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Who was the Beagle's Naturalist?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 January 2009

Jacob W. Gruber
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Extract

So great has been the impact of Darwinian evolution upon contemporary thought that even the tiniest aspect of Darwin's own history assumes importance as a datum in the history of those ideas which provide the ideological base of the contemporary world. In all of the accounts of the intellectual journey which led to the formulation of that theory, a great deal of stress is placed upon the Beagle voyage, that prolonged period of initiation from which the young Darwin returned, the sober—and too often in later accounts, sombre—naturalist, scientifically seasoned by his experiences with a world observed but still unexplained and hardly known. The traditional outlines of the story have been repeated over and over again: the outfitting of the Beagle for its surveying responsibilities; Fitzroy's proposal that “some well-educated and scientific person should be sought for who would willingly share such accommodations as I had to offer, in order to profit by the opportunity of visiting distant countries yet little known”; Henslow's recommendation of his friend and student Darwin; the parental refusal; and, finally, the permission granted. In the retelling, in the almost mystical affect attached to the Beagle voyage and to Darwin's participation, the association of the inexperienced youth with the Beagle has become a fixed point in intellectual history.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , June 1969 , pp. 266 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © British Society for the History of Science 1969

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References

1 Robert Fitzroy, R. N., Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty's Ships Adventure and Beagle between the year 1826 and 1836, Vol. II: Proceedings of the Second Expedition, 1831–36 (London, 1839), p. 18.Google Scholar

2 See particularly Barlow, Nora (ed.), Charles Darwin and the Voyage of the Beagle (London, 1945)Google Scholar; The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, 1809–1882 (London, 1958)Google Scholar; and, most recently Darwin and Henslow: The Growth of m Idea (Berkeley and Los Angeles, U. of California Press, 1967)Google Scholar in which she publishes the whole of the extant Darwin-Henslow Correspondence.

3 Lloyd, Christopher and Coulter, Jack L. S., Medicine and the Navy, 1200–1900, vol. iv, 1815–1900 (Edinburgh and London, E. & S. Livingstone, 1963), p. 74.Google ScholarPer contra, see Darwin's view noted below.

4 Ibid., pp. 77–78.

5 Keevil, J. J., “Robert McCormick, R.N., The Stormy Petrel of Naval Medicine,” Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, xxix (1943), 36–62.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 42.

7 Six years later, in an article on Benjamin Bynoe (“Benjamin Bynoe (1804–1868), Surgeon of H. M.S. Beagle”, Journal of the Royal Naval Medical Service, xxxv (1949), 251–268)Google Scholar, Keevil notes that Bynoe on the Beagle “found himself serving under Surgeon Robert McCormick, a man already known for his ill-humour and petulance” (p. 253). And he notes his association with Darwin as described by the latter. Except for a bibliographic reference, however, to his earlier article on McCormick, there is no indication that the two men were in fact the same person. In any case, by 1949, as in the account by Lloyd and Coulter in 1963, McCormick's difficulties aboard the Beagle are ascribed to the imperfections of his own character and there is no suggestion that he was either interested in or engaged in natural history pursuits.

8 McCormick, Robert, Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas and Round the World, 2 vols. (London, 1884).Google Scholar

9 Fitzroy, , op. cit. (1), p. 19.Google Scholar

10 Ibid., p. 20.

11 Barlow, Nora (ed.), Charles Darwin's Diary of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle (Cambridge, 1934), pp. 26, 28.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., pp. 57–58; McCormick's name is variously spelled; in the few letters from him to Richard Owen in the Owen Collection of the British Museum of Natural History, he signs himself “R. M'Cormick”.

13 Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1945, p. 64Google Scholar; see also, a similar comment in Darwin, to Henslow, , 18 05 1832Google Scholar, in Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 56.Google Scholar A few days after reaching Rio de Janeiro, Darwin accepted the invitation of an Englishman to visit his estate in the interior. The short trip lasted for a little over two weeks and was Darwin's first extended “naturalising” trip on the Beagle voyage (Darwin, Charles, Journal of Researches … London, n.d., pp. 38–45)Google Scholar. It was during this absence, that the difficulties between McCormick and Fitzroy and Wickham developed. It is possible, although highly conjectural in the absence of any other information, that that excursion by Darwin precipitated the question of who was naturalist, a question which required no clear answer so long as the Beagle was en route or so long as both Darwin and McCormick could function together as at St. Jago.

