Today, a young man boards a ship and redirects
history. The University of Houston's College of
Engineering presents this series about the machines
that make our civilization run, and the people
whose ingenuity created them.
The year is 1831. A
22-year-old student presents himself for the post
of ship's naturalist on a long voyage of
exploration. He does so at the urging of a
professor and over his father's objections. In a
London office, he meets the captain, who is himself
only 26. The two form a powerful affinity and the
student is hired.
The student was Charles Darwin -- just graduated
from Cambridge. Darwin had been an undistinguished
student, but he'd shown a real flair for natural
history. The captain was Robert Fitzroy, an intense
religious fundamentalist and strict charismatic
leader. The ship was a brig, only 90 feet long,
named the Beagle. Fitzroy had been
given command of the Beagle when he
was only 23.
The purpose of the voyage was twofold: to chart the
South American coast, and to check longitudes
around the world with a set of chronometers. Adding
young Darwin was an afterthought -- a way to
squeeze a little more scientific data out of a long
trip.
As Darwin prepared to sail, he sensed what he had
no way of knowing -- that he was sailing into
history. To his sister he wrote, "There is indeed a
tide in the affairs of men and I have experienced
it." To Fitzroy he wrote that the sailing date
would be "as a birthday for the rest of my life."
When the Beagle sailed, 3½
months later, Darwin stayed seasick all the way to
the Cape Verde Islands. But when he saw his first
volcanic island, just as Lyell had written about in
his famous geology text, Darwin he realized that he
too might write a book one day. He eventually wrote
many books, including one about volcanic islands
off South America. But it's Origin of
Species that we remember.
The last data Darwin needed for a theory of
evolution lay in the Galápagos Islands off
the west coast of South America. When Darwin
reached the Galápagos after four years
exploring the South American coast, he found its
plant and animal life had grown apart from that in
South America. Its evolution had been isolated.
The Galápagos put in perspective all that
Darwin had seen in South America. It would be 27
years before Darwin published his theory of
evolution by natural selection. But after the
Galápagos, that theory was inevitable. And
when it came out, Charles Lyell, whose book had so
reached Darwin, was an important early convert to
it.
Fitzroy was another story. That charming, intense
fundamentalist had befriended Darwin. His long
conversations had sharpened Darwin's arguments.
Fitzroy went on to become an admiral.
But Darwin's theory was too much for him. In 1860,
he showed up at a debate on
evolution at Oxford University to rage against
his old friend. Five years later, in a fit of
righteous frustration, Fitzroy cut his own throat.
He'd been first to see the genius in the boy. But,
in the end, Darwin asked us to accept more change
in the very nature of things than many people could
bear to accept.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Moorehead, A., Darwin and the Beagle.
New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1969.
See also articles in various editions of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica on Darwin and
Fitzroy.
For more on Darwin's voyage on the
Beagle, see Episode 617.
The complete text of Darwin's book, The
Voyage of the Beagle, is included in the
website http://www.literature.org/Works/Charles-Darwin/.
For a full-size image
click on the thumbnail
Image courtesy of Special
Collections, UH Library
The Beagle off the southern coast of South
America.
For a full-size image
click on the thumbnail
Image courtesy of Special
Collections, UH Library
Cutaway drawings of the Beagle
Both images from the Journal of Researches into
the Natural History and Geology of the Countries
Visited during the Voyage Round the World of H.M.S.
'Beagle', 1913.
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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