Fossils, Finches and Fuegians: Charles Darwin’s Adventures and Discoveries on the Beagle. Richard Keynes
coasts.
During 1829 the Adventure, Beagle and Adelaide conducted independent surveys at various points between Tierra del Fuego and Chiloe, coming together at Valparaiso in November. On 19 November the Beagle departed to survey more of the southern coasts of Tierra del Fuego before rejoining the Adventure at Rio de Janeiro for the final return to England. Working among the Camden and Stewart Islands to the south of the mouth of the Cockburn Channel, FitzRoy found tiresome anomalies in his compass bearings, and wrote in his journal for 24 January 1830:
There may be metal in many of the Fuegian mountains, and I much regret that no person in the vessel was skilled in mineralogy, or at all acquainted with geology. It is a pity that so good an opportunity of ascertaining the nature of the rocks and earths of these regions should have been almost lost. I could not avoid often thinking of the talent and experience required for such scientific researches, of which we were wholly destitute; and inwardly resolving, that if ever I left England again on a similar expedition, I would endeavour to carry out a person qualified to examine the land; while the officers and myself would attend to hydrography.33
A week later it was reported to FitzRoy that the ship’s five-oared whale-boat, manned by Mr Murray, the Master, and a small crew, had been stolen during the night by the Fuegians near Cape Desolation, ‘now doubly deserving of its name’. The bad news was brought to the Beagle by two of the sailors, paddling a basket-like canoe that they had thrown together for the purpose, and whose curious structure was commemorated in the names given both to the small island on which Cape Desolation was located, and to the first of the Fuegians taken hostage by FitzRoy.*
On the Beagle’s map of the Strait of Magalhaens (sic),34 Basket Isle was inserted near the western end of Tierra del Fuego, with Thieves Sound to the north, and Whale Boat Sound to the east. In a modern map the area lies on the coast of Tierra del Fuego due south of Punta Arenas. FitzRoy responded to the theft with a campaign to capture hostages for return of the whale-boat, but the move failed, largely because the Fuegians showed no interest in exchanging their booty for their comrades, who remained quite happily on the ship. So he was left with the young girl Fuegia Basket, ‘as broad as she was high’, and the men York Minster, taken in Christmas Sound near the cliff of that name, and Boat Memory captured later nearby. He soon began to appreciate the practical difficulties that would arise in returning them immediately to their own peoples, and to consider the possibility of taking them back to England for a period of education before they were repatriated.
While a replacement for the whale-boat was being built at Doris Cove, situated on an island beside Adventurer Passage, Mr Murray was dispatched in the ship’s cutter to explore the waters to the north and east of Nassau Bay. Not far to the north, but a long way to the east, he sailed through a channel little more than a third of a mile wide which became known as the Murray Narrow, and which ‘led him into a straight channel, averaging about two miles or more in width, and extending nearly east and west as far as the eye could reach’. He had discovered the Beagle Channel, whose precise orientation on the map would provide grounds for legal dispute long afterwards in arguments between Argentina and Chile over territorial rights in the Antarctic. The new country was thickly populated, and on 11 May 1830, when the Beagle herself was in the Murray Narrow, some canoes full of natives anxious for barter were encountered. FitzRoy wrote: ‘I told one of the boys in a canoe to come into our boat, and gave the man who was with him a large shining mother-of-pearl button.’35 Jemmy Button, as the boat’s crew called him, quickly settled down in his new surroundings, and there were now four Fuegians in FitzRoy’s little group.36
At the end of June the Beagle sailed back to the Rio Plata. While in Monte Video, FitzRoy tried to have the Fuegians vaccinated against smallpox, whose ravages were all too often fatal to unprotected natives, but the vaccination did not take. At the beginning of August the Beagle rejoined the Adventure in Rio de Janeiro, and together they made a ‘most tedious’ passage to Plymouth, where they anchored on 14 October.
FitzRoy’s first thought was for the Fuegians. Landing after dark, they were taken to lodgings where next day they were vaccinated for the second time. With the Beagle’s coxswain James Bennett to look after them, they were then transferred to a farmhouse in the country near Plymstock, where they could enjoy the fresh air and hopefully avoid infection by other virus diseases, without attracting public attention. Meanwhile the Beagle was stripped and cleared out, and on 27 October her pendant was hauled down.
During the voyage home, FitzRoy had addressed through Captain King to John Barrow,37 Second Secretary of the Admiralty, a long account of the manner in which he had taken the four Fuegians on board the Beagle,38 and of his proposal to return them to their country after they had received some education. Mr Barrow’s response, although it was negatively worded and predictably lacking in enthusiasm, said that their Lordships would not interfere with FitzRoy’s benevolent intentions towards the Fuegians, would afford him facilities towards their maintenance and education, and would give them a passage home again. Their Lordships’ promise was duly kept when early in November Boat Memory was taken ill with smallpox, and instructions were at once given for the Fuegians to be admitted to the Royal Naval Hospital at Plymouth for vaccination and treatment. Unhappily Boat Memory, who was FitzRoy’s favourite among them, could not be saved, but the other three were successfully re-vaccinated. Fuegia Basket was in addition taken home by the doctor in charge of them in order to be exposed to measles with his own children. She duly had a favourable attack and quickly recovered with a strengthened immune system.
Through contacts with the Church Missionary Society, the Fuegians were next taken to Walthamstow just outside London for schooling in charge of the Revd William Wilson, and remained in his care until October 1831, still with James Bennett to keep an eye on them. Fuegia Basket and Jemmy Button were very receptive pupils, but the older man York Minster was not. He would reluctantly assist with practical activities like gardening, but firmly refused to learn to read. He also took what seemed to be an unhealthy interest in the ten-year-old Fuegia, following her everywhere, keeping her well away from other men, and treating her as if she was his personal possession. At this time there was no suggestion that anything sexual took place between them, though on board the Beagle later on she was deemed to be officially engaged to York in order to avoid embarrassment, and back in Tierra del Fuego she did become his wife. During that summer the Fuegians were taken to St James’s Palace at King William IV’s request, and Queen Adelaide honoured Fuegia Basket by placing one of her own bonnets on the girl’s head and a ring on her finger, and gave her some money to buy clothes for returning home.
FitzRoy had been led by Captain King to suppose that the Adventure and Beagle’s surveys in South America would need to be continued by some other ship, giving him an opportunity to restore the Fuegians to their native land. But having in March 1831 completed his official obligations with respect to the Beagle’s 1826–1830 cruise, for which he was officially commended, FitzRoy discovered that the Admiralty’s plans had for no stated reason been altered, and that their Lordships no longer intended to complete the survey. Feeling that he could not trust anyone but himself to return the Fuegians to the precise places from which they had been taken, he obtained twelve months’ leave of absence from the Navy. In June he made at his own expense an agreement with the owner of a small merchant ship to take him with five companions, the Fuegians, and a number of goats to Tierra del Fuego, where he proposed to stock some of the islands with goats and deposit his protégée and protégés. This agreement did not, however, have to be put into effect, for FitzRoy happened one day to mention his problem to one of his aristocratic and politically influential uncles, the fourth Duke of Grafton, and the former Foreign Secretary