Fitzroy Robert

Photo Fitzroy Robert
Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy RN (5 July 1805 – 30 April 1865) achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, and as a pioneering meteorologist who made accurate weather forecasting a reality. He was an able surveyor and hydrographer and served as Governor of New Zealand from 1843 to 1845. Robert FitzRoy was born at Ampton Hall, Ampton, Suffolk, England into the upper echelons of the British aristocracy and a tradition of public service. Through his father, General Lord Charles FitzRoy, Robert was a fourth great-grandson of Charles II of England and his grandfather was Augustus Henry Fitzroy, 3rd Duke of Grafton. His mother was the daughter of the first Marquess of Londonderry and the half-sister of Viscount Castlereagh, who became Home Secretary. From the age of four Robert FitzRoy lived at Wakefield Lodge in Northamptonshire, the Palladian mansion of the FitzRoy family. Robert's half-brother Sir Charles FitzRoy was Governor of New South Wales, Governor of Prince Edward Island and Governor of Antigua. Fitzroy was also the Father of the Commander of the Channel Rear Admiral Sir Robert Fitzroy. In February 1818, 12 years old, he entered the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth, and in the following year he entered the Royal Navy. At the age of 14 he embarked as a voluntary student aboard the frigate HMS Owen Glendower, which sailed to South America in the middle of 1820, and returned in January 1822. He was promoted to midshipman while on the vessel. FitzRoy then served on HMS Hind as a midshipman. He completed his course with distinction and was promoted lieutenant on 7 September 1824, having passed the examination with 'full numbers' (100%), a result not achieved previously. After serving on HMS Thetis, in 1828 he was appointed flag lieutenant to Rear-Admiral Sir Robert Waller Otway, commander-in-chief of the South American station, aboard HMS Ganges. At that time HMS Beagle under Captain Pringle Stokes was carrying out a hydrographic survey of Tierra del Fuego, under the overall command of captain Phillip Parker King in HMS Adventure. Pringle Stokes became severely depressed and shot himself, and the ship under Lieutenant Skyring sailed to Rio de Janeiro, where Otway made FitzRoy (temporary) Captain of the Beagle on 15 December 1828. By the ship's return on 14 October 1830, FitzRoy had established his reputation as a surveyor and commander. During the survey, some of his men were camping onshore when a group of Fuegian natives made off with their boat. His ship gave chase and, after a scuffle, the culprit's families were brought on board as hostages. Eventually FitzRoy held a boy, a girl and two men. As it was not possible to put them ashore conveniently he decided to 'civilise' the 'savages', teaching them "English ... the plainer truths of Christianity ... and the use of common tools" before returning them as missionaries. They were given names: the girl he called Fuegia Basket (so named because the replacement for the stolen boat was an improvised coracle that resembled a basket), the boy Jemmy Button (he was purchased by FitzRoy with buttons) and the one man who did not escape he named York Minster (named after the large rock near which he was captured). There was also a boy called Boat Memory. FitzRoy brought them back to England where Boat Memory died following a smallpox vaccination. The others were minded by the trainee missionary Richard Matthews and became 'civilised' enough to be presented at court in the summer of 1831. In early May 1831 FitzRoy stood as Tory candidate for Ipswich in the General Election, but was defeated. His hopes of obtaining a new posting and organising a missionary project appeared to be failing, and he was organising the charter of a ship at his own expense to return the Fuegians with Matthews when his friend Francis Beaufort, Hydrographer to the British Admiralty, and his "kind uncle", the Duke of Grafton, interceded on his behalf at the Admiralty. On 25 June 1831 he was re-appointed commander of the Beagle. He spared no expense in fitting out the ship. Very conscious of the stressful loneliness of command and of the suicide both of Captain Stokes and of his uncle Viscount Castlereagh, who had cut his own throat in 1822 while in government office, he approached Beaufort in August 1831 and asked him to find a suitable gentleman companion for the voyage. Such a companion should share his scientific tastes, make good use of the expedition's opportunities for naturalism research, dine with him as an equal, and provide a semblance of normal human friendship.[1] While those Beaufort first approached turned the opportunity down, FitzRoy eventually approved Charles Darwin for the position. Before they left England FitzRoy gave Darwin a copy of the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, a book the captain had read that explained terrestrial features as the outcome of a gradual process taking place over extremely long periods. Moreover, FitzRoy took a request from Lyell himself to record observations on geological features such as erratic boulders.