Author(s): Michael Kerrigan

History

This stunningly illustrated volume tells the story of the voyage of HMS Beagle in the words of Darwin himself, with linking narration and commentary as well as sidebars and special features by author Michael Kerrigan. This was an epic adventure into the scientific unknown, related here with unsurpassed excitement and immediacy.

HMS Beagle put out of Devonport dockyard, England, on December 27, 1831, and one of the most extraordinary voyages in history was under way. Aboard was a highly skilled crew of surveyors, set to chart key coastlines for the British Admiralty - and a raw and inexperienced naturalist named Charles Darwin. This fairly obscure twenty-two year old had not been the first choice to accompany the Beagle expedition. Yet his experiences and insights reverberate to this day.

For a mind like Darwin's, open to fresh impressions, alert to their every implication, it was an exhilarating journey. Here is his detailed account of a five-year expedition that was as powerful emotionally and spiritually as it was scientifically; the formative moment of one of modernity's greatest minds.

These journals capture the "first sensations" of standing on a sun-seared volcanic island in mid-Atlantic; or plunging through a Brazilian rainforest "undefaced by the hand of man." Here are his awestruck reactions to Patagonia, the Andes, the Galapagos Islands, Australia's Blue Mountains and the Keeling Islands.

An earnest - even naive - young man, Darwin had yet to find a firm direction in life (indeed, he had very seriously considered the clergy). The idea of evolution by natural selection was itself only just beginning to evolve: within these diaries we see the first hints of future theories taking form. This is a very different Darwin from the monumental figure we know today, revered - and reviled - as the Prophet of Evolution. Rather, he is a likeable young man brimful of curiosity and remarkably free of preconception or prejudice.