FitzRoy
John and Mary Gribbin
Review Books 2003
Pp xii + 336
ISBN 0 7553 1181 7
Price 18.99
Evolutions Captain
Peter Nichols
Profile Books 2003
Pp 336
ISBN 1 86197 451 5
Price 16.99
Robert FitzRoy is best known as the captain of the Beagle the ship in which Charles Darwin travelled round the world on the voyage that led to his theory of evolution by natural selection.
But as these two new books make clear, although overshadowed in his own lifetime by the younger Darwin and largely forgotten subsequently, FitzRoy himself lived a full and interesting life. He was an outstanding seaman and scientist he was responsible for surveying much of South Americas coastline, and his charts were in use for over one hundred years until well after the Second World War, he was an MP and governor of New Zealand for a period, and in the last ten years of his life he did pioneering work on weather forecasting as the founding director of the (UK) Meteorological Office.
Indeed it is this latter association that has led to the renewed interest in FitzRoy, with the recent renaming of the Finisterre shipping area (off the north-west coast of Spain) FitzRoy in his honour.
FitzRoy was born in 1805, a member of the aristocracy, with private means and connections both of which would prove vital during his lifetime. He joined the Royal Navy at the age of 12, first going to sea at 14, and by the age of 23 he had his first command, the Beagle. His first voyage had been to South American waters to participate in survey work there, and in the Beagle he was sent back there to continue surveying, particularly around Tierra del Fuego.
But that voyage took an unusual turn when FitzRoy acquired/kidnapped four Fuegians. Initially these were intended as hostages for a boat that had been stolen, but he subsequently decided to take them back to England to educate them before returning them to their land. And it was on their return voyage that he decided to take along a scientific person Darwin principally to collect scientific information from the region, but also to provide himself with companionship, mindful of the depressive nature that had led his uncle, Lord Castlereagh, to slit his own throat, and also that his predecessor on the Beagle, Pringle Stokes, had on those very shores shot himself in a fit of depression.
FitzRoys captaincy of the Beagle and his association with Darwin is the best documented part of his life and makes up the bulk of these books. After that episode, apart from being involved in the commissioning of the Navys first screw-driven ship HMS Arrogant, he didnt hold another sea-going command, but he remained concerned about safety at sea and as meteorological statist, he started weather forecasting and provided the first storm warnings to shipping, and also developed a standard barometer. However the years of physical and mental strain took their toll, and exacerbated by a combination of factors, including family losses, criticism for his failure to provide accurate forecasts and the publication by Darwin of his ideas, which conflicted his own increasingly fundamentalist views, history caught up with FitzRoy a few weeks short of his 60th birthday.
These two books cover much the same ground and there are common quotes, unsurprisingly since they are based on the same primary reference material, but the Gribbins work also includes detailed endnotes, an index and photographs, all of which Nichols book lacks. The approach of the two is also somewhat different and the Gribbins give more coverage to FitzRoys post-Beagle years, while Nichols, who is also inclined to fanciful speculation, goes into more detail on Darwins ideas and the subsequent fate of FitzRoys Fuegians. For the Gribbins, FitzRoy is very much a hero, but one senses that while Nichols has respect for FitzRoy as a fellow seaman, he doesnt much like him as a man, even making allowances for the thinking of the day.
These comments aside, both of these works are highly readable and bring to life a figure who deserves to be better remembered. Who, for example, now knows the origin of the term synoptic chart, or even weather forecast?
(Jonathan Spencer Jones)
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