Evolution's Captain (12 page)

As soon as he read the letters, Darwin told his three sisters he would go. But his father was so strongly against the idea that Darwin almost immediately gave it up. The next morning he wrote to Peacock and Henslow, thanking them but regretfully turning down the offer.

Darwin lived securely and happily wrapped in the community of his family, the second youngest of six children, cosseted and fussed over by his three older sisters who formed the maternal bulwark in his life after the early death of his mother when he was eight. His father was a benign but magisterial presence at the head of the household, a physically immense man, rich, intelligent, influential, a creator of the world around him, a figure of absolute authority to his son. Charles was not a headstrong young man who would go against such a father's wishes. When Dr. Darwin expressed his disapproval, Charles didn't argue.

Instead, he packed a gun and rode to his Uncle Jos's house. Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood II enjoyed a relationship almost as close as father and son. Uncle Jos was not as formidable a man as Robert Darwin, not the authoritarian in Charles's life, yet he was a strong influence on his nephew. The two enjoyed shooting together so much that Darwin called Maer, the Wedgwood home, “Bliss Castle.” Dr. Darwin respected Wedgwood, his brother-in-law, and the influence he had over his son. As Darwin was leaving for Maer, his father told him pointedly: “If you can find any man of common sense who advises you to go, I will give my consent.” And he gave Darwin a note to take to his uncle:

Darwin and his Uncle Jos talked it over. He put his father's objections on paper for Wedgwood to look at and mull over.

• 1) Disreputable to my character as a Clergyman hereafter
  
• 2) A wild scheme
  
• 3) That they must have offered to many others before me, the place of Naturalist
  
• 4) And from its not being accepted there must be some serious objection to the vessel or expedition
  
• 5) That I should never settle down to a steady life hereafter
  
• 6) That my accomodations would be most uncomfortable
  
• 7) That you should consider it again as changing my profession
  
• 8) That it would be a useless undertaking
  

Wedgwood—the “man of common sense” whom Dr. Darwin was plainly referring to—wrote him a letter addressing each of his eight objections:

Wedgwood sent the letter off early on September 1. He and Darwin then tried to distract themselves shooting partridge—it was the first day of the season, an opportunity neither could ignore—but their hearts weren't in it and they made a poor bag. At 10
A.M
., Wedgwood impatiently decided he wanted to talk to the doctor face to face, and uncle and nephew set out in his carriage for The Mount, determined to present their opinion with persuasive arguments.

But they found Dr. Darwin in a compliant mood. He'd had a change of heart, perhaps reflecting on the honor of the invitation by the Admiralty, passed to his son by illustrious professors who clearly thought highly of him. Perhaps his greatest objection was one not mentioned in Charles's list: he feared for his son's life on a voyage to the wilder parts of the little known world. Captain Cook himself, despite the protection of a boatload of armed seamen, had been killed in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) by natives who had previously revered him. In the end Dr. Darwin recognized the singular opportunity that was presenting itself, and he had decided to let Charles go—with all the considerable financial assistance and encouragement he could provide.

But by then, it appeared, FitzRoy had asked someone else.

O
r so FitzRoy told Alexander Charles Wood, his cousin,
a Cambridge undergraduate and one of Peacock's students. Wood had heard about the voyage and the opportunity for a naturalist and had written to FitzRoy enthusing about Darwin, but pointing out that he was a Whig (a liberal). FitzRoy wrote back informing Wood that the position had already been filled. Wood told Henslow. Darwin, who had by then returned to Cambridge to consult with Henslow about the coming voyage, was dismayed. Both he and Henslow were now confused, and Henslow angrily felt that Peacock had misrepresented the availability of the position, getting everybody worked up over a tantalizing maybe.

FitzRoy may indeed have asked a friend, a “Mr. Chester,” as he later told Darwin, or he may very reasonably have been hedging his bets until he met the candidate produced by the long arm of the Admiralty and Cambridge. As much as he felt the need for a gentleman companion on such a long voyage, he knew the peril of taking the wrong gentleman, of being locked in close quarters for months and years on end with the wrong personality. Nevertheless, Darwin and FitzRoy arranged to meet in London and they kept the date.

They were both young men—FitzRoy 26, Darwin 22—with
the world and a ship at their disposal. They met and appraised each other as potential partners in a very great adventure. But FitzRoy had the experience, accomplishment, and self-confidence of someone much older, and he was the captain—a most absolute authority.

FitzRoy stressed to Darwin the rigors of the voyage: the danger, the storms, the extremes of cold and heat, the risk of illness, the unvarying diet—he probably described these at their grimmest. Also, the voyage might not result in a circumnavigation, he told Darwin. His first duty was the completion of the South American survey, and the time taken for this might prevent them continuing on around the world. He painted as unenticing a picture as possible.

