SOURCES
My most constant guide was Robert FitzRoy, in his massive four-volume Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle Between the Years 1826 and 1836 Describing Their Examination of the Southern Shores of South America and the Beagle’s Circumnavigation of the Globe, by FitzRoy, Captain Phillip Parker King, Captain Pringle Stokes, and, in Volume 3, Charles Darwin. Surely one of the most complete and exhaustive accounts of any (two) voyage(s) in history, this work is rich not only in its observations of wind, weather, sea and coast, nature ashore, and every possible aspect of a prolonged exploration of the globe by ship in the early nineteenth century, but today it is most valuable for the view of the world of its main author, Captain Robert FitzRoy. He carried with him in all his doings the forthright prejudices of his age, and this gives his Narrative its great worth as a historical document. Only a few thousand copies were printed by its publisher Henry Colburn in 1839; Darwin’s Volume 3, later retitled Voyage of the Beagle, found a lasting readership and has never been out of print, but the full four-volume set is a rarity, going for $50,000 or more if one can be found. I was lucky to find a complete, virtually new, clothbound facsimile reprint, complete with charts, published by AMR Press of New York in 1966, for $350.
Janet Browne’s magisterial two-volume biography of Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin; Voyaging (1995, Jonathan Cape, London) and Charles Darwin; The Power of Place (2002, Knopf, New York) was almost as useful. Browne’s knowledge of Darwin and the world he lived in is encyclopedic, her authority absolute. Her book, with its bibliography, was a constant resource for me. Also very useful early on was the introduction Janet Browne wrote with Michael Neve to the Penguin edition of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle (1989).
Of course, Charles Darwin himself. The 1839 (Narrative, Vol. 3, Colburn) and 1845 (John Murray, London; 1909, 1937, Collier/Harvard, New York) editions of his Voyage. His Beagle Diary, which formed the basis for his Voyage; I used the Cambridge University Press edition (paper, 2001, Cambridge), with useful additions, edited by Darwin’s great-grandson, Richard Darwin Keynes.
Various editions of Origin of Species. Darwin’s letters from the Folio Society edition of A Narrative of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle, edited by David Stanbury (1977, UK). The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, unabridged version edited by Nora Barlow (1958, Collins, London).
Many historic documents at the Public Records Office, Kew Gardens, London—ADM 1/1818; 1/2031; 51/3026; 51/3053; 52/3965; 53/239 among others—comprising the logbooks of H.M.S. Beagle; letters by Captains FitzRoy, Philip Parker King, and Pringle Stokes; particularly, most fascinatingly, King’s long letter to his superiors at the Admiralty explaining the circumstances and details of the death of Stokes, the Beagle’s first commander (ADM 1/2031). To hold these documents in one’s hand for an hour, to read these pre-Victorian captains’ flourish-embellished handwriting, is worth months of factual research.
For most of the facts of Robert FitzRoy’s life, FitzRoy of the Beagle, by H.E.L. Mellersh. London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968.
And then:
Ackroyd, Peter; London. London: Chatto & Windus, 2000.
Annan, Noel; The Dons. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Beaglehole, J.C.; The Life of Captain James Cook. London: A&C Black, 1974.
Bridges, E. Lucas. Uttermost Part of the Earth. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1951.
Caldwell, John. Desperate Voyage. London: Victor Gollancz, 1952.
Dugan, James. The Great Iron Ship. New York: Harper Brothers, 1953.
Fowles, John. The French Lieutenant’s Woman. New York: Little, Brown, 1969.
Freeman, Michael. Railways and the Victorian Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999.
Gosse, Edmund. Father and Son. London: Penguin, 1986.
Gosse, Philip Henry. Omphalos. London: John Van Voorst, 1857.
Hazlewood, Nick. Savage. London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2001.
Hayter, Alethea. A Sultry Month. London: Robin Clark, 1992.
Hiscock, Eric. Cruising Under Sail. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950.
Hughes-Hallet, Penelope. The Immortal Dinner. London: Viking, 2000.
Hydrographer of the Navy. South America Pilot, Volume 2. United Kingdom: Hydrographic Office of the British Royal Navy, 1993.
Inwood, Stephen. A History of London. New York: Carroll & Graf, 1998.
Marquardt, Karl Heinz. H.M.S. Beagle. London: Conway Maritime Press, 1997.
Morris, James. Heaven’s Command; Pax Britannica. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1973.
Moorehead, Alan. Darwin and the Beagle. London: Hamish Hamilton, 1969.
Pakenham, Thomas. The Scramble for Africa. London: Abacus, 1992.
Reisenberg, Felix. Cape Horn. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1939.
