Evolution's Captain: The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin's Voyage Aboard the Beagle

EVOLUTION’S CAPTAIN The Story of the Kidnapping That Led to Charles Darwin’s Voyage Aboard the “Beagle”

P ETER N ICHOLS

For Roberta my ark, my evolution

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die: For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods . . . —GENESIS, 3: 3–5

Contents Epigraph

iii

Map

xi

PART ONE

1

1 Port Famine, Strait of Magellan, August 2, 1828. It is…

3

2 In 1934, Nora Barlow, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, visited…

19

3 In January 1829, HMS Adventure, with Captain King, HMS Beagle,…

26

4 Small wonder the job had driven Pringle Stokes mad.

36

5 FitzRoy has been characterized as going after the Fuegians who…

45

6 FitzRoy's instructions from the British Admiralty contained no provisions about…

56

PART TWO

63

7 The term “collecting” had a particular weight attached to it…

65

8 Early in December 1830, Coxswain Bennett and the Beagle’s recent…

76

9 It was FitzRoy’s man on the scene, Coxswain Bennett, installed…

90

10 Perhaps only the dawn of the Internet, and the computer…

99

11 Or so FitzRoy told Alexander Charles Wood, his cousin, a…

119

12 Darwin traveled to Devonport by coach on October 24, 1831.

129

PART THREE

141

13 As the Beagle rolled and pitched across the Bay of…

143

14 They had come a remarkably long way. There was no…

152

15 Nowhere are the designs of men more subject to the…

159

16 Darwin was among the large group that set out on…

168

17 A year and more into this second voyage aboard the…

188

18 FitzRoy never counted on Admiralty support for his extracurricular hiring…

201

19 Early voyagers called them the Enchanted Islands, but not because…

211

PART FOUR

219

20 The Beagle dropped anchor in Falmouth, England, on October 2,… 221 21 Sometime between coming home in October 1836 and finishing his…

239

22 The book—in three volumes: King’s, FitzRoy’s, and Darwin’s, with a…

248

23 Religious mania was mainstream in nineteenth-century Britain. Almost as if…

262

24 Robert FitzRoy read of the massacre in the British press…

281

25 In October 1838…I happened to read for amusement Malthus…

290

26 In late June 1860, FitzRoy traveled by train to Oxford…

310

Epilogue Late in 1863, two years before FitzRoy’s death, Reverend Whait…

325

Acknowledgments Sources About the Author Praise Other Books by Peter Nichols Credits Cover Copyright About the Publisher

The TRUE

STORY = Theft of a Whaleboat the Subsequent ABDUCTION of FOUR SAVAGES from Tierra del Fuego • • •

Whose Shocking Misbehaviour at the WALTHAMSTOW I NFANTS S CHOOL

j Led to i

CHARLES DARWIN’s Voyage Aboard the Beagle • • •

the Shattering of •

Man’s Profoundest Beliefs •

the Most Ironic and Melancholy Fate of its Captain

R OBERT F ITZ R OY