Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World
An illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and his adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.

Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography/Memoir

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.—Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin—alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs.
Though storied, the Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America—particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador’s coast—eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle—an invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the ship's depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagle's purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions.
Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwin's Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, cities—including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year "voyage" on land—three years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexities—the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sources— in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle—Chaffin brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.
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Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World
An illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and his adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.

Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography/Memoir

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.—Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin—alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs.
Though storied, the Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America—particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador’s coast—eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle—an invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the ship's depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagle's purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions.
Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwin's Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, cities—including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year "voyage" on land—three years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexities—the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sources— in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle—Chaffin brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.
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Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World

Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World

by Tom Chaffin
Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World

Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World

by Tom Chaffin

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An illuminating and lively narrative of Charles Darwin’s formative years and his adventurous voyage aboard the H.M.S. Beagle.

Winner of the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Biography/Memoir

The voyage of the Beagle has been by far the most important event in my life and has determined my whole career.—Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin—alongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein—ranks among the world's most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs.
Though storied, the Beagle's voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyage's activities associated with South America—particularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuador’s coast—eclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagle—an invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the ship's depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagle's purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions.
Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwin's Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, cities—including Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year "voyage" on land—three years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexities—the brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentina's notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his era's celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sources— in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalist's own Voyage of the Beagle—Chaffin brings Darwin's odyssey to vivid life.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781643139081
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Publication date: 02/01/2022
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 1,055,022
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.60(d)

About the Author

Tom Chaffin is the author of, among other books, Revolutionary Brothers; Giant's Causeway; Sea of Gray; and Pathfinder. His writings have also appeared in the New York Times, the Oxford American, Time, Harper's, and other publications. He lives in Atlanta. Visit him at tomchaffin.com.

Table of Contents

Maps x

The Wedgwood and Darwin Family Tree xii

Introduction: Hiding in Plain Sight xv

Part I "We Philosophers Do Not Bargain for this Kind of Work" August 1833 1

1 Looking for the General 3

2 "The Perfect Gaucho" 10

Part II Shropshire Lad, 1809-1831 15

3 "Gas" 17

4 Edinburgh 25

5 Cambridge 34

6 "You Are the Very Man They Are in Search For" 44

7 Captain FitzRoy 52

8 HMS Beagle 63

9 Devonport 68

Part III Odysseus Unbound, 1832 75

10 Marine Life 77

11 In Humboldtian Climes 85

12 Tropic of Slavery 96

13 Rio 102

14 A Night at the Venda da Matto 112

15 Botafogo Idyll 117

16 "Laughable Revolutions" 123

Part IV Austral Climes, 1832-1833 131

17 "No Painter Ever Imagined So Wild a Set of Expressions" 133

18 Tierra del Fuego 143

19 Navarino Island 156

20 El Dorado Lost 167

21 In Patagonia 176

22 Cerro Tres Picos 186

23 "I thank Providence I am here with an Entire Throat" 188

24 Tierra del Fuego Redux 193

25 Rio Santa Cruz Ascent 207

Part V Round the Horn, 1834-1836 213

26 The Heights of Cerro La Campana 215

27 "Strange Proceedings Aboard the Beagle" 223

28 "The Greatest Phenomena to which This World is Subject" 228

29 Adventures on the Andes' Atlantic Coast 235

30 Galápagos 246

31 West of the One-Hundred-Eightieth Meridian 260

32 Antipodes 269

33 "Round the World, Like a Flying Dutchman" 276

Part VI Great Britain, 1836-1882 293

34 Odysseus Returns 295

35 "Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work" 308

36 "The Highest & Most Interesting Problem for the Naturalist" 315

Epilogue: Advice for Travelers 321

Acknowledgments 323

Image credits 329

A Note on Sources and Style 331

Bibliography 333

Endnotes 341

Index 355

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