Rich, Louise Dickenson. The Coast of Maine. Maine: Down East Books, 1993.
Ritchie, Rear-Admiral G.S. The Admiralty Chart. London: Pentland Press, 1995.
Robinson, W.A. 10,000 Leagues Over the Sea. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1932.
Rodger, N.A.M. The Wooden World. New York: Norton, 1996.
Severin, Tim. The Spice Islands Voyage. London: Little, Brown, 1997.
Slocum, Joshua. Sailing Alone Around the World. New York: The Century Company, 1900.
Thwaite, Ann. Glimpses of the Wonderful; The Life of Philip Henry Gosse. London: Faber & Faber, 2002.
Vaughan, Adrian. Brunel. London: John Murray, 1993.
Wallace, Alfred Russell. The Malay Archipelago. London: Macmillan, 1869; My Life. London: Chapman and Hall, 1905.
Zimmer, Carl. Evolution. New York: HarperCollins, 2001.
About the Author
PETER NICHOLS is the author of the national bestseller A Voyage for Madmen and two other books, Sea Change: Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat, a memoir, and the novel Voyage to the North Star. He has taught creative writing at New York University in Paris, Georgetown University, and Bowdoin College. He lives in Maine with his wife and son.
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Praise for Evolution’s Captain
“A powerful story played out against a beguiling landscape…that manages to convey just how heretical the theory of evolution was…. A meaty book…. Nichols has a finely tuned sense of history.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Nichols has done a first-rate job bringing to life a troubled man. His portrait of FitzRoy is sympathetic, engaging, and ultimately tragic. It is a well-written and lively tale, filled with insightful analysis and telling details.”
—Seattle Times
“Nichols delivers a dramatic, highly colored narrative about the head-on collision between two worldviews, one rooted in faith, the other in science.”
—Washington Post
“Fascinating…. Evolution’s Captain [has] a sense of drama that never lets up…further evidence of [Nichols’s] skill as a historian, researcher, and elegant writer.”
—Associated Press
“[It’s] hard not to share Nichols’s fascination with how FitzRoy…inadvertently set off a scientific controversy still flaring to this day.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A wonderful evocation of the tragic story of Robert FitzRoy, the Beagle’s captain who took Charles Darwin around the world and regretted it ever afterwards. The forgotten other half of the story behind the Darwinian revolution, FitzRoy has never before been treated with such an understanding eye.”
—Janet Browne, Darwin biographer and winner of the NBCC award for nonfiction
“Peter Nichols’s marvelous and intelligent new book tells the story of brilliant, tortured, and ultimately doomed Robert FitzRoy, who signed on Charles Darwin for an around-the-world surveying expedition and precipitated a scientific revolution. Evolution’s Captain is a fascinating and expert amalgam of history, science, anthropology, and seagoing adventure, and a gripping, penetrating account of one man’s struggle with his soul.”
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br /> —Derek Lundy, author of The Way of a Ship
“Engaging and fascinating…. FitzRoy’s extraordinary story is told beautifully.”
—The Times (London)
“Powerful and accessible…. Biography at its racy, compelling best. Nichols, an experienced yachtsman, brings an immediate sense of thrill and adventure to his subject and gives us a real historical page-turner.”
—The Observer
“Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle, was a much more interesting man than Charles Darwin: more complicated, more passionate, and driven so fiercely by principle that he could be said to have been destroyed by his own virtues…. Nichols knows about the strains of life on a small ship and he is…alive to the wildness of the sea and its ferocity.”
—New Scientist
“Nichols has done a magnificent job of bringing this awkward, intense, wrongheaded man to life. Crammed with fascinating and well-researched detail, the book has all the excitement of an old-fashioned nautical yarn as well as being an astute and convincing psychological portrait. Finally, Robert FitzRoy gets the sympathetic star billing he longed for all his life.”
—Sunday Tribune (London)
“Splendid…. The seafaring episodes off the southern tip of South America are frighteningly vivid…. Three hearty cheers for this sympathetic and stirring account.”
—Newsquest Media
Also by Peter Nichols
Sea Change:
Alone Across the Atlantic in a Wooden Boat
Voyage to the North Star
A Voyage for Madmen
Copyright
EVOLUTION’S CAPTAIN. Copyright © 2003 by Peter Nichols. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © APRIL 2007 ISBN: 9780061849893
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*William’s niece, Victoria, succeeded him on his death in 1837.
*The fox still roams the Falklands.
*I saw a FitzRoy in poor condition go for £25 at Christie’s in London on October 31, 2002. Models in better condition will fetch anywhere between several hundred to several thousand dollars.
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