As they talked, they sized each other up. Both men were on their best behavior, and after they had spoken a while and relaxed, both liked what they saw in the other. Like any sailor, FitzRoy would certainly have told Darwin stories of his earlier voyage in the
Beagle
, of Cape Horn and its weather, of the trials of surveying under such conditions. Undoubtedly he told him about the Fuegians, and the three “improved” specimens he was returning to Tierra del Fuego. All of this, the raw material of adventure, could only have whetted Darwin's appetite. He was enormously impressed by FitzRoy's manner, his directness, his authority, his intelligence, and probably above all his grasp of science, in which area the captain was then far more knowledgeable than the young Cambridge graduate.

FitzRoy in turn was charmed by Darwin, by his enthusiasm and his own well-developed knowledge. More importantly, he perceived in Darwin the breed of companion he sought. Here was a young man who knew horses and guns, who had dined all his life in the company of thinkers and gentlemen, who was expansive of mind and could probably be counted on as an affable and intelligent dinner companion for a thousand and more nights at the same table. FitzRoy also knew of Erasmus Darwin, the young man's grandfather, the poet and evolutionary thinker.
And he had come with the recommendations of professors and admirals.

The only thing that bothered FitzRoy was Darwin's face. His beliefs in the telling aspects of the shape of the cranium and facial features applied to Englishmen just as valuably as to savages, and Darwin's hooded brow and large, spatulate nose gave FitzRoy serious pause. “He doubted whether anyone with my nose could possess sufficient energy and determination for the voyage,” Darwin later wrote.

But this first meeting was encouraging to both. They agreed to dine together that same evening. That afternoon, Darwin wrote to his sisters.

The dinner was a success. Darwin wrote again to his sisters the next day.

The following weekend the two young men traveled by steam packet from London to Plymouth, to see the
Beagle
in the Devonport dockyard. Darwin could only have gained the poorest grasp of what she would be like to live aboard: the ship was without masts or interior bulkheads, and he thought she looked like a wreck. His own quarters in the chartroom aft were cluttered with carpenters and appeared dismayingly small, but FitzRoy assured him that he would make him comfortable and provide him with a workshop. The voyage around the coast had been pleasant, and Darwin's initial worries that he might suffer from seasickness were calmed.

It was settled. FitzRoy wrote to Beaufort that he approved of Darwin and wanted him aboard as naturalist. He told Darwin to do and buy what he must for the voyage and to report on board the
Beagle
by the end of October; he had chosen November 4 as their tentative departure date.

Then he set about preparing the ship.

 

After six years of service, most of the
Beagle
's planking and deck
frames were rotten and had to be replaced. As this work, along with a general refit of all her gear commenced at Devonport, FitzRoy got permission to make some other changes. When he had filled the “death vacancy” made by Captain Stokes and boarded the
Beagle
in Rio de Janeiro in 1828, FitzRoy had done his best with what he was given. Now, after two seasons in the far south and 20,000 miles of voyaging, he had definite ideas for the vessel's improvement. He had the upper deck raised eight inches through
out the ship, giving increased headroom for the whole crew, who had formerly moved about belowdecks in an uncomfortable stoop. This not only made life below more comfortable for everyone (a condition FitzRoy placed great value upon), but it added to the ship's buoyancy, literally providing more air inside the hull to resist a capsize when pushed over onto her beam by wind and seas. (Raising the deck would also have lifted the vessel's center of gravity, possibly increasing her tendency to roll, making her less stable, but nobody seems to have noticed or remarked on this.) FitzRoy was pleased with the alteration, which “proved to be of the greatest advantage to her as a sea-boat, besides adding so materially to the comfort of all on board,” he later wrote.

Heading out across a world of storms, FitzRoy—a tireless follower of modern scientific developments—installed lightning conductors of a type recently invented by William Snow Harris, a Fellow of the Royal Society. These were heavy-gauge continuous copper strips built into the masts and spars and bowsprit, running from the very top of the ship down through the rigging, down the outside of the hull into the ship's copper-sheathed bottom for grounding in the water. Struck by lightning a number of times in the voyage to come, the
Beagle
never received any damage.

Other improvements included a new type of rudder, designed by Captain Lihou of the Royal Navy, which enabled the rudder's pintle, or hinge, to be replaced if broken on a distant shore. The galley's open fireplace was torn out and “one of Frazer's stoves” with an oven installed in its place. This was more efficient in its consumption of fuel and made cooking on board safer in all weathers.

While these intrinsic shippy improvements were being carried out, FitzRoy turned to the equipping of his vessel for scientific purposes. Both he and Beaufort, with the full weight of the Admiralty behind them, were determined to provide the
Beagle
with the best, most up-to-date equipment and instruments possible.

