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This week's talk in our '1833' series focused on Charles Darwin's voyage on The Beagle, and was given by Mr King.
On the morning of 27 December 1831, HMS Beagle began a voyage which circumnavigated the Earth and landed at a huge variety of exotic places. Darwin collect a huge array of specimens and had them sent home along the way on board various trade ship that were encountered along the journey. The Beagle left Santiago, Cape Verde on 7 February 1832 and sailed towards Brazil, stopping for one day St Paul's rocks. Darwin went onshore
1833 While Thomas Chalmers was establishing his school at Merchiston Castle here in Edinburgh, Charles Darwin was in the area of the Tierra del Fuego while Captain Fitzroy worked on a private project. In the January of 1833 Captn Fitzroy set up a Christian Mission on Tierra del Fuego. The Beagle then set out for the Falkland Islands to survey the coast, and in April 1833 it headed North the survey the coast of Argentina. Throughout 1833 Darwin went ashore whenever possible and trekked along the coast to collect specimens. Darwin sent a third load of specimens to Revd. Henslow in Cambridge on 18 July 1833. This shipment included: eighty species of birds, twenty quadrupeds, four barrels of skins and plants, geological specimens and some fish on board a packet ship bound for England. Darwin got off the ship wherever possible and he collected specimens and took notes on virtually every fossil and living organism he encountered. These observations sowed the seeds of his theory of evolution. Darwin was amazed by the variety of organisms he encountered during his voyage. Everywhere he looked, he saw new and oddly shaped trees, exotically colored flowers and birds, and beetles and other insects. Darwin quickly realized that the diversity of living organisms was only part of the mystery of life. He found even greater numbers of fossil species. In Argentina, he discovered fossil armadillos, giant ground sloths, peculiar horses, and saber toothed cat skeletons, obviously not alive today. Darwin soon became convinced that living organisms (extant) were vastly outnumbered by extinct forms. He was convinced that extinction and the appearance of new species were real phenomena that had to be explained. T The Beagle went south again, around Cape Horn and North to survey the West coast of South America including the remote Galapagos Islands where Darwin saw how specialized the wildlife was due to its isolation from the main land. He came upon the seed of an idea that grew into the 'Theory of Evolution by Natural selection' which took the established world by storm with the publishing of the Origin of Species in 1859. Both Darwin and Wallace share credit for the theory of natural selection; however there is much more to the theory of evolution than this. Over more than 20 years Darwin amassed massive amounts of meticulously documented evidence to support his theory of "descent with modification" which can be summarized as follows:
Darwin had extreme misgivings about his theory due to his own Christian faith and lifelong indoctrination with the literal translation of the bible, but eventually his scientific instinct won and he published it. The biggest problem that many fundamentalist religious believers found hard to accept, and some still do today, is the evolution of humans from apes. This was the reaction in 1859. However, Evolution gained almost immediate acceptance by most scientists of the day and it remains the most significant law of Biology ever to have been discovered, underpinning most of modern Biology. Recent developments in DNA and molecular Biology have served to strengthen the authenticity of Darwin’s ideas with very little modification. But, evolution evidently does not have all the answers…
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Charles Robert Darwin was born in Shrewsbury 1809. He spent two years in medical school at Edinburgh but found that medicine was not for him. He then trained as a clergyman at Cambridge for three years. He was mostly bored by his studies but while at college he became friends with some of the most respected scientists of the time. Through a college contact he accepted an unpaid post as naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle which sailed around the world for 5 years (1831-1836). Darwin had just Graduated from Cambridge in Natural Sciences and he was given his passage on board the Beagle as ship’s naturalist and companion to the captain as a similarly educated gentleman. It was the 2nd survey voyage of the Ship HMS Beagle. Soon after the defeat of Napolian with the Battles of Trafalgar and Waterloo Great Britain was the ruler of the seas with the most powerful Navy in the world. Incomplete maps of the coast of Countries around the world was a worry to Britain as its empire and international trading grew from strength to strength. Captain John Fitzoy was given the task to Survey the coast of South America, an area with rich resources that Britain wanted to aquire for its Industrial revolution.
When Darwin left England he believed what he had always been taught that the earth and all the animals and plants on it had been created by god in 6 days about 6000 years ago as told in a literal translation of the book of Genesis. However, his personal observations over five years led him to question this. 
and described the rocks as standing just 50 feet above the ocean, and covered with bird dung. Two species of birds inhabited the rocks, the booby (a kind of gannet), and the noddy (a kind of tern). Apparently, the birds were so tame that one could walk up to them and 'hit them with a stick'!
he existence of fossils of extinct animals and the great age of the earth was in direct contradiction to the literal translation of Genesis from the bible, which at the time was the accepted explanation for the existence of life on earth . 
Darwin 's theory came under severe criticism from the church and he was even tried in court under Blasphemy laws. One of the witnesses for the prosecution was none other than Captain Fitzroy. 
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