A couple of gaps can be filled in and misconceptions cleared up here. Darwin was not employed as the ship's naturalist on the Beagle. He was invited to travel at his own (that is, his father's) expense as a social class-appropriate companion to Captain Fitzroy, who feared the isolation of a long voyage because suicide ran in his own family, and long voyages were hard on officers (the Beagle's previous captain had killed himself, and his son was still aboard as an officer. He and the Beagle's other officers took to calling Darwin the 'ship's philosopher' and he shared their cabin space.) Later on, after a brief, undistinguished stint as Governor of New Zealand, but an award-winning career as a proto-meteorologist, Fitzroy indeed ultimately took his own life.
Darwin had various ideas when he set out, but nothing terribly organized. Under the influence of Robert Grant, Lamarck and Lyell he started putting some ideas together based on his experiences. He was a good naturalist, but (e.g.) not good enough to recognize the Galapagos finches as such until John Gould reported on his own examination of the specimens. Still, by 1837, the year after the voyage ended, he had begun keeping a notebook on the transmutation of species, and had, in effect, an early version of the 'descent with modification' hypothesis to work from. Matthew K Chew Assistant Research Professor Arizona State University School of Life Sciences ASU Center for Biology & Society PO Box 873301 Tempe, AZ 85287-3301 USA Tel 480.965.8422 Fax 480.965.8330 [email protected] or [email protected] http://cbs.asu.edu/people/profiles/chew.php http://asu.academia.edu/MattChew
