'Evolution's Captain': The Beagle Has Landed
By SARA WHEELER
Published: October 19, 2003
In May 1826, when Britain was the mightiest nation on earth, the
stalwarts of its Admiralty dispatched a pair of ships to survey the
southern coasts of South America. It was a punishing voyage, and two
years in, the young commander of H.M.S. Beagle, the smaller ship, shot
himself in his cabin at Port Famine on the Strait of Magellan. Before
long, both vessels hurried north for repair. In Rio de Janeiro, a
23-year-old lieutenant, Robert FitzRoy, was appointed the Beagle's new
commander. Ostensibly, "Evolution's Captain" tells FitzRoy's story.
According to Peter Nichols, he was "a highly strung aristocrat" who
had gone to sea at 14 in possession of "dazzling and superior ability"
as well as "self-assurance, vanity, willfulness and a personal
fortune." But a far deeper theme underlies the biographical account:
the diminishing role of God in the scientific landscape of the 19th
century.
FitzRoy
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=FitzRoy&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=FitzRoy&sa=N&tab=nw
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=FitzRoy&sa=N&tab=wd&cat=gwd%2FTop
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_q=FitzRoy&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
Robert FitzRoy
http://news.google.com/news?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+%22Robert+FitzRoy%22&sa=N&tab=gn
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+%22Robert+FitzRoy%22&sa=N&tab=nw
http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=+%22Robert+FitzRoy%22&sa=N&tab=wd&cat=gwd%2FTop
http://groups.google.com/groups?as_epq=Robert%20FitzRoy&safe=images&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&as_scoring=d&lr=&num=100&hl=en
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