Charles Darwin set sail aboard HMS Beagle
On this day · 27 December 1831
On this day in 1831, a 22-year-old Darwin left Plymouth on a survey voyage he later called the most important event of his life.
On the morning of December 27, 1831, HMS Beagle weighed anchor at Plymouth and headed for the open Atlantic. On board was a 22-year-old naturalist, Charles Darwin, who had been invited as a gentleman companion to Captain Robert FitzRoy for what was meant to be a two-year survey of South American coasts.
The departure came only after repeated false starts: westerly gales had forced the ship back after sailing on the 10th and the 21st, and Christmas drunkenness among the crew cost yet another day.
The survey stretched to nearly five years, not returning until 1836. Along the way Darwin collected fossils, observed island species, and accumulated the observations that would slowly crystallize into his theory of evolution by natural selection.
Darwin later called the voyage “by far the most important event in my life.”
A delayed, storm-battered start, then, to one of science’s most consequential journeys.
Sources & references
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