The Beagle voyage
Capt. F. wants a man (I understand) more as a companion than a mere collector & would not take any one however good a Naturalist who was not recommended to him likewise as a gentleman. …The Voyage is to last 2 yrs. & if you take plenty of Books with you, any thing you please may be done— You will have ample opportunities at command— In short I suppose there never was a finer chance for a man of zeal & spirit. (Letter from J. S. Henslow, 24 August 1831)
It was this letter from his friend and former teacher, John Stevens Henslow, Cambridge University Professor of Botany, that brought the 22-year-old Charles Darwin news of the offer of a place on board the Admiralty surveying vessel, HMS Beagle, on a voyage to chart the coast of South America. Charles returned on 29 August 1831 from a geological fieldtrip in Wales with another former teacher, Adam Sedgwick, to find the letter waiting for him at home in Shrewsbury. Henslow had been asked to recommend a young man as a companion to Robert FitzRoy, the Beagle’s captain; Darwin was not the first choice for the trip, but a combination of engaging social skills and an already evident appetite for natural history, brought him to the top of the list when first Henslow himself, and then Leonard Jenyns, was forced to turn it down.
It took several weeks to pursuade his reluctant father, Robert Waring Darwin, to give his permission and finance the trip, and more delays were caused by the refitting of the ship and by bad weather, but when the Beagle finally sailed from Plymouth on 27 December 1831, Charles was on board.
What was originally planned as a two-year voyage around the world stretched to five. During this time Darwin exchanged letters not only with his family, in particular his sisters, but with Henslow and others who could give him advice on how to make the most of the opportunities he had to observe and collect. All the letters have been published and are available in an illustrated book Charles Darwin: the Beagle Letters. Follow the link to the Beagle Letters for a list of selected letters and to read more about the adventures of the voyage. To find out more about the books that Darwin read during the journey, see the article on the ‘Books on the Beagle’.
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- Charles Darwin: the Beagle Letters
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- Books on the Beagle
“A Voyage Round the World”
Follow the story of the Beagle voyage through Darwin’s notes, books, letters, and specimens, now in the collections of Cambridge University, and displayed for the Bicentenary exhibition A Voyage Round the World, in Cambridge University Library in 2009. The text, captions, and images from the exhibition are available here.
Images of the wonderful drawings and watercolours from two of the sketchbooks kept by the Beagle artist, Conrad Martens, and now in Cambridge University Library, have been used to create a virtual sketchbook. The images are accompanied by Darwin’s own descriptions from his letters, selected by editors from the Darwin Correspondence Project.
Beagle plants
Images of plant specimens collected by Darwin during the voyage, and now in the University of Cambridge Herbarium, are available through a dedicated website, Darwin’s Plants from the Beagle Voyage.
Above: Specimen of Sicyos villosa collected in the Galápagos by Darwin and now extinct.
