Beagle voyage

Darwin set sail on HMS Beagle in 1831 when he was 22 years old, travelling as a gentleman companion to Captain Fitzroy. The voyage lasted for 5 years.

ON DARWIN'S HAMMOCK

Extracts from Darwin's Diary

4 December 1831 .... I intend sleeping in my hammock... I did so last night and experienced a most ludicrous difficulty in getting into it

30 December 1831.... wretchedly out of spirits and very sick.... I can scarcely conceive any more miserable state than when such dark and gloomy thoughts are haunting the mind as have today pursued me.

He'd always slept on feather beds
at Christ's, and in his father's house,.
It was uphill at first, right foot
in the hammock, leap as if to mount
a horse, then a laughable collapse
with bed and body thrown apart
Fitzroy, sea hardened as a boy
would demonstrate the ship shape way -
sit down, exactly in the centre
twist the body expertly
miraculously head and feet
arrive each in their proper place.

And when the Bay of Biscay wrenched
his guts and drowned his eagerness
in waves of misery, Charles sought
his hammock's centre, stretched himself
upon its length and found some hope
of comfort lay suspended there.
He woke to trawl the seas, to hunt
the plains and forests, hammer out
extinction's stony relics. Piles
of squirming life, dead bones and skins,
his jigsaw muddled up in heaps,
bedevilled Beagle's well scrubbed decks.

He watched the girls in Buenos Aires
he heard voluptuous silence in
the forests of Brazil, the earth
heaved like a wave at Concepcion
He climbed the Andes, where the seas
had written messages with shells.
He penetrated clouds of mist that veiled
Galapagos' elusive isles.
He saw the corals decorate
volcanoes lips. At night the dreams
he cherished, feared to understand,
hung in the dark below the deck.

 

EL NATURALISTA AT BAHIA BLANCA

Extract from Darwin's Journal August 1833

Bahia Blanca scarcely deserves the name of a village. A few houses and the barracks for the troops are enclosed by a deep ditch and fortified wall. The settlement is recent (1828), and its growth has been one of trouble. The government of Buenos Aires unjustly occupied it by force, instead of following the wise example of the Spanish viceroys, who purchased the land near the older settlement of the Rio Negro from the Indians.

Of course he was suspicious, the captain
of the garrison, surviving on the edge
of Patagonia, he'd lived to know
much treachery. His soldiers, gauchos,
Indians, drifters from the margins of their tribes,
defend the border from avenging bands
of dispossessed. Experience teaches him
that traitors breed in civil strife, this yarn
spins always, everywhere. Do spies approach
who moves across the drab monotonies
of mud - who stirs the seagulls into flight?
Who walks beneath that single vulture's gaze?

The strangers say they're mapping out the shores
of continents and fathoming the sea.
It's true they're dressed in sailors' garb except
for one, they say he is the naturalist.
They say he is a gentleman, but why
the pistols in his belt? This country, yes,
it's dangerous, but why the hammer in his hand?
El hombre, does he build or wreck with it ?
What is the purpose of El Naturalista?
He gathers specimens, birds, plants and rocks.
But why? What King or government would need
to see another country's birds and stones?

The Captain orders - "Watch Don Carlos Darwin".
Soldiers troop behind him to the point.
The sea that once laid shells and bones in shale
has turned and now uncovers ancient tombs,
betrays a past devoid of men - the haunt
of giant sloth and monstrous mylodon.
Gauchos stare as Darwin's hammer frees
the massive skulls - men with native mothers
start to mutter - he disturbs great spirits.
Spaniards cross themselves and swear, God knows
who the devil pays him for his hoard, they fear
he's loco, digging out those nightmare bones

These two poems appeared in 'The New Welsh Review' magazine in December 2001

Darwin's book the Voyage of the Beagle is still in print and well worth reading. If you'd like to buy on line this or other books by or about Charles Darwin you can browse the Amazon  UK  Books Home Page

 Anne Bryan    

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