darwin's lost voyage

Charles Darwin and His Voyage Aboard H.M.S. Beagle

The Young Naturalist Spent Five Years on a Royal Navy Research Ship

Bettmann/Contributor/Getty Images

• Important Historical Figures
• U.S. Presidents
• Native American History
• American Revolution
• America Moves Westward
• The Gilded Age
• Crimes & Disasters
• The Most Important Inventions of the Industrial Revolution
• African American History
• African History
• Ancient History and Culture
• Asian History
• European History
• Latin American History
• Medieval & Renaissance History
• Military History
• The 20th Century
• Women's History

The History of H.M.S. Beagle

Gentleman passenger, darwin invited to join the voyage in 1831, departs england on december 27, 1831, south america from february 1832, the galapagos islands, september 1835, circumnavigating the globe, back home october 2, 1836, organizing specimens and writing, the theory of evolution.

Charles Darwin’s five-year voyage in the early 1830s on H.M.S. Beagle has become legendary, as insights gained by the bright young scientist on his trip to exotic places greatly influenced his masterwork, the book " On the Origin of Species ."

Darwin didn’t actually formulate his theory of evolution while sailing around the world aboard the Royal Navy ship. But the exotic plants and animals he encountered challenged his thinking and led him to consider scientific evidence in new ways.

After returning to England from his five years at sea, Darwin began writing a multi-volume book on what he had seen. His writings on the Beagle voyage concluded in 1843, a full decade and a half before the publication of "On the Origin of Species."

H.M.S. Beagle is remembered today because of its association with Charles Darwin , but it had sailed on a lengthy scientific mission several years before Darwin came into the picture. The Beagle, a warship carrying ten cannons, sailed in 1826 to explore the coastline of South America. The ship had an unfortunate episode when its captain sank into a depression, perhaps caused by the isolation of the voyage, and committed suicide.

Lieutenant Robert FitzRoy assumed command of the Beagle, continued the voyage and returned the ship safely to England in 1830. FitzRoy was promoted to Captain and named to command the ship on a second voyage, which was to circumnavigate the globe while conducting explorations along the South American coastline and across the South Pacific.

FitzRoy came up with the idea of bringing along someone with a scientific background who could explore and record observations. Part of FitzRoy’s plan was that an educated civilian, referred to as a “gentleman passenger,” would be good company aboard ship and would help him avoid the loneliness that seemed to have doomed his predecessor.

Inquiries were made among professors at British universities, and a former professor of Darwin’s proposed him for the position aboard the Beagle.

After taking his final exams at Cambridge in 1831, Darwin spent a few weeks on a geological expedition to Wales. He had intended to return to Cambridge that fall for theological training, but a letter from a professor, John Steven Henslow, inviting him to join the Beagle, changed everything.

Darwin was excited to join the ship, but his father was against the idea, thinking it foolhardy. Other relatives convinced Darwin’s father otherwise, and during the fall of 1831, the 22-year-old Darwin made preparations to depart England for five years.

With its eager passenger aboard, the Beagle left England on December 27, 1831. The ship reached the Canary Islands in early January and continued onward to South America, which was reached by the end of February 1832.

During the explorations of South America, Darwin was able to spend considerable time on land, sometimes arranging for the ship to drop him off and pick him up at the end of an overland trip. He kept notebooks to record his observations, and during quiet times on board the Beagle, he would transcribe his notes into a journal.

In the summer of 1833, Darwin went inland with gauchos in Argentina. During his treks in South America, Darwin dug for bones and fossils and was also exposed to the horrors of enslavement and other human rights abuses.

After considerable explorations in South America, the Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands in September 1835. Darwin was fascinated by such oddities as volcanic rocks and giant tortoises. He later wrote about approaching tortoises, which would retreat into their shells. The young scientist would then climb on top, and attempt to ride the large reptile when it began moving again. He recalled that it was difficult to keep his balance.

While in the Galapagos Darwin collected samples of mockingbirds, and later observed that the birds were somewhat different on each island. This made him think that the birds had a common ancestor, but had followed varying evolutionary paths once they had become separated.

