Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World

by Tom Chaffin

Overview

An illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and his adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.

Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography/Memoir

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.—Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin—alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs.
Though storied, the Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America—particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador’s coast—eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle—an invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the ship's depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagle's purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions.
Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwin's Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, cities—including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year "voyage" on land—three years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexities—the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sources— in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle—Chaffin brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781643139081
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	02/01/2022
Pages:	336
Sales rank:	644,705
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Tom Chaffin is the author of, among other books, Revolutionary Brothers; Giant's Causeway; Sea of Gray; and Pathfinder. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times, the Oxford American, Time, Harper's, and other publications. He lives in Atlanta. Visit him at tomchaffin.com.

Table of Contents

Maps x

The Wedgwood and Darwin Family Tree xii

Introduction: Hiding in Plain Sight xv

Part I "We Philosophers Do Not Bargain for this Kind of Work" August 1833 1

1 Looking for the General 3

2 "The Perfect Gaucho" 10

Part II Shropshire Lad, 1809-1831 15

3 "Gas" 17

4 Edinburgh 25

5 Cambridge 34

6 "You Are the Very Man They Are in Search For" 44

7 Captain FitzRoy 52

8 HMS Beagle 63

9 Devonport 68

Part III Odysseus Unbound, 1832 75

10 Marine Life 77

11 In Humboldtian Climes 85

12 Tropic of Slavery 96

13 Rio 102

14 A Night at the Venda da Matto 112

15 Botafogo Idyll 117

16 "Laughable Revolutions" 123

Part IV Austral Climes, 1832-1833 131

17 "No Painter Ever Imagined So Wild a Set of Expressions" 133

18 Tierra del Fuego 143

19 Navarino Island 156

20 El Dorado Lost 167

21 In Patagonia 176

22 Cerro Tres Picos 186

23 "I thank Providence I am here with an Entire Throat" 188

24 Tierra del Fuego Redux 193

25 Rio Santa Cruz Ascent 207

Part V Round the Horn, 1834-1836 213

26 The Heights of Cerro La Campana 215

27 "Strange Proceedings Aboard the Beagle" 223

28 "The Greatest Phenomena to which This World is Subject" 228

29 Adventures on the Andes' Atlantic Coast 235

30 Galápagos 246

31 West of the One-Hundred-Eightieth Meridian 260

32 Antipodes 269

33 "Round the World, Like a Flying Dutchman" 276

Part VI Great Britain, 1836-1882 293

34 Odysseus Returns 295

35 "Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work" 308

36 "The Highest & Most Interesting Problem for the Naturalist" 315

Epilogue: Advice for Travelers 321

Acknowledgments 323

Image credits 329

A Note on Sources and Style 331

Bibliography 333

Endnotes 341

Index 355

Editorial Reviews

11/22/2021

Historian Chaffin (Revolutionary Brothers) delivers a granular look at Charles Darwin’s journey aboard the HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836. Drawing on Darwin’s voluminous diaries and letters and the writings of Capt. Robert FitzRoy and others onboard, Chaffin meticulously, if somewhat ponderously, charts the ship’s many stops along the coast of South America and Darwin’s long excursions into the interior. (He spent three-fifths of the five-year voyage on land.) Copious attention is paid to the natural specimens Darwin collected, as well as to his scientific influences, including geologist Charles Lyell, who broke with prevailing opinion to argue that “still active and readily observable natural processes, rather than rare catastrophes” shaped the earth. Back in England, Darwin drew from Lyell’s theories and the observations he had made in Punta Alta, Argentina, the Galápagos Islands, and elsewhere to develop his ideas about the evolution of plants and animals. Though medical ailments and fears about religious blowback delayed the publication of The Origin of the Species until 1859, Chaffin clearly demonstrates that Darwin’s time aboard the Beagle formed the “intellectual bedrock” for his theory of natural selection. Even if the documentation of every excursion grows tedious, readers with a passion for the subject will savor this account of the scientific process at work. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Compelling. Mr. Chaffin’s Odyssey presents a heroic adventure. His robust Darwin is an English Odysseus sailing a global wine-dark sea. [The book] offers new and exciting ideas that will likely beat out the competition."

