When the admiralty sent ships to chart new territories naturalists were often taken along to observe the wildlife. One of the most famous examples of this is Fitzroy’s circumnavigation of the globe with Charles Darwin (1831-36).
Fitzroy and Darwin
HMS Beagle left Plymouth in 1831 to update the admiralty charts of South America. Captain Fitzroy was worried about making the voyage without a suitable companion (the previous captain of the Beagle had become depressed and shot himself), so he ‘asked around’ for a suitable ‘gentleman passenger’. His unlikely choice of companion was to be Charles Darwin – at that time a failed Doctor and Clergyman with a passion for marine biology. Darwin came onboard as the expedition’s naturalist, and ‘the rest is history’ – as they say!
Charles Darwin
In 1831 the 22 year old Darwin had few formal credentials as a biologist, but his many pastimes included hunting and shooting, catching marine animals and dissecting them, collecting beetles and geology. While supposedly studying medicine at Edinburgh University (he found the surgery of the time disgusting) Darwin made friends with Robert Grant and became an enthusiastic collector along the shore at Leith, and later helped classify plants in the University Museum. He also sat in on many geology lectures, learnt a little taxidermy – all distractions from his medical studies. Darwin’s father (a wealthy doctor) decided that Charles might do better if he changed course and location, so in 1827 he was sent to Cambridge to study theology.
Captain Fitzroy was an enthusiastic creationist and he probably expected his (theologically trained) naturalist/companion to share his views. In fact Darwin’s ideas about the evolution of species developed very slowly and there was no conflict of opinions during the voyage. After circumnavigating the globe the Beagle returned to Cornwall in 1836 and Darwin set about writing a journal of the voyage. In his absence he had become a little better known in academic circles, and his father had decided to set him up financially as a ‘gentleman naturalist’.
Darwin and his Barnacles
Darwin began to develop a mysterious illness back in England (now thought to be Chaga’s Disease – caught from Kissing Bugs in South America) but he continued with his geological work and wrote several papers including an important one about the origins of coral reefs. His ideas about evolution were steadily taking shape, but realising the likely reaction he decided to make himself an expert in some aspect of zoology before he published the theory. To this end he began a detailed study of barnacles in 1846, a work that was to take him eight years and culminate in two seminal monographs, published by the prestigious ‘Ray Society’ in 1851 and 1854.
(‘On the Origin of Species’ was published in 1859, with Darwin a well-known and respected academic.)
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