The Beagle left the Galapagos and arrived at Tahiti in November 1835, and then sailed onward to reach New Zealand in late December. In January 1836 the Beagle arrived in Australia, where Darwin was favorably impressed by the young city of Sydney.

After exploring coral reefs, the Beagle continued on its way, reaching the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa at the end of May 1836. Sailing back into the Atlantic Ocean, the Beagle, in July, reached St. Helena, the remote island where Napoleon Bonaparte had died in exile following his defeat at Waterloo. The Beagle also reached a British outpost on Ascension Island in the South Atlantic, where Darwin received some very welcome letters from his sister in England.

The Beagle then sailed back to the coast of South America before returning to England, arriving at Falmouth on October 2, 1836. The entire voyage had taken nearly five years.

After landing in England, Darwin took a coach to meet his family, staying at his father’s house for a few weeks. But he was soon active, seeking advice from scientists on how to organize specimens, which included fossils and stuffed birds, he had brought home with him.

In the following few years, he wrote extensively about his experiences. A lavish five-volume set, "The Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle," was published from 1839 to 1843.

And in 1839 Darwin published a classic book under its original title, "Journal of Researches." The book was later republished as " The Voyage of the Beagle ," and remains in print to this day. The book is a lively and charming account of Darwin’s travels, written with intelligence and occasional flashes of humor.

Darwin had been exposed to some thinking about evolution before embarking aboard H.M.S. Beagle. So a popular conception that Darwin’s voyage gave him the idea of evolution is not accurate.

Yet is it true that the years of travel and research focused Darwin's mind and sharpened his powers of observation. It can be argued that his trip on the Beagle gave him invaluable training, and the experience prepared him for the scientific inquiry that led to the publication of "On the Origin of Species" in 1859.

• Charles Darwin's Finches
• Biography of Charles Darwin, Originator of the Theory of Evolution
• World History Timeline From 1830 to 1840
• The Legacy of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species"
• Charles Darwin WebQuest
• Evidence Darwin Had for Evolution
• An Overview of the Galapagos Islands
• 8 People Who Influenced and Inspired Charles Darwin
• How Artificial Selection Works With Animals
• The 5 Types of Selection
• Biography of Ferdinand Magellan, Explorer Circumnavigated the Earth
• Interesting Facts About Charles Darwin
• Biography and Legacy of Ferdinand Magellan
• Artificial Selection: Breeding for Desirable Traits
• What Is Darwinism?

Premium Content

• HISTORY MAGAZINE

Darwin's first—and only—trip around the world began a scientific revolution

The plants and animals encountered on the five-year voyage of the 'Beagle' provided the foundation for Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.

During August 1831 Charles Darwin , recently graduated from the University of Cambridge, was stuck at home on exactly the same principle, he complained, as a person would choose to remain in a debtors’ prison. At age 22, Darwin was fascinated by the natural world and inspired by the adventure stories of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt , whose travels across Central and South America in the early 1800s was the basis of a series of extensive travelogues. Darwin was desperate to undertake a similar scientific odyssey. An attempt to organize an expedition to Tenerife in the Canary Islands off the coast of northwest Africa, had fallen through.

The awful necessity of earning his own living, probably as the vicar of a country parish, seemed inescapable. And then a letter arrived offering Darwin an amazing opportunity. The writer was one of Darwin’s former teachers, John Stevens Henslow, professor of botany at Cambridge. Henslow informed Darwin that he had recommended him to accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy on an expedition aboard the H.M.S. Beagle . He wrote: “I state this not on the supposition of yr. being a finished Naturalist, but as amply qualified for collecting, observing, & noting any thing worthy . . . in Natural History.”

Robert FitzRoy was an aristocratic but mercurial naval captain. In 1826 he had set off as a crew member on the Beagle to carry out a survey of South America. In the course of the voyage, he was placed in command of the expedition, from which he returned in 1830. The letter from Henslow to Darwin was written as FitzRoy was under instructions from the Admiralty to mount a second survey expedition to Tierra del Fuego, an archipelago at the tip of South America. The primary motive of the voyage was to chart the coast of South America. A secondary motive was scientific exploration. FitzRoy wanted a naturalist aboard, both to carry out scientific work and to keep him company.

