The Beagle Channel which provides a link between the Atlantic and the Pacific
Oceans is 240 kilometres long and only about five kilometres wide at its narrowest
point. The shoreline is covered in dense forest and on the north side there is a range
of mountains beginning with Mount Darwin and culminating in Mount Sarmiento
which are covered in perpetual snow. Glaciers extend from the mountains down to
the water’s edge and Darwin wrote in his field notes that ‘It is scarcely possible to
imagine anything more beautiful than the beryl-like blue of these glaciers, especially
as contrasted with the dead white of the upper expanse of snow’. While a shore party
from the Beagle was admiring the front of one of the glaciers a large mass of ice fell
into the water, sending a huge wave across the channel towards them. The following is
the event as described by FitzRoy and the next day he named the area Darwin Sound
to commemorate his companion’s heroic role in rescuing the ships boats from disaster:
Our boats were hauled up out of the water upon the sandy point, and we were sitting around
a fire about two hundred yards from them, when a thundering crash shook us: down came
the whole front of the icy cliff, and then surged up in a vast heap of foam. Reverberating
echoes sounded in every direction, from the lofty mountains which hemmed us in; but our
whole attention was immediately called to a great rolling wave which came so rapidly that
there was scarcely time for the most active of our party to run and seize the boats before they
were tossed along the beach ... they were just saved in time, for had not Mr Darwin, and two
or three of the men, run to them instantly, they would have been swept away irrecoverably.(^) HMS Beagle, The Beagle Channel and Mount Sarmiento, Conrad Martens
74 Where Australia Collides with Asia
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