Darwin's Journey On The HMS Beagle

On February 12th, 1809, a man was born who would change the world of biology forever. A medical school dropout born into a family of doctors, Charles Robert Darwin at first looked like he would be a disappointment to his parents. However, his wish to travel the world using the family money instead of pursuing his medical career turned out to be the best decision he could have made. The observations and discoveries Darwin made on his voyage on the HMS Beagle fueled the thought process that would evolve into the idea of natural selection, the fundamental basis for one of the most well supported scientific truths – the theory of evolution. Darwin began his journey on the HMS Beagle, which departed in December of 1831, with the works of Charles

The landing of the ship at various ports offered him a respite from the sea sickness that plagued him whenever they sailed, but that wasn’t the reason he enjoyed himself so much. As he stated in his journal, “in these fertile climates, teeming with life, the attractions are so numerous, that [a man] is scarcely able to walk at all.”[2] The islands they explored were full of wonder for Darwin. A stark difference from his home in England, filled with plants and animals he had never seen before, and he gathered more specimens than he ever could have hoped for. These samples he sent back to England, “fearing others would think his discoveries of little importance to natural science.”[3] His fears were unfounded, as many of the specimens and fossils he sent back were things that had never been studied by modern scientists, as he found out when a ship came from England bearing letters from home. This ship contained another surprise for Darwin too – a copy of Charles Lyell’s second volume of Principles of Geology, which had just been

Darwin seemed to know even before he got there that they would contain his most significant findings yet, he even wrote a letter to his sister claiming “I am very anxious to see the Galapagos Islands, -- I think both the Geology & Zoology cannot fail to be very interesting”. His claims turned out to be quite right. Exploring a few of the different islands, Darwin was intrigued by the wild variety of plants and animals on the island and he was even quoted later saying "The natural history of this archipelago is very remarkable: it seems to be a little world within itself; the greater number of its inhabitants, both vegetable and animal, being found nowhere else." An Englishman living there impressed Darwin with the observation that you could tell which island a tortoise came from just by looking at its shell, a fact Darwin thought interesting but did not realize the significance of until after his journey. Sticking to the Lyell theory, he wrote in his journal, “It will be very interesting to find from future comparison to what district or 'center of creation' the organized beings of this archipelago must be attached”. [6] The captain of the HMS Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, also noticed the variation in the species, birds in particular, and seemed to agree with Darwin and Lyell. After observing how the birds living on the lava islands had strong beaks to help them