Despite Henslow’s recommendation, however, Darwin’s place was not immediately assured. FitzRoy’s first impression of the young naturalist was not entirely favorable. Darwin’s father expressed skepticism at the expense and dangerous nature of the venture. The Beagle was the overcrowded home to a total crew of 74. Shipwreck was a common hazard, death through disease an even greater one, and much of South America was lawless. To try to convince his father, Darwin sought help from his mother’s brother, the industrialist Josiah Wedgwood II. Wedgwood’s daughter Emma had been a childhood friend of Darwin’s, and the two first cousins would later marry, in 1839.

Setting sail

In the end both FitzRoy and his father were persuaded that he should go, and on December 27, 1831, the Beagle sailed out of Plymouth with Darwin on board. Originally planned for two years, the voyage stretched to five, and took Darwin not only to South America but to Tahiti, Australia, New Zealand, Africa, and many of the Atlantic and Pacific islands in between. Darwin often left the ship to travel hundreds of miles on horseback.

Life aboard the Beagle

First launched in 1820, the Beagle started life as a brig (a swift two-masted vessel), 90 feet long and 25 feet wide. It was reconditioned as a three-masted bark in 1825, and later set off to South America under the command of Pringle Stokes. Stokes died during the mission, and Robert FitzRoy took command. On the Beagle’ s return in 1830, it was remodeled again for a second surveying expedition in which Darwin would participate (1831-36); the route would take the Beagle to South America and then make a circumnavigation of the globe.

The 74-person crew for this second voyage consisted of officers, midshipmen, sailors and porters, and marines, who all formed the naval crew; in addition, there were nine noncommissioned members, including Darwin. It was a large crew for a ship of such modest dimensions, as Darwin wrote: “The vessel is a very small one . . . but every body says it is the best sort for our work . . . The want of room is very bad, but we must make the best of it.”

Darwin spent most of his time in the stern where Captain FitzRoy’s cabin was located. Darwin’s cabin was outfitted with a folding bunk and bookshelves. He also had a chest in which to store the samples collected ashore. Darwin soon felt at ease on the Beagle. He wrote in February 1832: “I find to my great surprise that a ship is singularly comfortable for all sorts of work. Everything is so close at hand, & being cramped, make one so methodical, that in the end I have been a gainer. I already have got to look at going to sea as a regular quiet place, like going back to home after staying away from it.”

In the course of this extraordinary journey, he filled notebook after notebook with sketches and observations. Darwin shipped home barrels, boxes, and bottles by the dozen, filled with pressed plants, fossils, rocks, skins, and skeletons. He explored landscapes that ranged from the gray desolation of the Falklands to the glorious heights of the Andes, from the wild glaciated cliffs of the Beagle Channel to the beaches of Tahiti, from the tropical lushness of Rio to the dripping rainforest of southern Chile.

Early observations

First landfall was the volcanic island of St. Jago (now Santiago) in the Cape Verde Islands. After three weeks of seasickness, Darwin threw himself enthusiastically into his first independent fieldwork, identifying rock samples and recording a cross section of the volcanic strata. He had the best equipment he could buy: a microscope, a clinometer for measuring angles, geological hammers, and a vasculum (a container for botanical specimens), but he was still a novice. He boasted in a letter to his Cambridge teacher, John Stevens Henslow, that his discovery of a color-changing octopus “appears to be new.” It wasn’t, and Henslow gently disabused him. ( Here's how animals are able to manipulate their color. )

By February 15, 1832, they were resupplying on the remote rocky islets of St. Paul’s, and two weeks later, the Beagle crossed the Equator and reached the coast of Brazil. Darwin, however, injured in the final leg of the journey, was forced to stay on board, so it was April before he first set foot in South America, at Botafogo Bay near Rio de Janeiro.

For the next few months as the crew of the Beagle sailed up and down the coast checking and rechecking naval charts, Darwin stayed ashore, happily exploring the Corcovado mountains near Rio, shifting from geology to zoology and building an impressive collection of spiders and wasps .

A man of letters

During the Beagle ’s voyage, Darwin famously amassed a huge scientific collection of plants and animals, but another important legacy is his prolific and detailed correspondence with family and friends. The letters reflect Darwin’s mood over the five years of the voyage and—despite the ups and downs—suggest he was never disheartened. His words to his loved ones also expose the man behind the scientist. His humanity and personality quirks are on full display—from delighting in his private cabin on the ship to asking his sisters to mail him more “Prometheans,” or matches.