The Wall Street Journal

"This retelling of Charles Darwin’s momentous journey on HMS Beagle offers a fresh and lively narrative in the round. We learn of Darwin’s appreciation of literature, his many land expeditions, his friends and colleagues on the ship, and the individuals who helped him gather a magnificent collection of natural history specimens and memories to last the rest of his life. Tom Chaffin links these transformative experiences to Odysseus’s celebrated wanderings and reveals the ways in which the young Darwin developed into a remarkable thinker."

Janet Browne

In Odyssey, Tom Chaffin presents a crisp and colorful narrative of Charles Darwin’s seminal voyage on the HMS Beagle, frequently and advantageously animated by Darwin’s own words. It is a vivid and insightful account of Darwin’s experiences and observations leading to his world-shattering theory of natural selection.”

Rob Wesson

Tom Chaffin lays out in spectacular detail and verve Darwin’s voyage, crisply painting vibrant scenes of his many companions and––occasionally dangerous––encounters. . . . Bristling with tales and facts that whet the appetite for more, Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, the Beagle, and the Voyage that Changed the World is an achievement one suspects Chaffin could only have pulled off by mastering time travel to stow aboard the Beagle himself."

Douglas C. Braaten

"Reading like a spectacular novel and drawing on Darwin’s journals and unpublished sources, Odyssey gives readers the details of Darwin’s formative experiences. The book is a brilliant contribution to the understanding of the cultural, intellectual, and even quotidian forces that shaped one of the world’s most influential scientists. Novelistic nonfiction at its best."

Rebecca Coffey

"One might think that, by now, the 'Darwin industry' had exhausted its material and, as has been suggested, studied “every laundry list... with paralyzing diligence for some extra insight into the character of the great man”. It turns out that there remains space for fresh perspectives on the life of one of the most important scientists in history. Chaffin’s narrative of Darwin's Beagle travels makes the reader feel like we’re there with an extraordinary young man as he explores—and ultimately creates a theory that will explain—the world. This is a well-told version of a great and enormously consequential adventure."

Warren D. Allmon

"Tom Chaffin’s Odyssey is a masterpiece. While focused on Darwin‘s Beagle travels, this lively and detailed, tightly-woven narrative also provides a splendid overview of the great Victorian naturalist’s life. Published and unpublished contemporary writings by Darwin and others, as well as up-to-date scholarship, lend colour to depicted events. All the while, the flesh-and-blood Darwin comes shining through."

Patrick Armstrong

2021-12-14
A fresh look at Charles Darwin’s famed voyage.

Drawing on Darwin’s notes and letters as well as those of his acquaintances, Chaffin chronicles the naturalist’s legendary journey on the Beagle. Most readers are familiar with Darwin’s exploration of the Galápagos Islands and his book On the Origin of Species. Chaffin takes us deeper into his subject’s life. “I’ve accorded primacy to writings created during [the Beagle] journeys: his diary, field notebooks, and letters,” he writes. “For further illumination, I’ve also drawn on the correspondence, memoirs, and diaries of others he encountered or traveled with during those years….This lively portrait…lurks just beneath the more public surfaces of Voyage of the Beagle and Origin of Species. Notably, it depicts formative experiences in the naturalist’s life unfound in—in some cases, deliberately excluded from—those two works.” In his late adolescence and early adulthood, Darwin spent many years adrift, bored with schooling and trying to figure out what to do with his life. Through circumstance and opportunity, he boarded the Beagle, which spent considerable time in and around South America. During that time, of course, Darwin kept meticulous notes on plant and animal species. In addition to expected descriptions of the flora and fauna, Chaffin examines the motivations of the expedition’s leaders as well as Darwin’s observations on politics, slavery, Indigenous populations, and his fellow shipmates, who were largely left out of his published works. Additionally, writes the author, while Darwin’s field notes included significant observations about a wide range of natural science topics, “the islands proved, for him, initially disappointing, and provided no eureka moment.” Nonetheless, Chaffin shows how the trip “would lead him to reformulate many past assumptions” and inform his future work. Late in his career, Darwin noted that “the voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.”

A well-written overview of Darwin’s formative experiences.

Kirkus Reviews