Captain FitzRoy's Protégé

Captain FitzRoy’s Protégé Peter Nichols NONFICTION 113 When he came home from his circumnavigation of the world aboard HMS Beagle, Charles Darwin had a book to write. It was to be one volume—essentially a footnote—of a much larger work describing the Beagle’s two voyages up to that time, being prepared by her captain, Robert FitzRoy. Darwin had been the ship’s naturalist, or “natural philosopher ” in the lexicon of the day, on the Beagle’s second voyage, and his book covered the natural history of the countries he had visited. The other volumes were concerned with the primary purpose of the voyages : the charting by FitzRoy and crew aboard the Beagle and another ship, HMS Adventure, of the South American coasts. These volumes included an account of FitzRoy’s capture of four Fuegian natives and his unsuccessful attempt to Christianize them in England and return them to Tierra del Fuego to establish a mission in that desolate part of the world—a fantastic misadventure , a tragicomedy of colonial hubris. Yet this misbegotten experiment had the profoundest outcome: FitzRoy’s Fuegians had become an embarrassment to him and the Admiralty (their transformations were less than successful, and there was talk of sexual misbehavior between them) and his need to get them out of England quickly and back to South America prompted the second, more historic voyage of the Beagle. Darwin sailed aboard the Beagle because FitzRoy was a manic-depressive with suicides in his family tree—his uncle, the Marquis of Londonderry, had slashed his own throat with a razor when FitzRoy was fifteen—and he wanted a gentleman companion to unburden himself to during the long months and years of what was proposed as, and became, a lengthy voyage around the world. Darwin was not his first choice. The British Admiralty had sent a letter to the scientific community at Cambridge University inviting one of their number as a companion to the captain on a world voyage. It was like an invitation to join a space mission circumnavigating the solar system, the incredible opportunity of a lifetime, but a daunting practical commitment. A number of professors leaped at the idea, but found, because of families, responsibilities, and a myriad of other reasons, Darwin sailed aboard the Beagle because FitzRoy was a manic-depressive with suicides in his family tree. 114 Ecotone: reimagining place they couldn’t get away. Finally, in the fall of 1871, the invitation found its way to an unencumbered Cambridge student, a wealthy, twentytwo -year-old frat boy who liked to party and ride to hounds, who had previously flunked out of medical school, but was popular and, as a natural philosopher, promising: Charles Darwin. The student traveled to London to meet the Royal Navy captain. FitzRoy was then twenty-six. He was vastly more experienced, and far more broadly and deeply educated in every field of science and the arts than Darwin. He had been sent to the Royal Naval College at Portsmouth when he was twelve years old and had consumed its threeyear curriculum—which included Greek, Latin, mathematics, history, modern languages, drawing, painting, astronomy, and Newtonian philosophy, in addition to the whole field of naval-specific studies—in twenty months. He graduated with full marks and a gold medal, neither of which had ever been awarded to another cadet. At fourteen he went to sea, serving aboard ships in the Mediterranean and South American squadrons. By the time Darwin met him, FitzRoy was a seasoned master mariner, traveler, and polymathic scientist. In an age when it was still possible for a man to hold in his mind a summary of virtually all human knowledge (or the knowledge derived from Western cultures, anyway), FitzRoy was such a man. He was also handsome, aristocratic, and rich. Darwin was dazzled. He wrote home: “I have seen him; it is no use attempting to praise him as much as I feel inclined to do for you would not believe me.” FitzRoy was less impressed. A believer in phrenology, he had grave doubts the moment he clapped eyes on Darwin: The boy’s brow was disconcertingly bulbous, overhanging the deep-set eyes almost like...