The ship went south again at the end of June. This time he went, too, encountering porpoises, whales, penguins, and seals. The expedition dropped anchor at the end of July at the mouth of the majestic Río de la Plata. Both Montevideo on the north bank, where they helped put down a revolt, and Buenos Aires on the south bank, where they were fired on as suspected cholera-carriers, were dangerous places. The flat and empty landscape seemed to Darwin a poor exchange for the lushness of the tropics. (Related: The tropics are home to 80 percent of the world's species, but they're losing wildlife fast. )

All the while, Darwin’s collections were annoying the ship’s purser who complained about the clutter. Darwin had already learned some taxidermy, and now experimented with other ways of preserving unfamiliar specimens using wax, spirits, and thin sheets of lead—with mixed results. ( See how one museum moved hundreds of taxidermy animals. )

Darwin's birds

The first letters from home brought criticism and advice from Henslow, on whose doorstep Darwin’s treasures were landing. It is another reminder of how Darwin's voyage was a learning experience: His labels weren’t securely fixed, beetles had been crushed, mice had gone moldy, and one mystery bottle looked like “the remains of an electric explosion, a mere mass of soot.”

By September 1832 they were surveying the coast of Argentina. Already a good shot, Darwin learned to use a bola (a weighted lasso) to bring down ostriches and took time off from “admiring the Spanish ladies” to discover his first large fossilized vertebrate—a Megatherium, an extinct species of giant ground sloth. Darwin’s curiosity was piqued by its similarity to a species of agouti, a rodent native to South America. In November he returned to Buenos Aires to restock for the voyage to Cape Horn.

A year after leaving home, the Beagle , like the Endeavour of Captain Cook and Joseph Banks before it, finally anchored in the Bay of Good Success on the coast of Tierra del Fuego. It was magnificent but inhospitable country. They spent Christmas on Hermit Island, just west of the cape, but were repeatedly beaten back by gales. One of their whaleboats was smashed against the ship in a storm, and Darwin lost notes and specimens.

After arriving at Ponsonby Sound, FitzRoy and some of the crew, including Darwin, headed off in two of the ship’s boats on a 300-mile round trip to chart the farther reaches of the Beagle Channel, named for FitzRoy’s first adventures there. It was spectacular country. Darwin’s letters home glitter with descriptions of the glaciers’ beauty. But they were dangerous as well: When a large sheet of ice crashed into the water sending a surge along the shore toward their boats, it was Darwin who led the desperate race to drag them to safety. FitzRoy named the place Darwin Sound in his honor.

Reptilian relationships

On April 18, 1835 Darwin wrote a long letter from Valparaíso (Chile) to his friend and former teacher, the botanist and geologist John Stevens Henslow. He described the local lizards and invited his colleagues’ opinions. Darwin's methodical approach to research and his generosity and openness to academic cooperation is on full display: “I also send a small bottle with 2 Lizards: one of them is Viviparous, as you will see by the accompanying notice.” Darwin had heard of a French scholar who had found a similar lizard, so he urged his friend to “hand over the Specimens to some good Lizardologist & Comparative Anatomist to publish an account of their internal structure.”

Foiled in their attempt to round the cape, they sailed east and on March 1, 1833, arrived at the Falkland Islands where the navy was keen to discover safe harbors. Concerned that the Beagle crew alone could not complete their mission, FitzRoy bought another boat: the Adventure. Both ships returned in April to Montevideo, where Darwin set off on his first long inland expedition, accompanied by the Beagle’ s cabin boy, Syms Covington, whom Darwin had hired as combined servant and research assistant. They did not rendezvous with the ship until September, in Buenos Aires.

Rounding the Cape

Both the Beagle and the Adventure headed south in December, retracing the route of the previous year as far as Tierra del Fuego. There, Darwin finally found something he had been looking for: a new species of rhea (originally named Rhea darwinii ), an ostrich-like bird—but only after half of it had been eaten for the crew’s dinner.

