Darwin's Voyage of the Beagle
by Professor George Howard Parker
Had Charles Darwin never published more than
"The Voyage of the Beagle," 1 his reputation
as a naturalist of the first rank would have
been fully assured. Even before the close
of that eventful circumnavigation of the globe,
the English geologist Sedgwick, who had probably
seen some of the letters sent by the young
naturalist to friends in England, predicted
to Dr. Darwin, Charles Darwin's father, that
his son would take a place among the leading
scientific men of the day. As it afterward
proved, the voyage of the Beagle was the foundation
stone on which rested that monument of work
and industry which, as a matter of fact, made
Charles Darwin one of the distinguished scientists
not only of his generation but of all time.
The conventional school and university training
had very little attraction for Darwin. From
boyhood his real interests were to be found
in collecting natural objects; minerals, plants,
insects, and birds were the materials that
excited his mind to full activity. But it
was not till his Cambridge days, when he was
supposedly studying for the clergy, that the
encouragement of Henslow changed this pastime
into a serious occupation.
THE OCCASION OF THE VOYAGE
About 1831 the British Admiralty decided to
fit out the Beagle, a ten-gun brig, to complete
the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego
begun some years before, to survey the shores
of Chili, Peru, and some of the islands of
the Pacific, and to carry a chain of chronometrical
measurements round the world. It seemed important
to all concerned that a naturalist should
accompany this expedition; and Captain Fitz-Roy,
through the mediation of Professor Henslow,
eventually induced Charles Darwin to become
his cabin companion and naturalist for the
voyage. Henslow recommended Darwin not as
a finished naturalist but as one amply qualified
for collecting, observing, and noting anything
worthy to be noted in natural history.
The Beagle, after two unsuccessful attempts
to get away, finally set sail from Devonport,
England, December 27, 1831; and, after a cruise
of almost five years, she returned to Falmouth,
England, October 2, 1836. Her course had lain
across the Atlantic to the Brazilian coast,
thence southward along the east coast of South
America to Tierra del Fuego, whence she turned
northward skirting the seaboard of Chili and
Peru. Near the equator a westerly course was
taken and she then crossed the Pacific to
Australia whence she traversed the Indian
Ocean, and, rounding the Cape of Good Hope,
headed across the South Atlantic for Brazil.
Here she completed the circumnavigation of
the globe and, picking up her former course,
she retraced her way to England.
When Darwin left England on the Beagle, he
was twenty-two years old. The five-year voyage,
therefore, occupied in his life the period
of maturing manhood. What it was to mean to
him he only partly saw. Before leaving England
he declared that the day of sailing would
mark the beginning of his second life, a new
birthday to him. All through his boyhood he
had dreamed of seeing the tropics; and now
his dream was to be realized. His letters
and his account of the voyage are full of
the exuberance of youth. To his friend Fox
he wrote from Brazil: "My mind has been, since
leaving England, in a perfect hurricane of
delight and astonishment." To Henslow he sent
word from Rio as follows: "Here I first saw
a tropical forest in all its sublime grandeur—nothing
but the reality can give you any idea how
wonderful, how magnificent the scene is."
And to another correspondent he wrote: "When
I first entered on and beheld the luxuriant
vegetation of Brazil, it was realizing the
visions in the 'Arabian Nights.' The brilliancy
of the scenery throws one into a delirium
of delight, and a beetle hunter is not likely
soon to awaken from it when, whichever way
he turns, fresh treasures meet his eye." Such
expressions could spring only from the enthusiasm
of the born naturalist.
THE TRAINING OF A NATURALIST
But the voyage of the Beagle meant more to
Darwin than the mere opportunity to see the
world; it trained him to be a naturalist.
During his five years at sea he learned to
work, and to work under conditions that were
often almost intolerable. The Beagle was small
and cramped, and the collections of a naturalist
were not always easily cared for. The first
lieutenant, who is described by Darwin in
terms of the highest admiration, was responsible
for the appearance of the ship, and strongly
objected to having such a litter on deck as
Darwin often made. To this man specimens were
"d—d beastly devilment," and he is said
to have added, "If I were skipper, I would
soon have you and all your d—d mess out
of the place." Darwin is quoted as saying
that the absolute necessity of tidiness in
the cramped space of the Beagle gave him his
methodical habits of work. On the Beagle,
too, he learned what he considered the golden
rule for saving time, i. e., take care of
the minutes, a rule that gives significance
to an expression he has somewhere used, that
all life is made of a succession of five-minute
periods.
