Hms Beagle

H.M.S. Beagle

A rainy morning on December 27, 1831, the H.M.S. Beagle and a crew of seventy-three men sailed out of Plymouth Harbor. This fairly small ship was sent on a mission to continue the charting of the South America coast, and to gather more accurate fixings of longitude by chain of chronological reckonings round world. The voyage was said to be take more than two years, perhaps three or even four.

Among the seventy-three men, there was a twenty-two year old young man named Charles Darwin. Darwin was aboard the ship to explore. John Henslow, Charles botany professor, recommended Darwin as a naturalist to Caption Robert Fitzroy.

The voyage was all over the Southern Coast of South America. At each stop during the voyage, when Darwin wasn’t sea sick, he would get off and explore and discover different things. He collected specimens of all kinds of plants and animals.

Ashore in South America, were he spent majority of his time, Charles noticed that the species differed a great deal from those of Europe. He also observed and noticed the different species of different temperature regions of South America. Such as Argentina and Chile were more similar to those of the tropical South America, Brazil than they were to European species.

When the Beagle reached to the Galapagos archipelago, west of the equator, he saw that most of the animal species were found no where else. On the mainland in South America there were quite similar animal species, but nothing like the species on the islands. After thinking about this discovery he knew that this would mean that the species on the island were geographically isolated and they soon formed their own species because they were not able to interbreed. But what else could come out of this?

On James Island Darwin counted Twenty-six species of land birds that were unique. He also discovered that they were incredibly tame. Having never learned to fear man they regarded Darwin simply as another large harmless animal, and they sat unmoved in the bushes whenever he passed by.

Even on the different island