Chapter 1, pt1: Departure

A modern-day view of Devonport and Plymouth from Google Earth.

After having been twice driven back by heavy south-western gales, Her Majesty's ship Beagle, a ten-gun brig, under the command of Captain Fitz Roy, R.N., sailed from Devonport on the 27th of December, 1831. The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830--to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific--and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World.

The Beagle

The HMS Beagle was built in 1820 as one of over 100 "Cherokee-class brig-sloops" ordered by the British government and intended as warships. These ships were first ordered during the Napoleonic Wars, and were smaller, faster, and cheaper than the great man-of-war that was common at the time. Each had ten carronades, small cannons that were powerful short-range weapons but less effective at longer ranges.

A carronade like those that would have been used on the Beagle and other 10-gun brigs.

As history had it, though, the period between the Napoleonic Wars, which ended in 1815, and the Crimean War, which started in 1854, was relatively quiet. The new warships didn't have much fighting to do, and most of them ended up serving as packet ships running mail and passengers between Britain and North America. A handful, though, were used on various exploration and surveying voyages, the Beagle included.

The design of the 10-gun brigs was a frequent target of criticism. They were often referred to as "coffin brigs" due to their high rate of shipwreck. Another popular nickname was "half-tide rock" — their upper decks weren't far above the waterline, and solid bulwarks prevented water from draining easily, so their decks were often flooded. The standard 10-gun brig design also lacked a forecastle, which would have deflected waves crashing over the bow of the boat. The Beagle, however, had a forecastle added before her inaugural voyage in 1825, as well as a mizzen mast. Later, before her second voyage, her upper deck was raised, along with other upgrades. She was therefore substantially more seaworthy than your average coffin brig.

Illustration of the Beagle, from the original frontispiece of Voyage of the Beagle.

By the time she was launched for her first voyage, in 1826, the Beagle was a three-masted bark, 90 feet long and 24 feet wide, with six guns rather than ten. Her mission was to accompany the larger HMS Adventure on a hydrographic survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. The overall mission was under the command of Captain Phillip Parker King, Commander and Surveyor, and the captain of the Beagle was Pringle Stokes.

Longitudal section of the Beagle dated 1832.

Once in Tierra del Fuego, the Beagle was assigned to make her way through the Strait of Magellan and attempt to survey the western coasts. Captain Stokes was generally a competent and serious seaman, and had been at sea since the age of 12, but battling the notorious conditions of Tierra del Fuego proved too much for him, and he sank into depression. By the time the Beagle rejoined the Adventure on July 27, 1828, Stokes had not left his cabin for four weeks, and the ship was effectively under the command of Lieutenant William Skyring, the assistant surveyor. On August 1, Stokes shot himself. He died eleven days later, of gangrene caused by the wound.

Captain King put Skyring in temporary command of the Beagle, and both ships returned to Montevideo for repairs. It was there that Captain Robert FitzRoy was given charge of the Beagle. He was an aide to Rear Admiral Sir Robert Otway, the commander of the British Navy's South American station, who assigned him to command the Beagle.

Captain FitzRoy

Robert FitzRoy was a member of the upper echelons of British aristocracy and a distant descendant of King Charles II. Like Stokes, he had been at sea since the age of 12, and they had even served together on the HMS Owen Glendower in the early 1820s. After taking command of the Beagle in December of 1828, he proved himself a competent commander and surveyor, and was well established by the time the expedition returned to England in 1830.

A lithograph of Robert FitzRoy from the 1840s.

While in Tierra del Fuego, FitzRoy had picked up a few additional passengers by way of an unusual turn of events. While some of the men were camping on shore, a group of native Fuegians, of the Yaghan people, made off with their ship's boat. The men improvised a small coracle using a basket of branches covered in canvas from their tent and made their way back to the Beagle. FitzRoy attempted to hunt down the ship's boat, and while he never found it, he did find Yaghan encampments with some of its goods and gear, and took hostages from each of them. After returning some of the hostages, he eventually decided to take four of them back to England with him, with the intent of "civilising" them, training them as interpreters, and eventually returning them to Tierra del Fuego as Christian missionaries to their own people. Aside from the rather significant exception of kidnapping them, he seems to have treated them well, and they became a minor sensation in England, where they went by the names of York Minster, Fuegia Basket, Jemmy Button, and Boat Memory.

Two drawings of Jemmy Button from FitzRoy's account of the Beagle's voyage.

On his return to England, FitzRoy had hopes of being put in command of a second expedition to continue the South American hydrographic survey. However, his command of the Beagle had only been temporary, and support for a second expedition was not forthcoming from the Lords of the Admiralty. FitzRoy began making other plans to return the Fuegians to their homeland, booking passage on a small merchant vessel and purchasing a herd of goats to populate the islands of Tierra del Fuego. But his friend Francis Beaufort, the Hydrographer to the British Admiralty, interceded with them on his behalf, as did his uncle, the Duke of Grafton. FitzRoy was reappointed commander of the Beagle in June of 1831, and a second expedition planned.

