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did you change the cue card you monster
you monster lanterns sway boards creak
the air is humid and thick in the depth
of the British survey vessel in the
ship's library book titles glint in the
candlelight the ship rocks nauseating
and relentless but the young man in the
cabin doesn't notice the humidity or his
own seasickness he can barely sense time
passing as he pours over his notes and
books the ship is the HMS Beagle and the
man Charles Darwin the 1830s were an
exciting time for science all throughout
Europe there was a great movement to
explore map and classify the world and
it was this expanding world that young
Charles Darwin graduated into Alby it
with the wrong degree because although
one day he would be known as the father
of modern biology Darwin's father was
set on his son following in his
footsteps as a doctor in childhood
Darwin had an obsession with bugs and
wildlife but at 16 his father signed him
up for medical school he had long
Anatomy lectures and the disturbing
sight of the anatomical theater were not
his cup of tea so he soon stopped
showing up for class but still
possessing his love for critters and
plants he took a taxidermy course from
John Edmund Stone a formerly enslaved
man who had participated in famous
conservation studies of South America
hungry for scientific knowledge
Darwin joined a club where students
explored and debated scientific theory
and questioned religious scientific
doctrine he went on fieldwork
expeditions
studying marine biology and geology
still he found his science classes dull
but his teachers did notice
Darwin's keen eye for observation and a
gift for writing yet Darwin's father on
the other hand having shelled out the
cash for medical school wasn't exactly
pleased his son had
basically dropped out to do taxidermy so
he forced his son to transfer to
Cambridge and take up a sensible career
as a parson but his father's plan
backfired
you see Cambridge had a large community
of parson natural ists who saw
scientific research as a critical part
of theology and after falling in with
that crowd Darwin threw himself into his
studies with gusto
he read voraciously and wrote
passionately about natural philosophy
impressing both his peers and professors
finally doing the work that he loved he
graduated 10th in a class of nearly 200
now normally the next step in his career
would be to settle down in a country
parsonage and pursue science on the side
but as a last hurrah Darwin went out on
a big wild graduation trip with his
university buddies they went to Wales
with the intent to go wild and study
rock strata with their geology professor
whoa spring break but when Darwin
returned home from his trip he found a
letter from his botany professor waiting
for him he'd recommended Darwin for a
singular opportunity to serve for two
years as a gentleman naturalist on a
navy serve a ship the HMS Beagle the
Beagle was commissioned to spend several
years mapping and surveying South
America to produce accurate nautical
charts and it's captain Robert Fitzroy
had been on similar missions in the past
and regretted that there had not been a
scientist on board who could study the
diverse ecosystems and landscapes they
were surveying because you see at this
time there were few professional
scientists the British elite disdained
the idea of doing research for money and
felt that natural philosophy was a
leisure pursuit for gentlemen Scholars
Fitzroy had already offered the position
to several prestigious natural ists
but none wanted to leave their family
and career and spend three years on a
cramped ship but that was all right
Fitzroy didn't need an established
Master Naturalist he just needed a keen
observer who could write detailed
reports and serve as a dinner companion
on the long journey in fact the position
wasn't even paid instead captain Fitzroy
offered the opportunity to collect
specimens so Darwin the eager but
expendable theology school graduate was
the perfect man for the job and four
weeks later they set sail the Beagle was
to travel across the Atlantic Kerry
surveys in South America then
circumnavigate the globe and return via
Australia the ships 400 volume library
doubled as Darwin's personal cabin where
he spent months free from distractions
reading books preparing specimens for
the collection and developing his own
scientific theories and while the ship's
officers took careful measurements out
at sea Darwin explored geology and
ecology on land he observed all manner
of marine life mammals reptiles insects
and birds he wondered at the infinite
biological diversity of the Amazon which
he personally described as a chaos of
delight he witnessed the volcanic
eruption while climbing in the Andes and
noticed fossil mussel beds far above
shore proving the theory that geological
forces could shift the landscape causing
ancient soil to rise to the surface of
the earth the fossils he discovered
attracted great interest back in England
and he got lost in the excitement and
romance of the hunt in fact in a letter
to his sister he wrote there is nothing
like geology the pleasure of the first
days partridge shooting or the first
days hunt cannot be compared to finding
a fine group of fossil bones which tells
their story of former times with almost
a living tongue however it was not
always smooth sailing and specimen
collecting Darwin encountered Horrors as
well as wonders while slavery had been
outlawed in Britain in fact Darwin and
his family were radical abolitionists it
was still legal in the British colonies
as well as much of South America and on
this voyage Darwin would be confronted
with slavery and colonialism as he never
had before on their way across the
Atlantic the Beagle would pass British
Navy vessels patrolling for illegal
slave ships he saw enslaved children
beaten in Brazil witnessed the aftermath
of a slave revolt and heard plantation
owners threatened to sell the children
of enslaved families it makes one's
blood boil
he wrote yet the hot tremble meanwhile
on the Beagle he got to know several
native Islanders from the Tierra del
Fuego they'd been taken aboard on a
previous voyage and Christianized and
were now being returned in a sort of
missionary experiment in long hours of
conversation he found that these people
much like his old taxidermy instructor
were little different than he was you
see popular European beliefs at the
time held that there were different
species of human in fact a well-known
book in Darwin's own floating library
divided humans into no less than 15
different species but as Darwin traveled
he increasingly collected information
that confirmed the view that all people
were the same species and when he
eventually published his revolutionary
theory this would be one of his most
controversial claims after several years
of research Darwin increasingly viewed
both the geological landscape and the
nature of human beings as mutable and
changing and he brought this perspective
with him to the place that would give
him his greatest revelation the
Galapagos Islands because the Galapagos
were geologically new and home to an
amazing array of unique species Darwin
went looking for evidence of how wild
life had come to reside there and he'd
heard rumors that you could tell which
island a tortoise came from based on its
shell but his attempt to confirm this
was undermined by the crew turning his
specimens into soup he did however
discover birds that were mostly similar
to those he'd seen in Chile but whose
beak shapes varied from island to island
and in time this observation would grow
into a revolutionary theory but right
now they were just an interesting
tangent inside Darwin's notes seeing the
gradation and diversity of structure in
one small intimately related group of
birds he wrote one might really fancy
that from an original paucity of birds
in this archipelago one species had been
taken and modified for different ends
although he took the idea only half
seriously at the time the phenomena
Darwin observed fundamentally changed to
mainstream scientific views about how
species came to be and after five years
of exploring collecting and studying the
natural world it was time to return home
and on the journey Darwin organized his
5436 specimens his 770 page diary and
thousands of pages of notes in doing so
he started to have an inkling of the
revolutionary concept his observations
and theories pointed toward if there is
the slightest foundation for these
remarks he wrote the zoology of the
archipelago will be well worth examining
for such facts undermine the stability
of species he paused then cautiously
added the word
would before undermine in October 1836
the Beagle docked in Cornwall and Darwin
took a train back home when he greeted
his family the next morning he was no
longer the failed medical student or
even the fresh-faced Divinity School
graduate they'd known before he was now
an established naturalist and a member
of the scientific elite all because five
years ago he had had the courage to
seize a wild opportunity and follow it
to the ends of the earth and though they
didn't know it yet what he found on that
journey would soon change the world
special thanks to educational to your
patrons Ahmed Ziad Turk and Joseph plane
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