Charles Darwin – In Australiarespect; I leave your shores without sorrow or regret.On the journey home Darwin writes of the several sources of enjoyment in a long
voyage. The map of the world ceases to be a blank and becomes a picture full of the
most varied and animated figures. Continents and islands come to life, and having
sailed for weeks along portions of their shores they start to assume their proper
dimensions. After some time in Cape Town making more chronological observations
the Beagle rounds the Cape of Good Hope and is now in the Atlantic Ocean and
heading home. Darwin contemplates life on his return to England and the fact that for
the next few years he will be fully occupied classifying and documenting the huge
number of specimens he has collected during his voyage around the world:
I look forward with a comical mixture of dread and satisfaction to the amount of work,
which remains for me in England. I suppose my chief residence will at first be Cambridge
and then London. The latter, I fear, will in every respect turn out most convenient. I grieve
to think of it; for a good walk in the true country is the greatest delight, which I can imagine.The last months of the journey home were hard on all the crew and Darwin wrote
how ‘There never was a ship so full of home-sick heroes’. They had been away for
almost five years and Darwin could not wait to join his family and see England’s green
and pleasant land. He wrote of his joy to be heading home as well as concern for the
emotional state of his captain:
I think we shall not reach England before September: But thank God the captain is as
home sick as I am, and I trust that he will grow worse than better ... I have been for
the last twelve months on very cordial terms with him. He is an extraordinary but noble
character, unfortunately, however, affected with strong peculiarities of temper. Of
this no man is more aware than himself, as he shows by his attempts to conquer them.
I often doubt what will be his end; under many circumstances I am sure it will be a
brilliant one, under others I fear a very unhappy one.The Beagle arrived at Falmouth in Cornwall in 1836, where Darwin took his leave
and rushed to the family home in Shrewsbury. The Beagle sailed on to Plymouth,
Portsmouth and Deal to receive Admiralty officials and then finally to Greenwich
on the Thames to make the last in its record breaking series of chronometer readings
around the globe. FitzRoy’s insistence on taking so many chronometers paid off
because after five years only half were working properly. The shift in local noon time at
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