14 Banks, of course, accompanied Cook as a young man of 25, a decade before his election as President of the Royal Society, a position he was to hold continuously until his death in 1820. He sailed with Cook in grander fashion than Darwin but in much the same unofficial capacity as that which Darwin occupied on the Beagle voyage. See Cameron, H. C., Sir Joseph Banks (London, 1952), pp. 13–16.Google Scholar

15 Lloyd, and Coulter, , 1963, op. cit. (3), p. 70.Google Scholar For a general treatment of the surgeonnaturalist see their chaptser v, pp. 69–80, in which, however, primary emphasis is placed upon the well-known, if not spectacular, activities of SirRichardson, John, Hooker, J. D., and Huxley, T. H.. Keevil (1943, op. cit. (5), p. 40)Google Scholar lists some of the eighteenth-century surgeon-naturalists: Menzies, Anderson, Richard Hinds, Joseph Arnold, William Wright, George Bass, William Babington— “men who could combine the practice of medicine with natural history”, men in whom “the great patrons of the eighteenth-century scientific world had delighted”. What is still required is a detailed history in which the contributions of the many naval collectors and observers are related to the development of the body of natural history data necessary for the elaboration of biology by mid-nineteenth century. What is true for the more limited activity of the naval surgeon applies also to the expansion of scientific knowledge which was the consequence of the expansion of Empire. The Owen Collection in the British Museum of Natural History, for instance, provides an interesting and valuable record of the involvement of the advance agents of British colonialism in the collection of data in natural science which was processed and synthesized in London.

16 Darwin, Francis (ed.), The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (London, 1887), vol. i, p. 191.Google Scholar

17 Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 30Google Scholar; the transcription of this letter is slightly different in Darwin, F., op. cit. (16), i, 192.Google Scholar

18 Darwin, to MissDarwin, S., 5 09 1831Google Scholar, ibid., p. 201; see also Darwin to Henslow, in Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 38.Google Scholar

19 Darwin, F., op. cit. (16), i, p. 208Google Scholar; see, however, Peacock to Darwin in Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 32Google Scholar: “The Admiralty are not disposed to give a salary, though they will furnish you with an official appointment and every accommodation: if a salary should be required however I am inclined to think that it would be granted.”

20 Fitzroy, , op. cit. (1), pp. 18–19.Google Scholar

21 Ibid., pp. 19–21.

22 It is possible to confuse Darwin's servant with Sym Covington who after 1833 was Darwin's paid assistant and clerk. The evidence, however, is equivocal. Fitzroy, (op. cit. (1), pp. 19–21)Google Scholar lists a servant for Darwin as a supernumerary both at the beginning and at the end of the voyage. Covington, at the beginning of the voyage, was probably one of the six “boys” as part of the “established complement”. Prior to 1833, Fitzroy made one of the seamen available to Darwin as his assistant. In 1833, however, Darwin engaged Covington at £30 per year as his personal assistant in order that the Beagle be not deprived of a seaman's work. Although Darwin was prepared also to pay for Covington's food on board, Fitzroy kept him on the ship's books for victuals. Although I believe that “Darwin's servant” and Covington may have been two different individuals, for the argument in this case it is immaterial since it is quite clear that even in Covington's case, he was to be considered in a private capacity, i.e. as Darwin's man rather than the Navy's man. (On Covington, see de Beer, Gavin, “Some Unpublished Letters of Charles Darwin”, Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London (1959), xiv, 16–27)Google Scholar. Darwin's letter to his sister in which the subject of a servant (i.e. Covington) is broached (Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1945, pp. 85–86)Google Scholar does suggest that he had no servant prior to his engagement of Covington. If one accepts that version, Fitzroy's listing of the crew in 1839 must be regarded as an anachronism.

23 Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1945, p. 45.Google Scholar

24 McCormick, R., op. cit. (8), vol. i, p. 185.Google Scholar

25 Ibid., pp. 217–218.

26 Ibid., p. 218.

27 Ibid., p. 219.

28 Ross, J. C., A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions during the years 1839–42 (London, 1847).Google Scholar

29 It is interesting that despite the close relationship between Darwin and Hooker later, there seems to be no reference to the similarity of their experiences with the same man in the same role on what was to be the most significant exploratory trip for each.

