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Captain Fitzroy & HMS Beagle

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Captain Fitzroy & HMS Beagle Captain Fitzroy & HMS Beagle Robert Fitzroy (1805-65), son of General Lord Charles Fitzroy and a grandson of both the Duke of Grafton and the Marquess of Londonderry, was born at Ampton Hall, Suffolk. He entered the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, at the age of 12 and graduated with distinction two years later. In 1824 Fitzroy became the first man to pass the naval lieutenant’s examination with a perfect score. Four years later, aged just 23, he was appointed Captain of HMS Beagle. Voyage of the Beagle The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career. (Charles Darwin) On 27 December 1831, HMS Beagle set sail from Plymouth bound for South America. Her orders were to survey the treacherous waters along the coastline before returning via Tahiti and Australia. Surveys were vital to maritime powers such as Britain - they led to more accurate maps, which in turn meant the loss of fewer ships. Dreading the loneliness of command, and mindful that it had contributed to his predecessor’s suicide, Fitzroy requested that a gentleman companion with an interest in science be found to accompany him. The man chosen was 22 year old Cambridge graduate Charles Darwin, and the five year voyage the two men embarked upon became legendary. Life onboard Beagle was never easy. With 74 men crammed onto a ship measuring just 90 foot in length, space was so tight that Darwin, who shared his cabin with two others, had to remove a drawer before getting into bed to make room for his feet. Outside there lurked constant dangers; tempests, earthquakes, hostile locals and disease. While Fitzroy concentrated on his survey work, patiently measuring depths, charting harbours and recording wind speeds, Darwin roamed about on land, collecting fossils, plants, animals, birds and rocks. Thousands of specimens were brought back to England, hundreds of which had previously been unheard of. Darwin afterwards recorded their adventures in a bestseller, The Voyage of the Beagle. But in later years he and Fitzroy grew apart. Fitzroy, a profoundly religious man, could not reconcile himself to Darwin’s increasingly radical views, expressed most famously in On the Origin of Species (1859), and felt guilty about his part in that book’s conception. Beyond Beagle ...Biscay, Trafalgar, Fitzroy, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet... In 1854 Fitzroy was appointed to the newly created post of Meteorological Statistician to the Board of Trade, a role he embraced with relish. He gathered copious amounts of data from sea captains, devised new instruments to help them take more accurate readings, invented a storm warning device for fishing fleets and set up weather stations across Britain, which were ordered to submit reports every few hours via the newly invented telegraph. Detailed analysis of all this information led Fitzroy to begin, as he put it, ‘forecasting the weather’. From 1860 The Times started publishing his forecasts daily. By the time Fitzroy retired he was an Admiral and a Fellow of the Royal Society, whose work both onboard Beagle and subsequently had made a significant contribution to science and saved the lives of countless seamen. But Fitzroy himself increasingly came to regard his life as a failure, feelings which, along with his declining health, led ultimately to suicide. Today Fitzroy is commemorated across the world. A mountain in Argentina, a river in Australia and a settlement in the Falkland Islands are all named after him. And since the shipping area of Finisterre was renamed Fitzroy in 2002 by the body he established (the Met Office), his name can be heard each day on BBC Radio 4’s shipping forecast. Fitzroy and Hoare’s Bank Fitzroy was a customer at Hoare’s from 1830 until 1840. In this letter he informs the Bank that he has: purchased and fitted out a vessel, to act as a Tender to the Beagle...[and] not having, as yet, obtained an order from the Admiralty authorising such a step...I have drawn upon your house for the sum of eight hundred and sixty pounds. This second vessel was re-named Adventure, but the Admiralty refused to authorize her purchase, forcing Fitzroy to sell her again. After Fitzroy’s death it was discovered that he had spent his entire fortune on his work, leaving his widow and daughter destitute. They were saved only by Queen Victoria’s offer of a grace and favour apartment and a public subscription, to which Darwin contributed £100. And as for Beagle... Although Beagle circumnavigated the globe three times during the 1820s-30s, her later life was far less adventurous. In 1845 she was converted into a static coastguard watch vessel and moored off the Essex coast, remaining there (much to the annoyance of the oyster companies, who regarded her as an obstruction) until 1870, when she was scrapped. .
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