedly, of his Cambridge
education. In his Autobiography
he wrote:
I
found a letter from Henslow,
informing me that Captain Fitz-Roy
was willing to give up part of his
own cabin to any young man who would
volunteer to go with him without pay
as naturalist to the Voyage of the
"Beagle".
Darwin
was well prepared for such an endeavor
as a naturalist. He was
ambitious, had matured intellectually
at Cambridge, gaining confidence from
luminaries such as Alexander von
Humboldt, William Paley, and William
Herschel. (1) He had learned
botany and geology from eminent
scientists and his self-taught
entomology and ornithology far
surpassed his peers. He had
physical and social abilities which
would serve him well.
Nonetheless, such a journey was
scarcely conceivable. Darwin
recognized that he would for some
number of years be without his family
and friends, with possible adversity,
seasickness, loneliness, and isolation
on a lengthy odyssey. Darwin was
available because he was single, not
employed, and had access to
considerable funds.
So began a voyage that would be
decisive for human understanding of
the natural world.
*
* *
The captain of the Beagle,
Robert Fitzroy, was of aristocratic
stock and had graduated first in his
class at the Royal Naval College. He
needed a companion on the Beagle.
He could not risk his command by being
open with his subordinates, but the
isolation at sea could be
psychologically disastrous. By
taking a cultivated, educated dining
companion who was not under his
command, Fitzroy could find relief
while on board. To entice a
gentleman to join his voyage, he
offered an opportunity to explore as a
naturalist.
Darwin noted in his Autobiography that
Fitzroy was "devoted to his duty,
generous to a fault, bold, determined,
and indomitably energetic, and an
ardent friend to all under his sway.
He would undertake any sort of trouble
to assist those whom he thought
deserved assistance" (50). "His
character was in several respects one
of the most noble which I have ever
known," Darwin asserted, while also
noting that "Fitz-Roy's temper was a
most unfortunate one. It was usually
worst in the early morning, and with
his eagle eye he could generally
detect something amiss about the ship,
and was then unsparing in his blame"
(51). On the voyage, many officers
begged Darwin not to get into
disagreements with Captain Fitzroy,
because he usually took it out on them
and the crew.
The Beagle was a small vessel
(90 feet by 24 feet), easily
maneuverable in harbors. Darwin
shared a cabin (chart room about 10
feet by 11 feet) with two other
members of the crew: "[t]he corner of
the cabin, which is my private
property, is most wofully [sic]
small.--I just have room to turn round
& that is all" (qtd. in Brown
170). In the chart room
was a library of about 250 books,
including atlases, dictionaries,
Bibles, novels, travel narratives,
volumes on biology, geology, and
Darwin's treasured Paradise Lost,
Humboldt's Travels (a gift from
Henslow), and Lyell's Principles of
Geology (a gift from Fitzroy).
The Beagle departed Plymouth
on December 27, 1831, after a
two-month delay. Darwin
immediately became seasick (a
condition that would accompany him for
the next five years) and homesickness
was evident in his letters home
throughout the voyage.
*
* *
After the Beagle had been voyaging
towards South America for a few weeks,
Fitzroy reported to Captain Beaufort,
his superior officer:
Darwin
is a very sensible, hard-working man
and a very pleasant messmate.
I never saw a 'shore-going fellow'
come into the ways of a ship so soon
and so thoroughly as Darwin. I
cannot give stronger proof of his
good senses and disposition than by
saying 'Everyone respects and likes
him.' (qtd. in Bowlby 157)
Officers
on the Beagle bequeathed the
nickname "Philos" on Darwin, derived
from Natural Philosopher, after he
established himself as a scientific
authority, as well as "Flycatcher"
because of his propensity for insect
collecting. He endeared himself
to shipmates as he was always willing
to go ashore and do more than his
share of the physical work. His
hunting skills often resulted in
additional fresh meat for the
crew. Darwin learned to set
sails and in an impressive display of
seamanship, the Beagle crew
took the sails down and immediately
set them again with perfection.
