Evolution's Captain

The story of a visionary but now forgotten English naval officer and the events without which the name Charles Darwin would be unknown to us today. Captain Robert FitzRoy’s first voyage aboard the HMS Beagle had concluded with the kidnapping of four “savages” from Tierra del Fuego. But when his plan to bring them back to England to civilize them as Christian gentlefolk backfired, the second and most famous voyage of the Beagle was born. In naval terms, this second voyage—with twenty-two-year-old