'/l critical situation. H. M.S. Beagle .. .East Coast ofPatagonia, S. America ," unsigned. Courtesy National Maritime Museum , Greenwich , England.
HMS Beagle, 1820-1870 Voyages Summarized, Research and Reconstruction by L-Ois Darling With appreciation for the valuable contributions made by Commander Arthur Waite, Ret., National Maritime Museum, and Mr. John Chancellor In all of maritime history, few vessels have had a career of more consequence than HMS Beagle. Built at Woolwich Dockyard on the Thames River below London , she was launched on May 11th , 1820, the forty-first in her class of IO-gun brigs , 235 tons and 90ft on deck. The great wars that opened the century were over, and although many ships of the Royal Navy had become engaged in various peacetime pursuits, there appeared to be no immediate need for the little brig's services. Except for a brief moment of glory during a naval parade in celebration¡of the coronation of King George IV, the Beagle lay " in ordinary," for her first five years. The First and Second Voyages In September of 1825, Woolwich Dockyard reinforced and repaired the brig's hull already afflicted with rot , sheathed and recoppered her bottom , added a poop cabin and forecastle, stepped a small mizzen mast , and otherwise prepared the Beagle for her future as a surveying vessel. Under her commander, Pringle Stokes, she was to accompany HMS Adventure (330 tons) for the purpose of exploring the labyrinth of channels existing at the southernmost tip of South America . Here, buffeted by the foulest of weather, the Beagle would spend the better part of the next four years (1826-1830), surveying and charting waters acknowledged to be among the most dangerous in the world. By August 1828, with the little ship in sorry state and out of provisions, and her crew sick from scurvy and pulmonary diseases , Captain Stokes returned to Port Famine on the Strait of Magellan , retired to his cabin and shot himself. He was replaced by twenty-three year old Robert FitzRoy, Flag Lieutenant, HMS Ganges, then stationed in Montevideo. After nearly losing the Beagle within months of his appointment, Fitz-
SEA HISTORY, SPRING 1984
Roy learned to sail her with consummate skill for the duration of the first voyage and all of the second (1831-1836). Aside from extensive exploration and surveying, .making studies of the weather, and much else, FitzRoy was charged with the formidable task of establishing the precise longitude of Rio de Janeiro. Also, a chain of meridian distances and determination of longitudes more accurate than hitherto must be made as the Beagle worked her way around the world. The official account of both voyages, written mostly by FitzRoy, was published, in two volumes by Colburn in 1839.1 FitzRoy writes , " I could not avoid often thinking of the talent and experience required for such scientific researches, of which we were wholly destitute; and inwardly resolving that if ever I left England again on a similar expedition I would endeavor to carry out a person qualified to examine the land ; while the officers and myself would attend to hydrography." It was such thinking, not uncommon in the Royal Navy of this time, which resulted in a series of events which made it possible for Charles Darwin , then twenty-two, to be aboard the Beagle for her second voyage. During the years of ~xploration on the waters, continents, islands, and coastlines of the Southern Hemisphere, the enquiring eyes of the ship's young naturalist saw many things. He wondered at the diversity of life in the seas and the incalcuable number of microscopic organisms he found there. He roamed the tropical rain forests and the plains of South America. In Chile he climbed the Andes where he found beds of fossil seashells thirteen thousand feet above the sea. He sent boxes and barrels of specimens of both recent and fossil animals and plants home to England. On the lonely Galapagos Islands, some six hundred miles off Ecuador, Darwin found species of plants and animals