A midshipman, Philip Gidley King,
recalled:
Though
Mr. Darwin knew little or nothing of
nautical matters he one day
volunteered his services to the
First Lieutenant. The occasion was
when the ship first entered Rio
Janeiro. It was decided to make a
display of smartness in shortening
sail before the numerous Men-of-War
at the anchorage […] Mr Darwin was
told off to hold to a main-royal
sheet in each hand and a top-mast
studding-tack in his teeth. At the
order "Shorten sail" he was to let
go and clap on to any rope he saw
was short handed— this he did and
enjoyed the fun of it often
afterwards remarking "the feat could
not have been performed without
him". (van Wyhe)
Lieutenant
John Wickham was on excellent terms
with Darwin. On the third voyage of
the Beagle, Wickham replaced
Fitzroy as commander (Fitzroy had been
appointed Governor-General of New
Zealand), and in tribute to his friend
Darwin, named the Australian port in
his honor.
The Beagle finally arrived at
Bahia, Brazil, and Darwin took every
opportunity to explore and collect
specimens, which were sent back to
England, usually in care of
Henslow. As he was a free agent,
he was able to travel at will. He
enlisted a member of the crew, Syms
Covington, to help him collect and
prepare specimens. Darwin was
not only collecting biological
specimens and fossils, but actively
observing the geology he encountered
and speculating about changes.
His geological theories actually
predated his biological theories.
Darwin also displayed heroism during
the voyage. While undertaking
hydrographic studies in Tierra de
Fuego during January 1833, the
whale/survey boats were often
utilized, sometimes at great distance
from the Beagle. A crew
including Darwin was ashore when a
large icefall from a glacier landed in
the water and large waves headed
towards the whaleboats. Darwin
saw this and rushed to the boats with
three others and pulled the boats out
of the water, at considerable danger
to themselves. Darwin felt that
he had responded due to fear instead
of bravery, stating in his Diary,
"how dangerous our lot would have
been, surrounded on all sides by
hostile Savages & deprived of all
provisions" (Keynes 173).
Fitzroy witnessed the feat and on the
next day, he named the passage Darwin
Sound. The next year, on
Darwin's 25th birthday, Fitzroy
indicated his affection for Darwin by
naming the highest peak in the mouth
of the sound Mount Darwin.
Darwin spent as much time as he could
on land. Of the five-year
voyage, he spent about sixty-three
percent of the time away from the
Beagle. His longest
stretch at sea was forty-seven
days. Of his thirty-seven
onshore excursions, only five were
less than two weeks, and there were
excursions in Chile of one and two
months. In 1833, he was able to spend
seven consecutive months exploring
primarily in Argentina and Uruguay.
Sometimes he would return to the Beagle
at the point where he disembarked, and
on other occasions, he arranged to
meet the ship at a different port.
*
* *
Nine months into the trip, Darwin
found a very large skull and jawbone
of what was determined to be a
previously undiscovered horse-sized
giant armadillo. Darwin began to
ponder the strange fossils. He
noted that there were many large
animals and wondered why they died
out. Also, the extinct organisms
were similar to living organisms,
except for their size.
While in
Argentina, he heard reports of a
different ostrich-like bird, the rhea,
smaller than the well-known
rheas. He set out to find it and
finally came across the bird, being
served for his dinner! Next to the
fire, he was able to identify part of
the bird, recalling in the Voyage
of the Beagle:
This
species occurs most rarely on the
plains bordering the Rio Negro; but
about a degree and a half further
south they are tolerably abundant.
When at Port Desire, in Patagonia
(lat. 48°), Mr. Martens shot an
ostrich; and I looked at it
[…] and thought it was a
not full-grown bird of the common
sort. It was cooked and eaten before
my memory returned.
Fortunately the head, neck, legs,
wings, many of the larger feathers,
and a large part of the skin, had
been preserved; and from these a
very nearly perfect specimen has
been put together, and is now
exhibited in the museum of the
Zoological Society. Mr. Gould, in
describing this new species, has
done me the honour of calling it
after my name.
He
contemplated why the north and south
of Patagonia would have different
forms of the same bird. Why
would God create two different species
when their habitats differed only
slightly and they overlapped in part
of their range?
