Travels with Charlie

I chose this title aware that I am stealing it from John Steinbeck’s travelogue of 1962. Steinbeck’s book of that title helped give me a love of America as a young man. But I’m choosing this title now for a few words about another travelogue by a young man published in 1839 – The Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle by Charles Darwin. If you’ve read my blogs before you will know that I’m keen to un-demonize (for Americans at least) this 19^th C. Englishman that few know, and fewer have ever read. To be honest, I only got around to reading this book of his – a bestseller at the time of publication – recently. I want to give you a few insights into Charles that come to light through this book. 

Charles graduated from Cambridge in the summer of 1831 at the age of 22 with a B.A. 3^rd class, which means he just scraped through. His exasperated doctor father sent him to Cambridge with the idea of him becoming a country parson after Charles had dropped out of Med School. But after graduating his girlfriend dumped him. So, despite the fact that he’s afraid of the sea because he gets violently seasick, he gets a job as ‘companion’ to the captain of a British navy ship that’s commissioned to do some detailed survey of the coasts of Argentina and Chile plus some South Pacific islands ‘for about two years’.  His father says No. But his uncle intervenes and a couple of days after Christmas 1831 the Beagle sails from Plymouth, England with young Charles on board. The captain, Robert FitzRoy, fortuitously gives him a Christmas present of a recently published book The Principles of Geology by Charles Lyell which Darwin starts to devour between bouts of throwing up as the Beagle heads out across the Atlantic. 

Darwin is not the official naturalist on the ship. That job is held by Robert McCormick. But four months into the trip when they dock in Rio de Janeiro, McCormick quits. He was no doubt upstaged by the ardent collecting by Darwin of everything he could find or catch, including shrimp from the ocean. It couldn’t have been easy for FitzRoy either. He and Darwin shared a small cabin on a 90 ft sailing ship carrying 74 men.  The two men got into arguments over slavery – Darwin was appalled by what he saw of it in Brazil.  He writes: “These deeds are done by palliated men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth! It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants with their beautiful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty.” FitzRoy was a very conservative Christian but apparently wasn’t so bothered by the slavery they encountered. 

 

Most informed people know that the Beagle visited the Galapagos Islands; and certainly Darwin’s observations there were to prove key later, but the Beagle had been at sea for three years and nine months before they reached the archipelago; and Darwin’s description of the five-week stay there occupies one chapter out of 21 in his book. On leaving, after a stay of five weeks, the Beagle headed west across the Pacific and home to England a year later, a voyage of four years and ten months, much longer than Darwin thought it would be when he embarked. Darwin’s genius was that despite any hardships he made enthusiastic use of every minute and turned the voyage into the defining time of his life. 

The majority of the time on this long voyage was spent by the Beagle’s crew exploring and mapping the coasts of Argentina and Chile including the dangerous Cape Horn and Tierra del Fuego. There were several occasions when Darwin took off with one or two companions on horseback with a mule pack exploring the wild hinterland for up to three weeks at a time often camping rough. One marvels how – without cellphones – he managed to always connect back with the Beagle before it sailed on. Not once but three times he experiences an earthquake in Chile, observing with horror the devastation of a town, as well as taking note that in one place the coast had risen several feet after the main quake, leaving seaweed high and dry. Informed no doubt by Lyell’s book he is constantly noting the geology and rock strata, and is dumbfounded to find fossilized sea-shells high in the Andes. 

Wherever he went, Darwin collected – one reason for the mules. They must have been tripping over the stuff on board the little brig, but at every opportunity he would send crates back to England to be studied by the relevant experts of the day. He collected just shy of five and half thousand specimens!  1,529 small creatures preserved in alcohol, and 3,907 dried specimens – plants, skins, bones, fossils, rocks; all catalogued in 12 volumes; while filling 24 diaries about his experiences and observations.  

As a young upper-middle class Englishman of the early 19^th century he is rather snooty about what he deems laziness amongst the Latin Americans of that time, but is impressed by the work of English missionaries in Tahiti and New Zealand, bringing an end to cannibalism and tribal warfare and reducing the mistreatment of women. But he is deeply shocked at the bad treatment of the aboriginal people in Australia by the deported convicts from England. 

He loved the tropical islands with their coral reefs which the Beagle visited, including atolls, and wondered how they formed. He reasoned that the coral reef would grow towards the surface while the volcanic island sank eventually producing an atoll. This concept was dismissed by experts at the time, but has now been shown to be true.   

At the island of St Helena in the South Atlantic on the way home he finds a letter waiting for him from his sister in which she informs him that as a result of all the specimens and information that he’d been sending home he has created quite a stir in England. Darwin would never leave England again, would quickly marry, be devoted to his wife and help raise a large family, while pondering his voyage of a lifetime and all that his observations meant. His genius lay both in his unquenchable curiosity coupled with a constantly questioning mind. It would be another 23 years after his return home that he would publish his other famous book On the Origin of Species in 1859. Good trip Charlie.