A short history of nearly everything - Bill Bryson [192]
A life in a rural vicarage seemed to await him when from out of the blue there came a more tempting offer. Darwin was invited to sail on the naval survey ship HMS Beagle, essentially as dinner company for the captain, Robert FitzRoy, whose rank precluded his socializing with anyone other than a gentleman. FitzRoy, who was very odd, chose Darwin in part because he liked the shape of Darwin's nose. (It betokened depth of character, he believed.) Darwin was not FitzRoy's first choice, but got the nod when FitzRoy's preferred companion dropped out. From a twenty-first-century perspective the two men's most striking joint feature was their extreme youthfulness. At the time of sailing, FitzRoy was only twenty-three, Darwin just twenty-two.
FitzRoy's formal assignment was to chart coastal waters, but his hobby—passion really—was to seek out evidence for a literal, biblical interpretation of creation. That Darwin was trained for the ministry was central to FitzRoy's decision to have him aboard. That Darwin subsequently proved to be not only liberal of view but less than wholeheartedly devoted to Christian fundamentals became a source of lasting friction between them.
Darwin's time aboard HMS Beagle, from 1831 to 1836, was obviously the formative experience of his life, but also one of the most trying. He and his captain shared a small cabin, which can't have been easy as FitzRoy was subject to fits of fury followed by spells of simmering resentment. He and Darwin constantly engaged in quarrels, some “bordering on insanity,” as Darwin later recalled. Ocean voyages tended to become melancholy undertakings at the best of times—the previous captain of the Beagle had put a bullet through his brain during a moment of lonely gloom—and FitzRoy came from a family well known for a depressive instinct. His uncle, Viscount Castlereagh, had slit his throat the previous decade while serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer. (FitzRoy would himself commit suicide by the same method in 1865.) Even in his calmer moods, FitzRoy proved strangely unknowable. Darwin was astounded to learn upon the conclusion of their voyage that almost at once FitzRoy married a young woman to whom he had long been betrothed. In five years in Darwin's company, he had not once hinted at an attachment or even mentioned her name.
In every other respect, however, the Beagle voyage was a triumph. Darwin experienced adventure enough to last a lifetime and accumulated a hoard of specimens sufficient to make his reputation and keep him occupied for years. He found a magnificent trove of giant ancient fossils, including the finest Megatherium known to date; survived a lethal earthquake in Chile; discovered a new species of dolphin (which he dutifully named Delphinus fitzroyi); conducted diligent and useful geological investigations throughout the Andes; and developed a new and much-admired theory for the formation of coral atolls, which suggested, not coincidentally, that atolls could not form in less than a million years—the first hint of his long-standing attachment to the extreme antiquity of earthly processes. In 1836, aged twenty-seven, he returned home after being away for five years and two days. He never left England again.
One thing Darwin didn't do on the voyage was propound the theory (or even a theory) of evolution. For a start, evolution as a concept was already decades old by the 1830s. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus, had paid tribute to evolutionary principles in a poem of inspired mediocrity called “The Temple of Nature” years before Charles was even born. It wasn't until the younger Darwin was back in England and read Thomas Malthus's Essay