While the Beagle was
undergoing two months of repairs in
Valparaiso, Darwin headed for the
Andes. Heading south from
Valparaíso, Darwin saw two volcanos
erupt and experienced a major
earthquake a few days later. He
thought this was the most interesting
experience on the entire
journey. The earthquake had
raised the beach by more than eight
feet, leaving shellfish exposed above
the high tide line. He began to
comprehend the powerful forces of
geology in reshaping the
landscape. He continued inland
and found shells and fossilized marine
organisms high in the mountains.
He realized that these organisms had
been elevated by geological forces.
In September 1835, almost four years
after leaving England, the Beagle
sailed for the Galápagos
islands. Darwin looked forward
to the islands as they were volcanic
and had organisms found nowhere else
in the world. The Beagle
spent five weeks charting the islands,
and Darwin spent almost three of those
weeks ashore.
Responding to an inquiry about the
islands' tortoises, the governor told
Darwin that one could tell which
island they came from by the shape of
their shells. Darwin was
intrigued by why they would differ
from island to island and formulated a
hypothesis relating their feeding
habits to the shapes of the
shells. He collected many types
of animals, and noted the mockingbirds
were different on the islands he
encountered. He acquired
specimens of finches; thinking they
were variations on the mainland
species, he did not carefully note the
island on which each was
collected. Darwin only mentioned
finches once in his Beagle Diary
and never in The Origin of Species.
It was not until his return to
England, where an ornithologist
pointed the out to him differences
among the specimens, that Darwin was
aware that each was a different
species.
*
* *
The Beagle left the Galápagos
and sailed to Tahiti and New
Zealand. In Australia, Darwin
saw many strange animals, including
kangaroos and platypus. Later,
he wrote in his Beagle Diary:
"An unbeliever in everything beyond
his own reason, might exclaim 'Surely
two distinct Creators must have been
[at] work.'"
After Australia, in the Keeling
Islands, where through some hard work
and constant soundings by the survey
boats, Darwin was able to correctly
deduce the method of coral reef
formation, contrary to what
contemporary geologists had believed.
The Beagle proceeded to Cape
Town and then to Saint Helena,
Ascension. In his Autobiography,
Darwin wrote:
Towards
the close of our voyage I received a
letter whilst at Ascension, in which
my sisters told me that Sedgwick had
called on my father, and said that I
should take a place among the
leading scientific men. I could not
at the time understand how he could
have learnt anything of my
proceedings, but I heard (I believe
afterwards) that Henslow had read
some of the letters which I wrote to
him before the Philosophical Society
of Cambridge, and had printed them
for private distribution. My
collection of fossil bones, which
had been sent to Henslow, also
excited considerable attention
amongst palæontologists.
Darwin
utilized the journey home to organize
his notes and thoughts. He
continued to catalogue his specimens
and ponder the variations. One
of the most telling statements in his
Beagle Diary reveals his
observations in the Galapágos was
leading him to question the fixed
nature of species:
When
I recollect the fact, that from the
form of the body, shape of scales
& general size, the Spaniards
can at once pronounce from which
Isd. [i.e., Island] any tortoise may
have been brought: — when I see
these Islands in sight of each other
and possessed of but a scanty stock
of animals, tenanted by these birds
but slightly differing in structure
& filling the same place in
Nature, I must suspect they are only
varieties. […] If there is the
slightest foundation for these
remarks, the Zoology of
Archipelagoes will be well worth
examining; for such facts would
undermine the stability of species.
The
Beagle arrived in England on
October 2, 1836. When the voyage
concluded, Charles Darwin had 368
pages of zoology notes, almost 200
pages of notes on clams, barnacles,
etc., 1383 pages of geology notes, a
770-page diary, and over 5400
specimens, many of which had been
mailed or shipped home during the
voyage.
*
* *
The large fossils made Darwin famous
in scientific circles. While he was
still on the voyage, a letter from
Henslow had caught up to him,
informing of the sensation that
specimens were creating. His
interest in joining the clergy,
already diminished, dwindled
further. After his family
learned of his accomplishments, they
retreated from suggesting a parsonage
in their letters. In her book
Voyaging, science historian
Janet Browne writes, "The process of
abandoning a church career that took
place during the Beagle's
travels around the world was gradual,
gentle, and silent; it was barely
chronicled in his diary and letters"
(322). It became clear to all
that the clergy was no longer an
option, but a professorship at
Cambridge might be a possibility.
