On this Day: Darwin’s HMS Beagle Reaches Galapagos Islands

After three years surveying the coastline and collecting specimens in South America, the scientists and cartographers aboard the HMS Beagle were ready to return to England. The crew took on provisions in Peru and then headed westward via the Pacific Ocean. Late in the afternoon of September 15, 1835, the crew sighted land.

“[W]e were anxiously looking out for land, when what appeared to be an islet was seen from the mast-head. This seeming islet turned out to be the summit of Mount Pitt, a remarkable hill at the north-east end of Chatham Island,” the captain of the Beagle, Robert FitzRoy, wrote in his journal.

The next day, boats were launched and the crew landed on Chatham (now San Cristobal) as well as on Hood Island. Darwin got right to work observing and cataloging the islands’ many species of plants and wildlife.

Although the islands were typically a way station for sailors to hunt tortoises for meat before the long journey across the ocean, the Beagle and crew remained in the Galapagos for more than a month.

The 22 islands that make up the archipelago of the Galapagos Islands presented Darwin with a unique chance to study species’ reactions to subtle differences in environment and geology.

“The natural history of this archipelago is very remarkable: it seems to be a little world within itself; the greater number of its inhabitants, both vegetable and animal, being found nowhere else,” Darwin wrote in his diary.

As he visited each subsequent island, Darwin observed species similar in some aspects to those he saw on the last, but also differing in very evident ways. He meticulously recorded his observations, and collected specimens of plants and animals when he could.

Later, in his groundbreaking work, “The Origin of Species,” Darwin took his observations of slightly differing species from the Galapagos and applied his theory to all living things. He called this theory natural selection and used it to explain how and why species change over time.

The voyage in which Darwin reached the Galapagos was actually the second South American trip for the HMS Beagle. During the first charting expedition, the boat visited Patagonia and Tierra Del Fuego, but the difficult work depressed the captain, who committed suicide. His replacement was Captain Robert FitzRoy, who believed the charting expeditions could serve multiple purposes, including missionary work and collection of specimens of natural history.

FitzRoy cast about for a naturalist who could accompany him on his journey and was given the name of Charles Darwin, a geologist and theologian.  The 26-year-old scholar eagerly joined the crew, despite protestations from his father, who wished him to become a medical doctor.

Although Darwin began his voyage on the Beagle as a strict creationist, he wrote that what he learned in his travels changed his mind. In writing about evolution and its causes, Darwin sparked a fierce debate that continues to this day. Critics of his work have called it heretical, and have even used it to explain eugenics and the actions of Hitler. Darwin’s supporters have lauded his book and subsequent work as legendary and many scientific theories have since been based on the idea that plant and animal species change in response to their environment.

In 2009, the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, a British organization plans to build a replica of the HMS Beagle and travel around the world, making scientific observations.