H.M.S. Beagle, 1820-1870

摘要

With these words, Charles Darwin began his account of one of the most important voyages made in the 19th century. More than 100 years later we know a great deal about the voyage and about Charles Darwin, and we have learned quite a lot about Robert FitzRoy. But about the Beagle herself-a tiny vessel only 90 feet long which made three enormously important surveying voyages between 1826 and 1843-very little is known. I first began to read about the Beagle in the course of my work as an evolutionary biologist, and as I learned more and more, I was struck by the fact that so many statements about her, in works on Darwin and others connected with the second voyage, contradict each other. For example, in one book we read that the Beagle was sold to Japan and used as a training ship. In another we find that she ended her days at Southend-or was it Paglesham-in Essex. She was nominally a 10-gun brig but for most of her career was rigged as a three-masted bark. Why the conversion? Authorities cannot even agree when the change was made. No plans of the Beagle were known to exist, and there are few contemporary illustrations.