Sir Francis Beaufort, who helped FitzRoy win the approval of the Admiralty for the second voyage of the Beagle.

Charles Darwin came into the picture because of FitzRoy's desire to travel with a fellow naturalist who could also serve as a friend, equal, and dining companion. From FitzRoy's account of the voyage:

Anxious that no opportunity of collecting useful information, during the voyage, should be lost; I proposed to the Hydrographer that some well-educated and scientific person should be sought for who would willingly share such accommodations as I had to offer, in order to profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known. Captain Beaufort approved of the suggestion, and wrote to Professor Peacock, of Cambridge, who consulted with a friend, Professor Henslow, and he named Mr. Charles Darwin, grandson of Dr. Darwin the poet, as a young man of promising ability, extremely fond of geology, and indeed all branches of natural history. In consequence an offer was made to Mr. Darwin to be my guest on board, which he accepted conditionally; permission was obtained for his embarkation, and an order given by the Admiralty that he should be borne on the ship's books for provisions.

At the time, Darwin was a 22-year-old fresh out of Cambridge, and an enthusiastic student of natural history, although most his experience at that point was in beetle collecting, dissecting marine invertebrates, and some geologic mapping. Eager to see the tropics and study their natural history, he had been making plans with some friends to visit Tenerife, in the Canary Islands — a destination he and the Beagle eventually passed right by in the early days of their voyage.

Stephen Jay Gould, in his 1977 book Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History, pointed to another reason for Darwin's presence on the Beagle. After all, the ship already had an official naturalist — the surgeon, Robert McCormick. But as Gould points out, the life of a captain at the time was a lonely one. As a gentleman, he was isolated from his crew by an impenetrable social barrier, and long years of solitude and stressful decisions at sea could take their toll on his psychology — as they had, only a few years before, on Pringle Stokes. Add to this FitzRoy's own family history of "mental derangement" (his uncle, the Viscount of Castlereagh, had slit his own throat in 1822) and it is not hard to understand why he might want a companion of his own social class to alleviate his isolation. This was acknowledged in the letter Darwin received from Professor Henslow explaining the situation: "Capt. F. wants a man (I understand) more as a companion than a mere collector."

Robert McCormick, the ship's surgeon and official naturalist aboard the Beagle.

Whatever the ultimate objective, by early September of 1830, FitzRoy had his man, and Darwin had an opportunity to see the tropics beyond his wildest dreams.

Chronometrical Measurements

The official agenda for the Beagle's voyage encompassed several objectives, including the continuation of mapping efforts along the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, but one of its most important goals was to collect "chronometrical measurements" — i.e., longitudes. The question of determining longitude had bedeviled mariners for hundreds of years. Only in 1750 had a real solution to the problem been found, in the form of a reliable marine chronometer — a clock that could be set to Greenwich Mean Time and continue to accurately provide the time in England after years at sea. From anywhere in the world, if you knew the time in England when you measured noon by the apex of the sun's arc, you could tell how far around the curve of the Earth you had traveled.

One of the twenty-two chronometers carried on the second voyage of the Beagle.

Marine chronometers had been available since about 1750, but they had only been affordable since about 1800, and reliable longitudes for ports around the world were still works in progress. One of the Beagle's most important objectives was to measure the longitude of Rio de Janeiro, resolving disagreements from earlier surveys. Beyond that, FitzRoy planned to eventually cross the Pacific, stop at known longitudes in Australia, and return to England after circumnavigating the Earth, establishing, as Darwin put it, "a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World." To this end, the Beagle carried with it not merely one but twenty-two individual chronometers, as well as a dedicated technician FitzRoy had hired solely to tend to them.

Departure from Devonport

By December 27th, the Beagle had been prevented from leaving port for two months by a succession of westerly gales. She had tried twice to sail, only to return to port. Finally, on the 27th of December, conditions seemed favorable. In FitzRoy's words:

Vessels in the offing, and distant land 'looming' much; a few mottled, hard-edged clouds appearing in the east; streaks (mare's tails) across the sky, spreading from the same quarter; a high barometer (30.3); and the smoke from chimneys rising high into the air, and then going westward; were the signs which assured us of a favourable wind. A light 'cat's paw' rippled the water, we made all sail, the breeze increased, and at noon our little vessel was outside the Breakwater, with a fresh easterly wind.

Mare's tails.

Devonport is located on the south coast of Cornwall, adjacent to Plymouth. It was originally founded as Plymouth Dock during the construction of a new naval base nearby, and by the early 19th century, it had a population of approximately 30,000 residents and was larger than the adjacent towns of Plymouth and Stonehouse combined. Its name was changed to Devonport in the 1820s, and today it remains the largest naval base in Western Europe.

Map of Devonport and Plymouth, showing Mt. Edgcumbe and the Breakwater mentioned by Captain FitzRoy.