By March 1834 they were once again forced to head back to the Falklands without rounding the cape. The Beagle’ s keel had been badly damaged, so by the middle of April it was beached at the mouth of the Rio Santa Cruz for repairs. FitzRoy took advantage of the opportunity to mount an expedition upriver. They rowed and dragged the boats 140 miles through uncharted territory. It took three weeks to go up and three days to sail back down, Darwin all the while was adding to his observations. ( These scientists spent months exploring the Okavango delta. )

Darwin's fossils

After the Beagle was repaired, it made a third attempt to round the cape. Perhaps the third time was the charm, because this time they made it. In June 1834 the expedition finally reached the west coast of South America.

The next year was spent following the coastline of Chile and Peru in much the same manner as the previous two and a half years had been spent in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina: The Beagle followed a switchback course, surveying and resurveying the complex archipelago of the coastline.

Darwin loathed the incessantly dripping and impenetrable temperate rainforest of southern Chile, and was frequently absent organizing his own inland expeditions. He traveled southeast through the Andes from the colonial elegance of Valparaíso to Santiago. It was largely uncharted, so he relied on the help of locals who drew maps, advised on safe routes, and helped hire guides and horses. One looked after him for several weeks when he fell dangerously ill, probably with typhoid fever. Meanwhile FitzRoy felt isolated, overworked, and depressed. The Admiralty’s unwillingness to shoulder the cost of the Adventur e forced him to sell the ship, after which he threatened to resign. The future of the voyage hung in the balance.

Darwin made one more major land expedition, traveling 220 miles from Valparaíso through the Andes to Coquimbo and Copiapó, before rejoining the Beagle to sail to Iquique in Peru. From Lima they sailed west at the end of July 1835 and arrived at the Galápagos archipelago in mid-September.

You May Also Like

Beyond the Western myth of exploration lies a rich and often overlooked history

These 5 explorers disappeared into thin air. Will we ever know the truth?

Who were the original 49ers? The true story of the California Gold Rush

They spent five weeks exploring the islands, each with its own distinctive flora and fauna. Darwin, still months from forming even a rudimentary theory on how species might evolve over time, filed new facts away with each species he came across. Although the Galápagos, and their finches and great tortoises are closely connected in the popular imagination with the origins of his ideas about species change, Darwin did not conceive of his famous hypothesis on that visit. ( Turns out Galápagos tortoises migrate—just very slowly. )

Darwin’s observations on this trip led to a different grand, scientific theory. In the Andes, in the Uspallata Pass, he had noticed something curious: fossilized trees that he realized must once have been submerged in the sea. The question in Darwin’s mind was how had they been raised so high up in the mountains.

On January 19, 1835, while Darwin was exploring inland, the Beagle crew had witnessed the eruption of the Osorno Volcano in Chile. A month later, farther up the coast, an earthquake struck and caused a tidal wave. Darwin began to speculate that the events might be connected. FitzRoy reviewed earlier soundings and confirmed the height of the land had changed. Armed with this information, Darwin proposed a theory of continental-scale fall and uplift, with tiny changes working over eons to create dramatic landscapes like those in the Andes.

With this in mind, when they arrived in Tahiti and Darwin saw his first coral reef, he proposed a brilliant new solution to the mystery of how such reefs were formed. His letters describing his ideas were, unbeknownst to him, appearing in scientific journals, and he would return with an already established scientific reputation. But he wasn’t home yet. As they sailed west from the coast of Africa, FitzRoy had found errors in the very first charts they had made, and diverted across the Atlantic to resurvey the coast of Brazil.

The Beagle finally docked at Falmouth on October 2, 1836. Darwin never left Britain again, but he maintained a robust correspondence with his colleagues all over the world about the work done on the voyage. He went on to publish more than 20 articles from his notes and diaries written aboard the Beagle. He published books, became a best-selling travel writer, and a leading scientist.

Evolution of a theory

It is likely that during his trip aboard the Beagle Darwin may have already been beginning to sketch a first outline of his theory of evolution. Immediately after returning to London, he began to work on the theory in earnest, albeit secretly, in his private notebooks. He drafted a first brief treatise that he kept hidden for fear of the scandal it would provoke. As early as 1837 (a year after his return on the Bea- gle ), he drew a “tree of life” to illustrate the evolution—or “transmutation” as he then termed it—of species. It was not until 1859 that Darwin published the final version of his theory, spurred to do so by the publication of similar ideas by the English naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace.

