On this day in 1831 the British Royal Navy launched a ship to map the coast of South America. Nobody on board had any idea how momentous this trip was to be.
December 27, 1831 — Royal Navy ship HMS Beagle set sail from England on this day on a five-year voyage of discovery to South America. The plan was to survey the coastline in detail and chart the harbours, enabling more detailed maps of the region.
But maps and charts were not the principal interest of one person on board. Charles Darwin had seized the chance of making the trip so that he could study the area’s animals, fossils, rocks and plants.
Darwin had been recommended for the post of naturalist on the voyage by one of his professors at Cambridge University. Taking full advantage of the opportunity he spent much of the trip on land collecting samples from regions including Brazil, Argentina and Chile, as well as the Galápagos Islands.
Darwin was a rich kid, the son of a doctor, who wasn’t all that interested in following dad’s footsteps.
Darwin spent the summer of 1825 as an apprentice doctor, helping his father treat the poor of Shropshire, before going to the well-regarded University of Edinburgh Medical School with his brother Erasmus in October 1825. Darwin found lectures dull and surgery distressing, so he neglected his studies.[26] He learned taxidermy in around 40 daily hour-long sessions from John Edmonstone, a freed black slave who had accompanied Charles Waterton in the South American rainforest.[27]
In Darwin's second year at the university, he joined the Plinian Society, a student natural-history group featuring lively debates in which radical democratic students with materialistic views challenged orthodox religious concepts of science.[28] He assisted Robert Edmond Grant's investigations of the anatomy and life cycle of marine invertebrates in the Firth of Forth, and on 27 March 1827 presented at the Plinian his own discovery that black spores found in oyster shells were the eggs of a skate leech. One day, Grant praised Lamarck's evolutionary ideas. Darwin was astonished by Grant's audacity, but had recently read similar ideas in his grandfather Erasmus' journals.[29] Darwin was rather bored by Robert Jameson's natural-history course, which covered geology—including the debate between Neptunism and Plutonism. He learned the classification of plants, and assisted with work on the collections of the University Museum, one of the largest museums in Europe at the time.[30]
Darwin's neglect of medical studies annoyed his father, who sent him to Christ's College, Cambridge, in January 1828, to study for a Bachelor of Arts degree as the first step towards becoming an Anglican country parson. Darwin was unqualified for Cambridge's Tripos exams, and was required instead to join the ordinary degree course.[31] He preferred riding and shooting to studying.[32]
Darwin was, however, intensely interested in studying nature. Darwin developed relationships with naturalists such as botany professor John Stevens Henslow. That got him a gig as a dinner guest for a ship’s captain.
After leaving Sedgwick in Wales, Darwin spent a few days with student friends at Barmouth. He returned home on 29 August to find a letter from Henslow proposing him as a suitable (if unfinished) naturalist for a self-funded supernumerary place on HMS Beagle with captain Robert FitzRoy, a position for a gentleman rather than "a mere collector". The ship was to leave in four weeks on an expedition to chart the coastline of South America.[42][43] Robert Darwin objected to his son's planned two-year voyage, regarding it as a waste of time, but was persuaded by his brother-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood II, to agree to (and fund) his son's participation.[44] Darwin took care to remain in a private capacity to retain control over his collection, intending it for a major scientific institution.[45]
After delays, the voyage began on 27 December 1831; it lasted almost five years. As FitzRoy had intended, Darwin spent most of that time on land investigating geology and making natural history collections, while HMS Beagle surveyed and charted coasts.[18][46] He kept careful notes of his observations and theoretical speculations, and at intervals during the voyage his specimens were sent to Cambridge together with letters including a copy of his journal for his family.[47] He had some expertise in geology, beetle collecting and dissecting marine invertebrates, but in all other areas, was a novice and ably collected specimens for expert appraisal.[48] Despite suffering badly from seasickness, Darwin wrote copious notes while on board the ship. Most of his zoology notes are about marine invertebrates, starting with plankton collected during a calm spell.[46][49]
Darwin’s adventures in the southern hemisphere gave him the insight that evolution is driven, in part, by natural selection. This forever changed our understanding of the world we live in.
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