Fitzroy by John and Mary Gribbin, Headline, 拢18.99, ISBN 0755311817 Evolution鈥檚 Captain by Peter Nichols, Profile, 拢16.99, ISBN 1861974515 Reviewed by Roy Herbert
ROBERT FITZROY, the captain of the Beagle, was a much more interesting man than Charles Darwin: more complicated, more passionate and driven so fiercely by principle that he could be said to have been destroyed by his own virtues.
The events of Fitzroy鈥檚 life are fairly well known. Before the voyage with Darwin, he had already commanded the ship on a first exploration of Tierra del Fuego and had even brought back four Fuegian 鈥淚ndians鈥�, who caused a passing sensation in Victorian society. The second voyage, with Darwin as supernumerary along with returning Fuegians, was exhausting and prolonged. It tested Fitzroy鈥檚 superb skills of seamanship to their limits. Danger came from many quarters: the violent seas around the South American coastline which he had orders to survey and map, and near hostility from the Fuegian tribes, as well as worries about money. Fitzroy鈥檚 devotion to duty had led him to pay out of his own pocket for equipment and for small boats that were more suited than the Beagle to exploring the coves and inlets of the coast. A parsimonious Admiralty did not propose to reimburse him. The voyage dragged on much longer than he had bargained for. Towards its end, shredded by depression, he had to be dissuaded from turning over command to his lieutenant.
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Eventually, after four years of hazardous, stressful work the Beagle returned across the Pacific, completing a round the world trip, including the famous visit to the Galapagos Islands. Both Darwin and Fitzroy wrote accounts of the voyage. Darwin鈥檚 was popular. Fitzroy鈥檚 was not, and this galled him. Embittered, he finally found the limelight again as governor of the new colony of New Zealand, but was considered a failure, mostly because he would not countenance swindling and slaughter of the Maoris. Even promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral, and brilliant work in founding the science and methods of weather forecasting could not save him from despondency. When Darwin ended years of procrastination by publishing his theory of the evolution of species by natural selection, it was a bombshell of blasphemy to Fitzroy, by then heading for religious mania. He cut his own throat in an act of suicide expressly forbidden by the religious laws he followed.
Fitzroy鈥檚 life can easily accommodate two biographies. These necessarily draw on the same sources, and there is hardly a quotation or reference that appears in one book that doesn鈥檛 appear in the other. Nonetheless, they are distinctly different in style. The Gribbins鈥檚 version is more conventional and perhaps more painstaking with detail, and more elaborate on the scientific work of both Fitzroy and Darwin. Nichols is a sailor. He is breezier, he knows about the strains of life on a small ship and he is more alive to the wildness of the sea and its ferocity.