The work of identifying hundreds of specimens was parceled out to others, many of whom became lifelong friends and colleagues. Although not conceived during the voyage, Darwin’s ideas about species change were born not only out of his encounters with so many different plants and animals (including humans), but, most importantly, through the opportunity to see them in all the complexity of their shared habitats. Many years later, Darwin had no hesitation in declaring the voyage of the Beagle the single most important event of his life.

Related Topics

• SPECIES DISCOVERY
• JUNGLE EXPLORATION
• LAND EXPLORATION

New fossils reveal one of the smallest titanosaurs ever found

Magellan got the credit, but this man was first to sail around the world

The 11 most astonishing scientific discoveries of 2023

The ultimate Costa Rican adventure, from white-water rafting to jungle trekking

Real desert islands: 10 remote getaways in the Indian Ocean

• Environment
• Perpetual Planet

History & Culture

• History & Culture
• History Magazine
• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Paid Content
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

HMS Beagle: Darwin’s Trip around the World

Charles Darwin sailed around the world from 1831–1836 as a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle . His experiences and observations helped him develop the theory of evolution through natural selection.

Biology, Geography, Earth Science, Geology, Ecology

Loading ...

Idea for Use in the Classroom

Charles Darwin set sail on the ship HMS Beagle on December 27, 1831, from Plymouth, England. Darwin was 22 years old when he was hired to be the ship’s naturalist . Most of the trip was spent sailing around South America. There Darwin spent considerable time ashore collecting plants and animals. Darwin filled notebooks with his observations of plants, animals, and geology . The trip was an almost five-year adventure and the ship returned to Falmouth, England, on October 2, 1836.

Throughout South America, Darwin collected a variety of bird specimens . One key observation Darwin made occurred while he was studying the specimens from the Galapagos Islands. He noticed the finches on the island were similar to the finches from the mainland, but each showed certain characteristics that helped them to gather food more easily in their specific habitat. He collected many specimens of the finches on the Galapagos Islands. These specimens and his notebooks provided Darwin with a record of his observations as he developed the theory of evolution through natural selection .

Have students work in pairs to use the map and the resources in the explore more tab to create a social media feed that includes five dates and posts from the expedition. Students may need to conduct additional research to ensure their proposed posts are factual and something Darwin would have seen on the trip. Help students brainstorm ideas for their posts by asking: What types of animals would Darwin have seen? Are any of them extinct today? What types of plants did he note? What types of geology did he see? What would you imagine some of the hardships the explorers would have encountered on this voyage?

Articles & Profiles

Media credits.

The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.

Production Managers

Program specialists, last updated.

October 19, 2023

User Permissions

For information on user permissions, please read our Terms of Service. If you have questions about how to cite anything on our website in your project or classroom presentation, please contact your teacher. They will best know the preferred format. When you reach out to them, you will need the page title, URL, and the date you accessed the resource.

If a media asset is downloadable, a download button appears in the corner of the media viewer. If no button appears, you cannot download or save the media.

Text on this page is printable and can be used according to our Terms of Service .

Interactives

Any interactives on this page can only be played while you are visiting our website. You cannot download interactives.

Related Resources

• International edition
• Australia edition
• Europe edition

Darwin's lost fossils – including a sloth the size of a car – to be made public

Fossils collected by Darwin on his global voyages on the Beagle will be digitally scanned and made available online

On 23 September 1832 a young naturalist, thousands of miles from home and frequently seasick and homesick, found the fossil of an enormous skull embedded in soft rock. It took Charles Darwin three hours to chip it out of the cliff face at Punta Alta in Argentina, and hours more to lug it back to base. He arrived with it long after dark at the ship which became the most famous in the history of natural science, the Beagle.

Darwin was only 24, a college dropout from his medical degree who had done a crash course in geology in order to join the voyage. He was wild with excitement about the chase, writing in a letter to a friend: “I have just got scent of some fossil bones of a Mammoth, what they may be I do not know, but if gold or galloping will get them, they shall be mine”.