[2] FitzRoy and Darwin got on well together, but over the five-year survey voyage FitzRoy's violent temper—his outbursts had gained him the nickname "Hot Coffee"[3]—occasioned quarrels sometimes "bordering on insanity", as Darwin later recalled. On a memorable occasion in March 1831 at Bahia, Brazil, Darwin was horrified at tales of the treatment of slaves, but FitzRoy, while not endorsing brutality, recounted how an estancia owner once asked his slaves if they wished to be free and was told they didn't. Darwin incautiously asked FitzRoy if he thought slaves could answer such a question honestly when it was posed by their master, at which the captain lost his temper and, before storming out, told Darwin that if he doubted his word they could no longer live together; effectively he banished Darwin from his table. Before nightfall FitzRoy's temper cooled and he sent a handsome apology with the request that Darwin "continue to live with him", so they avoided the subject of slavery from that time on. However, none of their quarrels were over religious or doctrinal issues—such disagreements came after the voyage.[1] At the island of "Buttons Land" in Tierra del Fuego they set up a mission post, but when they returned nine days later the possessions had been looted. Matthews gave up, rejoining the ship and leaving the three westernised Fuegians to continue the missionary work. While in the Falkland Islands, FitzRoy bought a schooner out of his own funds to assist with the surveying tasks he had been asked to complete, and had it refitted and renamed Adventure, hoping that the cost would be reimbursed by the Admiralty. They returned to the mission post but found only Jemmy Button who had returned to native ways and refused the offer to go with them back to England. At Valparaiso in 1834, while Darwin was away from the ship exploring the Andes, the Admiralty reprimanded FitzRoy for buying the Adventure. He took the criticism badly, selling the schooner and announcing they would go back to recheck his survey, then resigning his command with doubts about his own sanity. The ship's officers persuaded him to withdraw his resignation and continue as planned once Darwin returned to the ship.[3] FitzRoy continued his voyage, sailing on to the Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, then detouring to Bahia in Brazil so that he could carry out an additional check to ensure the accuracy of his longitude measurements before returning to England. Soon after the Beagle's return on 2 October 1836, FitzRoy married a young woman to whom he had long been engaged. Darwin was amazed, as not once during the entire five years of the trip had FitzRoy spoken about being engaged. FitzRoy was awarded a gold medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1837. Extracts from his diary read to the society on 8 May 1837 included the observation (page 115) "Is it not extraordinary, that sea-worn, rolled, shingle-stones, and alluvial accumulations, compose the greater portion of these plains? How vast, and of what immense duration, must have been the actions of these waters which smoothed the shingle-stones now buried in the deserts of Patagonia!"[4] FitzRoy then wrote his account of the voyage, including editing the notes of the previous captain of the Beagle, which was completed and published in May 1839 as the Narrative of the surveying voyages of H.M.S. Adventure and Beagle in four volumes including Darwin's Journal and Remarks, 1832—1836 as the third volume. FitzRoy's account includes a section of Remarks with reference to the Deluge in which he admits that having read works "by geologists who contradict, by implication, if not in plain terms, the authenticity of the Scriptures" and "while led away by sceptical ideas" he had remarked to a friend that the vast plain of sedimentary material they were crossing "could never have been effected by a forty days' flood" indicating that in his "turn of mind and ignorance of scripture" he was willing to disbelieve the Biblical account. Concerned that such ideas might "reach the eyes of young sailors" he earnestly explains in great detail his renewed commitment to a literal reading of the Bible, with arguments that rock layers high in the mountains containing sea shells are actually proof of Noah's Flood and that the six days of creation could not have extended over aeons because the grass, herbs and trees would have died out during the long nights.[5] FitzRoy was clearly dissociating himself from the new ideas of Charles Lyell which he had accepted during the voyage, and from Darwin's account which embraced these ideas, instead asserting a new commitment under the influence of his very religious wife to the doctrine of the established Church of England.[3] FitzRoy was elected the Tory Member of Parliament for Durham in 1841, and appointed Acting Conservator of the River Mersey in 1842. The first Governor of New Zealand, William Hobson, died in late 1842 and the Church Missionary Society, which had a strong New Zealand presence, suggested FitzRoy as his successor. He took up his new task in December 1843.
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