charles_darwin

The Life of Charles Darwin
and mapping shorelines. FitzRoy wanted a naturalist to share his
quarters to counteract the likelihood of depression on a long
voyage—the previous captain of the Beagle, Pringle Stokes, shot himself
in August 1828 during the ship’s previous voyage—and, given
his interest in science, FitzRoy thought a naturalist would be stimulating
company. In fact, several of FitzRoy’s crew were bona fide naturalists.
Initially, Darwin was one naturalist among many on the
ship. Darwin became the premier naturalist of the Beagle because he
proved himself the best at doing what Britain needed: collecting and
identifying important and new specimens of plant and animal life. 26
The voyage of the Beagle is significant because, during it, Darwin
began to think about some of the important and unanswered
questions in science. Darwin’s voyaging was not unique: this was the
era of David Livingstone (1813–1873), the great Scottish explorer
and missionary who discovered Victoria Falls and opposed the slave
trade in Africa. A naturalist making his name by participating in a
voyage to South America or Australasia was also not uncommon.
Darwin had been inspired by the adventures of Alexander von Humboldt
and Aime Bonpland (1773–1858), the French botanist, in
South America.
Following Henslow’s suggestion, Darwin took a copy of the first
volume of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology: the early entries in
the diary he kept while on the voyage show that Darwin was thinking
like a geologist. 27 Darwin did not join the Beagle because he
intended to solve the problem of the origin of species.
But the miles covered and the places visited by the Beagle and
her crew provided an excellent opportunity for a naturalist aspiring
to fame, as Darwin was. The voyage from England to Cape Verde, off
the West African coast, and the east coast of South America occupied
most of 1832. Exploring Patagonia, the Falkland Islands, and Tierra
del Fuego took all of 1833. In 1834, the crew explored Lower Patagonia,
the Straits of Magellan, the Falkland Islands, again, and the
west coast of South America. The crew continued on the Pacific
Ocean side of South America during 1835 and sailed to the Galapagos
Islands in September, where they stayed for just over a month;
they traveled to Tahiti by November and the North Island of New
Zealand by the end of December. They arrived in Sydney, Australia,
in January 1836 and in the next eight months sailed to Hobart, Tasmania
(February), King George Sound, South Australia (March), the
Keeling Islands in the Indian Ocean (April), the islands of Mauritius
and Reunion (April/May), the Cape of Good Hope at the southern
tip of Africa (May), the islands of St. Helena and Ascension in the
mid-Atlantic (July), the coast of Brazil and Cape Verde (August), the
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