Evolution's Captain Read Free Page A

than the scene around us. The lofty, bleak, and barren heights that surround the inhospitable shores of this inlet, were covered, even low down their sides, with dense clouds, upon which the fierce squalls that assailed us beat, without causing any change…. Around us, and some of them distant no more than two-thirds of a cable’s length, were rocky islets, lashed by a tremendous surf; and, as if to complete the dreariness and utter desolation of the scene, even the birds seemed to shun its neighbourhood. The weather was that in which…“the soul of a man dies in him.”
    It got worse. The ship’s 28-foot-long yawl, “a beautiful boat,” and vital to their surveying methods, was smashed to pieces while being hoisted aboard in a gale: “We were obliged to cut her adrift…. her loss was second only to that of the ship.”
    Stokes’s crew, despite being outfitted with foul weather “clothing”—lengths of painted canvas to wrap around themselves (this only ensured a clammy discomfort)—began to fall apart dramatically. They were generally hardy young men, in their teens through their thirties, but without being able to get ashore and supplement the ship’s salt beef and pork and rock-hard biscuit with fresh meat, they soon began to suffer from scurvy. Their gums bled and their teeth loosened, old scars opened, they grew listless and weak, and the cold accelerated this frighteningly, until it seemed that Stokes’s crew might not be able to control the ship. After consulting with his surgeon, Mr. Bynoe, Stokes made for a landlocked anchorage where the Beagle was temporarily decommissioned for a period of convalescence. The yards and topmasts were struck, the ship was covered with sails for protection, the crew were put on light duty, the sick were tended. Even safe from storms, their harbor of refuge…
    being destitute of inhabitants, is without that source of recreation, which intercourse with any people, however uncivilized, would afford a ship’s company after a laborious and disagreeable cruise in these dreary solitudes.
    And here Stokes’s journal stops. Even he must have tired of the repetition of his lamentations.
    After a two-week rest, the crew somewhat revived, the Beagle sailed south and east heading back to the Strait of Magellan and Port Famine, where the Adventure was waiting for her. The passage took almost four weeks and Captain Stokes remained in his cabin the entire time. The ship was effectively commanded by his assistant surveyor, Lieutenant William Skyring, and the ship’s sailing master, Samuel Flinn.
    Fighting strong winds to the last, even tacking into sheltered water, the Beagle reached Port Famine after dark on the wintry evening of July 27. Skyring immediately had the bosun’s gig row him across to the Adventure where he climbed aboard and reported Stokes’s condition to Captain King. King went to see for himself.
    â€œI went on board the Beagle in the evening and found Captain Stokes, after the first two or three minutes, perfectly collected and communicative of all the events of his cruize,” he later wrote in a long letter to the Admiralty. “For three days afterwards I saw him daily during which he resumed all his duties with increased energy.”
    However, King told his ship’s surgeon to confer with Benjamin Bynoe, the Beagle ’s doctor, so both men could give him an opinion of Stokes’s health. They told him that although Stokes had at times in the last few months “expressed himself weary of life and wished to meet his death,” he now seemed so recoveredthat they thought he might be able to carry on his duties. Those duties meant continuing the surveying mission for several more years at least. While the two surgeons were aboard the Adventure actually reporting this to King, word came from the Beagle that Stokes had shot himself.
    They found him in his cabin, his head