30 Huxley, Leonard, Life and Letters of Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (London, 1918), i, p. 45Google Scholar; for the occasional references to McCormick by Hooker, , see i, pp. 41–70passim.Google Scholar

31 This letter is part of a miscellaneous collection of manuscript materials in the British Museum (Add. 52580, if. 215–216) presented to the Museum by C. Davis Sherborne. Sherborne was a collector of materials of this sort and to him is due the preservation of much of the original documents dealing with nineteenth-century natural science. It was Sherborne who arranged and ensured the preservation of the great mass of the Owen Collection after the death of Sir Richard Owen in 1892; and it was he who served as scientific consultant in the writing of Owen's generally unsatisfactory biography by his grandson, Richard Starton Owen. On the grounds of historiography, this letter has an additional interest, if not importance, for were it not for the fact that the name of the addressee is still preserved on the original folio, the content of the letter could have led to the identification of Charles Darwin as its recipient.

32 Mr. Charles P. Finlayson, Keeper of Manuscripts in the Edinburgh University Library, which possesses all that seems to be left of the Jameson papers, has kindly searched the indexes of the collections for me but has found nothing there relating to McCormick.

33 McCormick, , op. cit. (8), p. 219.Google Scholar

34 Darwin, to Henslow, , 30 08, 1831Google Scholar, in Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 33.Google Scholar The context suggests that this was a reflection of Darwin's father's concerns.

35 24 July 1858; Owen Collection, British Museum of Natural History, vol. xviii, ff. 228–229.Google Scholar

36 de Beer, , op. cit (22), pp. 36–37, 48–49.Google Scholar

37 Glanville, A. B., The Rayal Society in the XIXth Century; being a Statistical Summary of its labours during the last Thirty-Five Tears (London, 1836), p. 23.Google Scholar

38 de Quatrefages, A., The Rambles of a Naturalist on the Coasts of France, Spain, and Sicily (trans. Otte, E. C., London, 1857), pp. 50–51.Google Scholar

39 Darwin, to Henslow, , 18 05 1832Google Scholar, Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 56.Google Scholar

40 Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1958, p. 52.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., pp. 78–79.

42 Glanville, , op. cit. (37), 34–49.Google Scholar

43 Sabine Correspondence, Royal Society of London, 4 07 1852.Google Scholar

44 Tyndall Correspondence, Royal Institution, 6 07 1852.Google Scholar

45 See Barlow, Nora, “Robert Fitzroy and Charles Darwin”, Cornhill Magazine, lxxii (1932), 493–510.Google Scholar

46 See Cope, Zachary, The History of the Royal College of Surgeons of England (London, 1959)Google Scholar. Since this has the character of an authorized history, it glosses over the earlier period of social difficulties and stresses that of later successes. However, Newman (Newman, Charles, The Evolution of Medical Education in the Nineteenth Century (London, 1957)Google Scholar, is more specific about the prestige distinction between the physician (with his university background and affiliation) and the surgeon whose origins were technical and practical. His brief treatment of the medical (more properly surgical) student (pp. 41–47) suggests the differences in social selectivity between the two branches of medicine which were occasioned both by the nature and by the costs of the respective training programmes. In more specific terms, the elder John Lubbock expressed perhaps something of the distaste of the upper classes for surgical training when, in a letter dated 21 February 1849 he requested Richard Owen's help in getting some private instruction in anatomy for his son, then aged 15: “What occurs to me is that perhaps one of the demonstrators or lecturers or [“at” intended] Kings College or any of the hospitals would give him three or four lessons charging so much for each either at their own residence or at my house as I do not wish him to get amongst the students” (Owen Collection, B.M.N.H., f. 18: 76a).

47 Actually, until 1843, when naval surgeons were first commissioned rather than appointed by warrant, they were in effect second-class officers when compared with executive officers who were “gentlemen” rather than specialists. Lloyd and Coulter quote one witness before the Milne Commission in 1866 as saying: “I think that they [medical officers] are regarded as an inferior class of being altogether [by executive officers]”, op. cit. (3), p. 19.

48 Darwin, to Henslow, , 30 10 1831Google Scholar in Barlow, , op. cit. (2), 1967, p. 46.Google Scholar