Preeminent among these, as necessary as a compass, were the ship's chronometers. Accurate time was vital to accurate naviga
tion, the determination of longitude, and the consequential correct placing of rocks, islands, and coasts in FitzRoy's surveys—his primary mission. Since the groundbreaking work of John Harrison a century earlier, which had won him the government's £20,000 award for a chronometer that would provide mariners with longitude, timepieces had been continually refined. A chronometer is not a clock that keeps perfect time, but one whose mechanism gains or loses it at a nearly consistent, measurable rate. Thus once set with the correct time at Greenwich, that Greenwich Mean Time—the basis for all celestial navigation—can still be accurately known weeks later, far out at sea, after the correction for loss or gain is applied. That was the theory. But a chronometer, like any mechanical device, can go wrong or break down, so several were carried aboard ships, their rates of loss or gain observed and compared with each other, and an average assumed.

Twenty-two chronometers were carried aboard the
Beagle
on her second voyage. The Admiralty provided sixteen, and FitzRoy, in his pursuit of absolute sufficiency, even redundancy, bought a further six. They were the finest money could buy, each a jewel of mechanical contrivance, purchased from different clockmakers. Their storage aboard the ship and the conditions of their use were as important as their construction for keeping good time. Each was housed in a small wooden box, suspended by well-oiled gimbals that kept the clock level despite the rocking of the ship and its own box around it. The twenty-two boxes were kept in a small cabin beside FitzRoy's own, placed in sawdust three inches thick beneath and at the sides of each box as a shock absorber.

A good fix on this punctilious scientist-captain is provided by imagining him in a gale at sea, oiled coat thrown off, head toweled to avoid dripping, bent over his chronometers as the ship pitches around him, magnifying glass in hand, to observe the fine sprinkling of powder on the glass tops in his rookery of clocks.

The greatest disturbance to the clocks was their daily winding. To tend them, and ensure a consistency of attention and handling, FitzRoy hired a supernumerary to the ship's crew, George James Stebbing, eldest son of a mathematical instrument maker from Portsmouth, who came along for the entire voyage. Only Stebbing touched the clocks, winding them every morning at 9
A.M
. He came again at noon daily to compare their times and rate their gains and losses. Only FitzRoy and Stebbing ever entered the small cabin of chronometers. Most of the boxes were never moved after first being secured in sawdust in 1831 until the completion of the voyage in 1836.

Between voyages, FitzRoy had his sextant, theodolite, small portable compasses, telescopes of several powers, and other instruments cleaned and repaired as necessary. New ones were purchased for this voyage. Once aboard ship, Stebbing looked after these too.

As with the extra chronometers, FitzRoy paid for Stebbing out of his own pocket.

The whaleboat built by Jonathan May on Chiloé Island in 1829, stolen by Fuegians a few months later, is one of the great lost artifacts of history. FitzRoy couldn't have recognized it as such, but the first voyage had nonetheless given him the keenest appreciation for a sufficient quantity of ship's boats. It may have occurred to him that this second voyage of the
Beagle
might never have happened if he'd had more boats on the first. Six new boats were now built: two 25-foot whaleboats, two 28-foot whaleboats, a 23-foot cutter, and a 26-foot yawl. Their tough hulls were made from a double layer of diagonal planks, a method refined by a foreman at
Plymouth Dockyard, a Mr. Jones. The Admiralty felt four were enough, but FitzRoy disagreed. He paid for the other two. These were carried on deck, the cutter nesting inside the yawl in the forward waist, the two larger whaleboats carried upside down aft, the smaller whaleboats held outboard on davits aft. A seventh boat, a 15-foot dinghy (
dingy
is an Indian word for small boat) was carried in davits astern. These boats greatly interfered with movement on deck, and the handling of the rig, but they were an accepted part of any ship's gear and the sailors scrambled over and around them.

Although Frenchman Louis Daguerre was already experimenting with capturing permanent images on silver-plated sheets of copper used with a camera obscura, photography was still virtually unknown. To make a visual record of the voyage, FitzRoy hired another civilian supernumerary, an artist, Augustus Earle, and, as with Stebbing, paid for him out of his own pocket. The son of an American painter living in England, Earle had studied at the Royal Academy in London. But he was unable to settle into the role of society painter; afflicted by a serious wanderlust, he had already traveled to Australia, New Zealand, India, and South America as an itinerant artist, earning a scratchy living painting portraits of colonial governors. When FitzRoy met him in London he was thirty-seven years old, peddling his paintings of Maoris and finding no takers. His lack of success was probably because Earle had an eye for the truth in a subject, rather than for what might be pleasing to European taste. His subsequent drawings and paintings of the
Beagle
and the people and places it encountered are among the most valuable and accurate records of nineteenth-century exploration. FitzRoy could not have chosen better.