Evolution's Captain: The Dark Fate of the Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around the World

292 Pages·2003·1.53 MB·English

by  Peter Nichols

EVOLUTION’S CAPTAIN
The Story of
the Kidnapping
That Led to
Charles Darwin’s
Voyage Aboard
the “Beagle”
P N
ETER 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
Map
PART ONE
1
Port Famine, Strait of Magellan, August 2, 1828. It is…
2
In 1934, Nora Barlow, the granddaughter of Charles Darwin, visited…
3
In January 1829, HMS Adventure, with Captain King, HMS Beagle,…
4
Small wonder the job had driven Pringle Stokes mad.
5
FitzRoy has been characterized as going after the Fuegians who…
6
FitzRoy—s instructions from the British Admiralty contained no provisions
about…
PART TWO
7
The term “collecting” had a particular weight attached to it…
8
Early in December 1830, Coxswain Bennett and the Beagle’s recent…
9
It was FitzRoy’s man on the scene, Coxswain Bennett, installed…
10
Perhaps only the dawn of the Internet, and the computer…
11
Or so FitzRoy told Alexander Charles Wood, his cousin, a…
12
Darwin traveled to Devonport by coach on October 24, 1831.
PART THREE
13
As the Beagle rolled and pitched across the Bay of…
14
They had come a remarkably long way. There was no…
15
Nowhere are the designs of men more subject to the…
16
Darwin was among the large group that set out on…
17
A year and more into this second voyage aboard the…
18
FitzRoy never counted on Admiralty support for his extracurricular hiring…
19
Early voyagers called them the Enchanted Islands, but not because…
PART FOUR
20
The Beagle dropped anchor in Falmouth, England, on October 2,…
21
Sometime between coming home in October 1836 and finishing his…
22
The book—in three volumes: King’s, FitzRoy’s, and Darwin’s, with a…
23
Religious mania was mainstream in nineteenth-century Britain. Almost as if…
24
Robert FitzRoy read of the massacre in the British press…
25
In October 1838…I happened to read for amusement Malthus…
26
In late June 1860, FitzRoy traveled by train to Oxford…
Epilogue
Late in 1863, two years before FitzRoy’s death, Reverend Whait…
Acknowledgments
Sources
About the Author
Praise
Other Books by Peter Nichols
Copyright
About the Publisher

Map
PART ONE