Evolution's Captain (32 page)

M
any people have helped me with this book, and others,
and in my writing life, in more ways than there is room to detail here. My gratitude and debt to them are too great to summarize in this finite space.

Sloan Harris, my friend and agent. Katharine Cluverius, Teri Steinberg at ICM. My editor at HarperCollins, Dan Conaway; and Cathy Hemming, Nikola Scott, Justin Loeber, Jane Passberger, Jason Curran, Martha Cameron, and Jill Schwartzman at HarperCollins. Andrew Franklin, Kate Griffin, and all at Profile Books, London. Anita and David Burdett; Anita particularly for her help at the PRO at Kew. Marion and Jeric Perth. Lucy Waitt at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London; Helen Harrison of the State Library of New South Wales, Australia; Barbara Brownlie of the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Sam Manning, again, for his beautiful maps, and Susan Manning for her crucial part in these.

At
Outside
magazine, Elizabeth Hightower, for more than she ever imagined, and Hal Espen. Elaine Lembo and Herb McCormick at
Cruising World
. Judith Miller and Beth Epstein at New York University in Paris.

Fraser Heston for the good word.

My mother, Barbara Nichols; David Nichols; Liz and Tony Sharp; Cynthia Hartshorn; Matt deGarmo; Penny and Robert Germaux; Peter Landesman; Doug Grant and Kathryn Van Dyke.

Josephine Franzheim, Kenneth Franzheim, Gay and Tony Brown for their spectacular hospitality and generosity.

The booksellers who over the years have invited me to their very special stores and championed my books—it would be unfair to single out one person or store without naming all; Booksense, and everyone associated with that wonderful enterprise; to all these people I am profoundly grateful.

Bennett Scheuer, a very true friend.

My wife, Roberta, for the faith, encouragement, and intelligence that allow me to reach higher, to write the right books.

M
y most constant guide was Robert FitzRoy, in his massive
four-volume
Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships
Adventure
and
Beagle
Between the Years 1826 and 1836 Describing Their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America and the
Beagle
's Circumnavigation of the Globe,
by FitzRoy, Captain Phillip Parker King, Captain Pringle Stokes, and, in Volume 3, Charles Darwin. Surely one of the most complete and exhaustive accounts of any (two) voyage(s) in history, this work is rich not only in its observations of wind, weather, sea and coast, nature ashore, and every possible aspect of a prolonged exploration of the globe by ship in the early nineteenth century, but today it is most valuable for the view of the world of its main author, Captain Robert FitzRoy. He carried with him in all his doings the forthright prejudices of his age, and this gives his
Narrative
its great worth as a historical document. Only a few thousand copies were printed by its publisher Henry Colburn in 1839; Darwin's Volume 3, later retitled
Voyage of the Beagle,
found a lasting readership and has never been out of print, but the full four-volume set is a rarity, going for $50,000 or more if one can be found. I was lucky to find a com
plete, virtually new, clothbound facsimile reprint, complete with charts, published by AMR Press of New York in 1966, for $350.

Janet Browne's magisterial two-volume biography of Charles Darwin,
Charles Darwin; Voyaging
(1995, Jonathan Cape, London) and
Charles Darwin; The Power of Place
(2002, Knopf, New York) was almost as useful. Browne's knowledge of Darwin and the world he lived in is encyclopedic, her authority absolute. Her book, with its bibliography, was a constant resource for me. Also very useful early on was the introduction Janet Browne wrote with Michael Neve to the Penguin edition of Darwin's
Voyage of the Beagle
(1989).

Of course, Charles Darwin himself. The 1839 (
Narrative, Vol.
3, Colburn) and 1845 (John Murray, London; 1909, 1937, Collier/Harvard, New York) editions of his
Voyage
. His
Beagle Diary,
which formed the basis for his
Voyage
; I used the Cambridge University Press edition (paper, 2001, Cambridge), with useful additions, edited by Darwin's great-grandson, Richard Darwin Keynes.

Various editions of
Origin of Species
. Darwin's letters from the Folio Society edition of
A Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S.
Beagle, edited by David Stanbury (1977, UK).
The Autobiography of Charles Darwin,
unabridged version edited by Nora Barlow (1958, Collins, London).

Many historic documents at the Public Records Office, Kew Gardens, London—ADM 1/1818; 1/2031; 51/3026; 51/3053; 52/3965; 53/239 among others—comprising the logbooks of H.M.S.
Beagle
; letters by Captains FitzRoy, Philip Parker King, and Pringle Stokes; particularly, most fascinatingly, King's long letter to his superiors at the Admiralty explaining the circumstances and details of the death of Stokes, the
Beagle
's first commander (ADM 1/2031). To hold these documents in one's hand for an hour, to read these pre-Victorian captains' flourish-embellished handwriting, is worth months of factual research.

For most of the facts of Robert FitzRoy's life,
FitzRoy of the
Beagle, by H.E.L. Mellersh. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968.

And then:

Ackroyd, Peter;
London
. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000.

Annan, Noel;
The Dons.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.

Beaglehole, J.C.;
The Life of Captain James Cook
. London: A&C Black, 1974.

Bridges, E. Lucas.
Uttermost Part of the Earth
. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1951.

Caldwell, John.
Desperate Voyage
. London: Victor Gollancz, 1952.

Dugan, James.
The Great Iron Ship.
New York: Harper Brothers, 1953.

Fowles, John.
The French Lieutenant's Woman.
New York: Little, Brown, 1969.

Freeman, Michael.
Railways and the Victorian Imagination.
New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.

Gosse, Edmund.
Father and Son.
London: Penguin, 1986.

Gosse, Philip Henry.
Omphalos.
London: John Van Voorst, 1857.

Hazlewood, Nick.
Savage.
London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001.

Hayter, Alethea.
A Sultry Month.
London: Robin Clark, 1992.

Hiscock, Eric.
Cruising Under Sail.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.

Hughes-Hallet, Penelope.
The Immortal Dinner.
London: Viking, 2000.

Hydrographer of the Navy.
South America Pilot
, Volume 2. United Kingdom: Hydrographic Office of the British Royal Navy, 1993.

Inwood, Stephen.
A History of London.
New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998.

Marquardt, Karl Heinz.
H.M.S.
Beagle. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1997.

Morris, James.
Heaven's Command; Pax Britannica.
New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973.

Moorehead, Alan.
Darwin and the
Beagle. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969.

Pakenham, Thomas.
The Scramble for Africa.
London: Abacus, 1992.

Reisenberg, Felix.
Cape Horn.
New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939.

Rich, Louise Dickenson.
The Coast of Maine.
Maine: Down East Books, 1993.

Ritchie, Rear-Admiral G.S.
The Admiralty Chart.
London: Pentland Press, 1995.

Robinson, W.A.
10,000 Leagues Over the Sea
. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932.

Rodger, N.A.M.
The Wooden World.
New York: Norton, 1996.

Severin, Tim.
The Spice Islands Voyage.
London: Little, Brown, 1997.

Slocum, Joshua.
Sailing Alone Around the World.
New York: The Century Company, 1900.

Thwaite, Ann.
Glimpses of the Wonderful
;
The Life of Philip Henry Gosse
. London: Faber & Faber, 2002.

Vaughan, Adrian.
Brunel.
London: John Murray, 1993.

Wallace, Alfred Russell.
The Malay Archipelago.
London: Macmillan, 1869;
My Life.
London: Chapman and Hall, 1905.

Zimmer, Carl.
Evolution.
New York: HarperCollins, 2001.