Evolution's Captain: The Dark Fate Of The Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around The World (2003) - Plot & Excerpts
There are different echelons in the fame that men win. For his work on evolution, Charles Darwin is among the gods, who, however assailed my true believers of the fundamentalist religious persuasion, will be remembered alongside Newton, Galileo, and Harvey. But what of the man who was the Captain of the H.M.S. Beagle, the ship on which Darwin sailed on a five-year circumnavigation of the globe that included almost four years in Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego. Robert Fitzroy is remembered today primarily as the man who took Darwin on that journey that gave birth to Darwin's classic Voyage of the Beagle. What did he do on his own? Among his successes are the accurate mapping of the South American waterways that was so accurate that it was used for over a hundred years. Later in life, he founded the British Weather Service and was instrumental in making weather predictions that, at that time, were more accurate than had been seen.The fly in the ointment in his life was a combination of rigid religious beliefs and a family predilection for suicide. Darwin's theories of evolution galled him to no end, and to be held responsible for giving him the opportunity to topple the superstructure of the Christian religion preyed on his mind. Between the voyage of the Beagle and his role as head of the British Weather Service, he had a series of notable failures, most particularly his governorship of New Zealand, from which he was cashiered after two years. Another failure was his attempt to bring several Fuegian Indians to England and return them to their native land to help spread Christianity. One of them, called Jemmy Button, was instead held responsible for a massacre of Christian missionaries at Woollya in 1859.Nichols's biography made for an interesting read. At times I felt as if I were looking through the wrong end of a telescope, looking for Darwin and seeing Fitzroy instead. But that's what the book was ultimately about: As Ecclesiastes said, the race is not always to the swift. Fitzroy was perhaps not always swift, but he played a role, albeit secondary, that changed the world as we see it. I will think about that in November 2011, when I travel to Patagonia and view the Fitzroy Massif of the Andes from El Calafate.
Again, an historian bets on the obscurity of his subject to make his book and loses. Ostensibly the story of one Robert FitzRoy, captain of Darwin's ship the Beagle, this disorganized book turn out to be mostly the story of the controversies surrounding Darwin himself, the particulars of the expedition and the subsequent reaction to the newly-formulated theory of evolution. FitzRoy's story is interwoven throughout, but not skillfully so. The plotting is busy,and the prose too dry and generic to handle it well. The book does drive home the seriousness of the controversy evolution stirred up. That in itself is worth some study, but along with the loosely-constricted narratives of contemporary popular science, religious reactions to evolution both contemporary and current and the tale of a voyage, it gets lost in a mix of too much information delivered in a humdrum monotone. A piece of a fascinating puzzle, but not a convincingly important one, and not much of an interesting one.
What do You think about Evolution's Captain: The Dark Fate Of The Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around The World (2003)?
I found this a very powerful book in capturing so much of history in such few pages. It brought to life the emotional roll coaster life of the British naval officer FitzRoy's. His navigation of South American waters in the 1830s would refine the mapping of the world that exists today as well as his contribution to meteorology. It also provides an amazing insight into FitzRoy's role in facilitating Darwin develop his theories in transforming one species into another, whereby a plant or animal selected their best features based on the best adoption to its environment for survival rather than theology. It also showed how society at the time wasn't very supportive to their unsung heros
—Starlight
An innovative approach to a controversial issue through examining the life of the captain of the HMS Beagle. Part one covers the career of Captain FitzRoy and provides a detailed understanding of his character and personality. Also included is the early life of Charles Darwin. It helps the reader view the humanity of one who has become larger than life.The second half is weaker. The content shifts to Darwin and his change from devout Christian to founder of atheistic evolution. This could have been portrayed more thoroughly considering that this is the major focus of the rest of the book. I saw Captain FitzRoy becoming a figure representing those who will become extinct because they hold onto a supposedly inadequate and inconsistent belief system. While his kind die out, the more fit (atheistic evolutionists?) survive.The author describes the seas of the southern latitudes in a way that I could feel the spray and the gales, but his attempt to address the evolution-creation controversy left me in the doldrums.
—Russ Jarvis
I found this book really interesting. It tells the story of Robert FitzRoy, the Captain of the 'Beagle'. He was appointed Captain after the suicide of the former Captain and undertook extensive survey work in the Magellan Strait. He was a true man of his times, to the extent that he even took four of the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego back to London with him in an ill-fated attempt to 'civilise' them. He returned to South America, taking his 'savages' back, and also Charles Darwin, who was to be a companion for him. Little did either of them realise how important this voyage would be, and the ultimate tragedy for Robert FitzRoy.While there is a certain amount of nautical terminology, the book has a much wider brief. It discusses the scientific debate and social mores of the time and puts it all into context.
—Amanda