Darwin, however, not only learned on the Beagle
how to work against time and under conditions
of material inconvenience, but he also acquired
the habit of carrying on his occupations under
considerable physical discomfort. Although
he was probably not seriously ill after the
first three weeks of the voyage, he was constantly
uncomfortable when the vessel pitched at all
heavily, and his sensitiveness to this trouble
is well shown in a letter dated June 3, 1836,
from the Cape of Good Hope, in which he said:
"It is lucky for me that the voyage is drawing
to a close, for I positively suffer more from
seasickness now than three years ago." Yet
he always kept busily at work, and notwithstanding
the more or less continuous nature of this
discomfort, he was not inclined to attribute
the digestive disturbances of his later life
to these early experiences.
The return voyage found his spirits somewhat
subdued. Writing to his sister from Bahia
in Brazil where the Beagle crossed her outward
course, he said: "It has been almost painful
to find how much good enthusiasm has been
evaporated in the last four years. I can now
walk soberly through a Brazilian forest."
Yet years after in rehearsing the voyage in
his autobiography he declared: "The glories
of the vegetation of the Tropics rise before
my mind at the present time more vividly than
anything else."
PRACTICAL RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE
Darwin's opinion of the value of the voyage
to him can scarcely be expressed better than
in his own words. In his later years he wrote:
"The voyage of the Beagle has been by far
the most important event of my life," and
again: "I have always felt that I owe to the
voyage the first real training or education
of my mind; I was led to attend closely to
several branches of natural history, and thus
my powers of observation were improved, though
they were always fairly developed." And finally
in a letter to Captain Fitz-Roy he said: "However
others may look back on the Beagle's voyage,
now that the small disagreeable parts are
well nigh forgotten, I think it far the most
fortunate circumstance in my life that the
chance afforded by your offer of taking a
naturalist fell on me. I often have the most
vivid and delightful pictures of what I saw
on board the Beagle pass before my eyes. These
recollections, and what I learned on natural
history, I would not exchange for twice ten
thousand a year."
But the voyage of the Beagle was not only
training for Darwin, it was the means of gathering
together a large and valuable collection of
specimens that kept naturalists busy for some
years to come, and added greatly to our knowledge
of these distant lands and seas. In the work
of arranging and describing these collections,
Darwin was finally obliged to take an active
part himself, for, to quote from his "Life
and Letters," it seemed "only gradually to
have occurred to him that he would ever be
more than a collector of specimens and facts,
of which the great men were to make use. And
even of the value of his collections he seems
to have had much doubt, for he wrote to Henslow
in 1834: 'I really began to think that my
collections were so poor that you were puzzled
what to say; the case is now quite on the
opposite tack, for you are guilty of exciting
all my vain feelings to a most comfortable
pitch; if hard work will atone for these thoughts
I vow it shall not be spared."' Thus the collections
made on the Beagle served to confirm Darwin
in the occupation of a naturalist and brought
him into contact with many of the working
scientists of his day.
SPECULATIVE RESULTS OF THE VOYAGE
Darwin, however, not only brought back, as
a result of his work on the Beagle, large
collections of interesting specimens, but
he came home with a mind richly stored with
new ideas, and one of these he put into shape
so rapidly that it forms no small part of
"The Voyage of the Beagle." During much of
the latter part of the journey he was occupied
with a study of coral islands and his theory
of the method of formation of these remarkable
deposits was the first to gain general acceptance
in the scientific world. In fact, his views
gained so firm a foothold that they are to-day
more generally accepted than those of any
other naturalist. But coral islands were not
the only objects of his speculations. Without
doubt he spent much time reflecting on that
problem of problems, the origin of species,
for, though there is not much reference to
this subject either in the "Voyage" itself
or in his letters of that period, he states
in his autobiography that in July, 1837, less
than a year after his return, he opened his
first notebook for facts in relation to the
origin of species about which, as he remarks,
he had long reflected. Thus the years spent
on the Beagle were years rich in speculation
as well as in observation and field work.
Doubtless the direct results of the voyage
of the Beagle were acceptable to the British
Admiralty and justified in their eyes the
necessary expenditure of money and energy.
But the great accomplishment of that voyage
was not the charting of distant shore lines
nor the carrying of a chain of chronometrical
measurements round the world; it was the training
and education of Charles Darwin as a naturalist,
and no greater tribute can be paid to the
voyage than what Darwin himself has said:
"I feel sure that it was this training which
has enabled me to do whatever I have done
in science."
