Sailing Towards the Origin

The H.M.S Beagle was originally built as one of a large class of ten-gun brigs for the British Navy, and was first launched in 1820. She was re-fitted and re-rigged three times as a survey vessel. This model is based on the 1831 (second) refit by Robert FitzRoy, Darwin’s captain on the famous voyage. Because the Beagle was a commissioned ship of the line, the Admiralty required it to be armed, but allowed its cannons to be made of brass (a metal which would not interfere with the compasses). The ship carried up to seventy-three men, and more workboats than are included on this model, as they would have obscured much of the deck detail.

Louis Audette built the model as a gift for Frederick Burkhardt, the late founder and editor of the Darwin Correspondence Project.

On loan from Louis Audette.

The H.M.S. Beagle sailed first to South America, the continent which Darwin explored most fully during the voyage. The surveying vessel charted much of the South American coastline, allowing Darwin also to explore the jungle, pampas, and cordillera on horseback and foot.

John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861), a professor of botany and mineralogy at the University of Cambridge, was a mentor and friend to Darwin, and he organized the Beagle collections sent back to England. Only fifty copies of these extracts from Darwin’s and Henslow’s extensive correspondence were printed and few survive. This is Darwin’s first, and rarest publication. The extracts include hints of ideas later published in the Origin.

The Darwins moved to Down House, Kent, in 1842. Darwin lived there for the rest of his life, raising his family and continuing his work.

Photograph courtesy of Desmond Fitz-Gibbon.