Hey, it’s Charles.
Something happened and I need to tell you about it quickly because I think if I stop and think too hard I will talk myself out of it.
I just graduated from Cambridge with a degree in theology that I am never going to use. I have no plans. I have no career. My beetle collection is coming along nicely but that is not something you can tell your father at dinner. I was fully prepared to accept my fate as a disappointing clergyman in some quiet village when a letter arrived.
One of my professors — a botanist named John Henslow, probably the only person at Cambridge who took me seriously — recommended me for a position on a ship called the HMS Beagle. The ship is doing a survey voyage. Mapping coastlines, taking measurements, that sort of thing. They need someone on board who can study the geology and natural history of wherever they land. It is unpaid. The voyage is supposed to last two years. The ship is tiny — about 90 feet long, which sounds fine until you remember this thing is crossing oceans.
I want to go more than I have ever wanted anything.
My father said absolutely not. He said it was a waste of time. He said it was dangerous and foolish and another example of me refusing to settle down and do something sensible with my life. He said no respectable person would take a position like this and that if I had any sense I would forget about it immediately.
I sat in his office and nodded and said yes father and then went straight to my uncle Josiah and begged him to change my father’s mind. Uncle Josiah is the one person my father actually listens to — probably because he is rich and successful and everything my father wishes I was. Josiah wrote my father a letter basically saying the trip would be good for me. My father, shockingly, agreed.
I am in. I am going.
I need to be honest with you — I am terrified. I have never left England. I have never been on a ship for more than a few hours. The Beagle is going to South America, around the bottom of the continent, across the Pacific, and back. The captain is a man named Robert FitzRoy who is by all accounts extremely competent and extremely moody. I have been told he picked me partly because he wanted a gentleman companion for dinner conversation on the long stretches at sea. So my qualification for this scientific voyage is apparently that I am pleasant to eat with.
Also — and I did not fully consider this before saying yes — I get violently seasick. Not mildly uncomfortable. Violently. I discovered this on a short trip and spent the entire time hanging over the side of the boat wishing for death. And I have just signed up for two years of this.
We set sail in a couple of weeks. I have packed notebooks, collection jars, a microscope, some books on geology, and an amount of optimism that is probably not justified by any of my life choices so far.
My father shook my hand before I left home. He did not say he was proud of me. He did not say good luck. He said —
“I suppose this will at least keep you from shooting birds for a while.”
Which from him might actually be affection. It is hard to tell with a man that large.
I will write you from sea. Or from whatever continent I wash up on. Assuming I survive the seasickness, which at this point is not guaranteed.
— Charles