Darwin’s treasures, brought on board after every shore trip to the exasperation of the crew of the small cramped ship, and sent back to England whenever he came upon a vessel making the return journey, were all meticulously recorded in his journals, and labelled according to a four-colour system he devised himself using printed labels he had brought from England.

His fossils, much less famous now in the history of how he came to publish his theory of evolution by natural selection than his observations of wildlife, are among the treasures of the Natural History Museum in London. They are still of interest to scientists all over the world but many of the originals are almost too fragile to handle. The NHM this week launches an ambitious project to scan and digitally recreate the fossils in 3D , in such minute detail that they can be studied by scientists as well as pored over by members of the public. One of the first completed has just been digitally dissected by a scientist in Montpellier in France.

The digitisation also guarantees that a permanent record of the bones will be preserved as scientific tests continue. Carbon dating has recently confirmed a date for one which Darwin could only have guessed at from the rock layer in which he found it – just 12,660 years old, so very close to the extinction of its species – and the NHM will now attempt to extract DNA from it.

The first to go online is the skull of Toxodon platensis , which Darwin found propped up against the fence in a Uruguayan farmer’s yard, where the local children competed to throw stones and knock out its teeth. Darwin bought it for a shilling and sixpence (equivalent to £6.40 today). Its curved teeth led Darwin and fellow scientists to wonder if it was an gigantic rodent, but it was eventually identified as a distant relative of a rhinoceros – and the last member of a group of South American mammals stretching back 60m years.

As they arrived back in England, Darwin’s fossils were already becoming famous and making his reputation, when he still had years of the voyage ahead. One batch contained a missing section of a skeleton which had already been sent back by another collector – the creature whose skull Darwin had chipped out of the cliff face. They were the remains of Megatherium, a ground dwelling relative of modern tree dwelling sloths – but Megatherium was the size of a car, the largest and heaviest land mammal ever to live in South America. After the fossils were displayed at a science event in London, one friend wrote to Darwin: “From sending home the much desired bones of Megatherium your name is likely to be immortalised.” In fact, Megatherium and its relationship to modern animals was one of the observations which would set Darwin’s mind on the course which would make his name immortal, and the publication decades later of his great book.

At the NHM, senior curator Pip Brewer and Adrian Lister, a research leader in the museum’s Earth Sciences department who has written a new book on Darwin’s fossils, share Darwin’s excitement over the hunt, having tracked down a chunk of fossil where it has been missing in plain sight for more than a century.

They launched an international hunt for Darwin fossils as part of the project. Most came to their museum after the second world war from the Royal College of Surgeons – which in the 19th century had the best comparative anatomy collection, while Darwin was scathing about the British Museum’s displays of its natural history specimens. The huge skull remains with the RCS, and others went to Harvard in the 19th century with a Swiss scientist, a correspondent of Darwin’s. The missing slice of the skull which Darwin chipped out of the Argentinian cliff in 1832 turned up in his own home, Down House, now a museum run by English Heritage .

“They told us they had a bit of tooth in the stores but they no idea what it was. When we got there they had had it laid out on a table and we recognised it as the missing piece of Megatherium in seconds,” Lister said. They later brought the fossil to the RCS, and could see instantly how perfectly the cut marks matched with the rest of the skull.

“It wasn’t quite as dramatic as Darwin’s discovery of it – but it was still such a thrill,” Brewer added.

• The first of the digitised Darwin fossils goes online at the Natural History Museum site on 9 April. Darwin’s Fossils: Discoveries that Shaped the Theory of Evolution by Adrian Lister is published by Natural History Museum Publishing
• Charles Darwin

More on this story

Charles Darwin autograph manuscript could fetch £700,000 at auction

Rare orchid flourishes in Charles Darwin’s gardens after two-year project

Do we need a new theory of evolution?

Stolen Darwin journals returned to Cambridge University library

How should we address Charles Darwin's complicated legacy?

Charles Darwin's notebooks reported stolen from Cambridge University

Charles Darwin's ailments are 'typical of Lyme disease' in UK

The Wider Earth review – Natural History Museum's Darwin spectacular

The removal of Darwin and evolution from schools is a backwards step

Most viewed.