His thinking on species was beginning
to take shape. However, it would
take him twenty-three years to publish
his ideas in the Origin of Species.
Concluding, we can identify what
characteristics of Darwin made this
voyage successful. He was
inquisitive, inspired by Alexander von
Humbolt and others, ambitious with a
great desire, analytical and
contemplative. He was a prolific
note-taker and letter writer, a
thorough journal writer with excellent
command of the language, and an avid
collector with an extensive knowledge
of geology, botany, and zoology.
He was well-bred, friendly, and
possessed of physical ability and
courage. He had no wife or
children to keep him from traveling, a
supportive family, and a wealthy
father who underwrote his considerable
expenses. Stephen Jay
Gould wondered "How different would
the science of Biology be today if
Darwin had been the offspring of a
tradesman and not the son of a very
wealthy physician?" (31).
Works Cited and
Consulted
Bowlby, John. Charles
Darwin: A New Life.
NY: Norton, 1990.
Browne, Janet. Charles Darwin:
A Biography. Vol. 1:
Voyaging. NY: Knopf, 1995.
Clark, Ronald W. The Survival
of Charles Darwin. NY: Avon,
1986.
Darwin, Charles. The
Autobiography of Charles Darwin,
1809-1882. Francis Darwin, ed.
Project Gutenburg,
2013.
---. On the Origin of Species
by Means of Natural Selection, or the
Preservation of Favoured Races
in the Struggle for Life.
London: John Murray, 1859.
---. The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle
(Journal of Researches). NY:
Heritage Press, 1957.
Darwin Correspondence Project (online) U
of Cambridge.
https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/
Desmond, Adrian and James Moore.
Darwin. London: Penguin, 1992.
Gould, Stephen Jay. Ever Since
Darwin. NY: Norton, 1977.
Keynes, Richard Darwin, ed.
Charles Darwin's Beagle
Diary. Cambridge U P, 2001.
Leff, David. About Darwin.com.
https://www.aboutdarwin.com/
Quammen, David. The Reluctant
Mr. Darwin: An Intimate Portrait of
Charles Darwin and the Making of His
Theory of Evolution. NY:
Norton, 2006.
Stott, Rebecca. Darwin and the
Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny
Creature and History's Most Spectacular
Scientific Breakthrough. NY:
Norton, 2003.
Thomson, Keith. The Young
Charles Darwin. New Haven and
London: Yale U P,. 2009.
van Wyhe, John, ed. The Complete
Work of Charles Darwin Online
(http://darwin-online.org.uk). 2002.
Weiner, Jonathan. The Beak of
the Finch. NY: Knopf, 1994.
Wistrand, Harry. "Charles
Darwin: The Formative Years
(1809-31)." The Torch Vol.
93, no. 1 (Spring 2018), 11-16.
Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of
Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's
New World. NY: Knopf, 2015.
Footnote
(1) For more
discussion of the remarkable Alexander
von Humboldt, see Fred Oppenheimer's
article on him in the Fall 2018 issue of
The Torch (vol. 92, no. 1), pages
18-23 (editor's note).
Author's
Biography
![Wistrand Photo](Wistrand.jpg)
Harry Wistrand received his Ph.D. from
Arizona State University and did
postdoctoral work at Yale University.
From 1974-2012 he served as Professor
of Biology at Agnes Scott College,
where he was Department Chair,
Associate Dean of the College, and
founding Co-Director of the Program
(now Department) of Public Health and
the Program in Environmental and
Sustainability Studies. His
scholarly interest is evolutionary
genetics.
After retiring, he moved to Richmond,
Virginia, where he gives talks on
genetics and evolution. He has
been a member of the Richmond Torch
Club and has presented several papers
to the club as well as other
organizations in Richmond. An
earlier paper, "Charles Darwin: The
Formative Years," appeared in the
Spring 2018 issue of The Torch.
"Charles Darwin: The Beagle Years" was
presented to the Richmond Torch Club
on February 13, 2018.
He may be reached at
harrywistrand@gmail.com.