Letterboxd — Your life in film

Forgotten username or password ?

• Start a new list…
• Add all films to a list…
• Add all films to watchlist

Add to your films…

Press Tab to complete, Enter to create

A moderator has locked this field.

Add to lists

Where to watch

Darwin's lost voyage.

2009 Directed by Geoffrey Luck

Along the wild edges of the Earth, against a stunning backdrop of aerial, underwater, and wildlife photography, evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi leads us on an unforgettable journey retracing the adventure- and uncovering the evidence-that inspired Darwin's revolutionary work, On The Origin of Species.

Josh Charles Tom Hiddleston

Director Director

Geoffrey Luck

Producers Producers

Geoffrey Luck Drew Pulley Stephen Reverand

Composer Composer

National Geographic

Alternative Titles

Darwin's Secret Notebooks, National Geographic Darwin's Lost Voyage, National Geographic: Darwin's Lost Voyage, Darwin titkos feljegyzései, 达尔文的演化远征, El viaje perdido de Darwin, Darwinova cesta poznání

Documentary TV Movie

Releases by Date

01 jan 2009, releases by country.

50 mins   More at IMDb TMDb Report this page

Popular reviews

Review by Mario ½

This is fucking shit holy fuck lmao what am I in 7th grade? FUCK CHARLES DARWIN DUDE LOOOOOL, Evolution is fake moron

Review by sofia

my biology teacher really thought he could put on a documentary narrated by Tom Hiddleston and I would focus on anything else besides his voice

Review by vicente ★½

Biology classes are intense .

Review by Pedro Borges ★★★★

Excelente documentário!! Vi na aula e é muito giro!

Review by Baite

watched in bio class, it was a bit boring but at least we stopped talking about the potatoes we planted last year

Select your preferred poster

Find anything you save across the site in your account

Darwin’s Lost Treasure, Found

By Simon Parkin

In a dimly lit basement in the Cambridge University Library, a conservator recently removed two reddish-brown, leather-bound notebooks from a moisture-controlled glass display case. The notebooks—one labelled “B” and the other “C”—belonged to the nineteenth-century naturalist Charles Darwin . In the spring of 1837, while wandering the filthy streets of London fresh from a five-year world-spanning expedition, he filled their pages with brilliant thoughts and dreadful drawings. (Darwin’s famous tree-of-life sketch, which appears in notebook “B,” looks like a schoolboy’s idle doodle.) The ideas that he jotted would later bloom into theories about the origin of species, which makes the notebooks akin to scientific relics.

For academics, the uncooked contents of the notebooks represent some of the liveliest writing in biology. “A lot of Darwin’s prose feels quite Victorian,” the professor Jim Secord, a leading expert in Darwin’s correspondence, told me. “But these are different: an early form of stream of consciousness; like Leopold Bloom on steroids.” Secord, who is sixty-nine and has the restrained charm of an American who has worked for decades in English academia, first saw the notebooks soon after he began teaching at Cambridge, in 1992. He examined the artifacts a few times in subsequent years, an experience that brought the reality of Darwin’s experience to life.

Then, in September, 2000, the notebooks were removed from the Special Collections Strong Rooms—where the library’s rarest and most valuable items are kept—to be photographed. At that time, the library was laxer about security; the shoot took place in a portable building situated on the library grounds. According to the logbook entries that record the comings and goings of library objects, the notebooks were duly returned. But, three months later, during a routine stock check, staff discovered that they were missing. “My theory was that they had been swept into a wastepaper basket,” Secord said. “That obviously turned out to not be true.”

For two decades, the library staff chose to believe that the notebooks, which are worth several million dollars apiece, had been misplaced—a somewhat reasonable theory considering the Alexandrian scale of the library’s collection of approximately eight million books spread across more than two hundred kilometres of shelving. With each passing year, however, the theory weakened. “People with legitimate interests had started to say, ‘Hey, we’d really like to see the notebooks,’ ” Secord explained. “And, if a newspaper had got a hold of the story, and reported that their loss had been kept secret . . . You know, it would really be bad.”

In April, 2017, Dr. Jessica Gardner became the university’s head librarian. She soon learned about the missing notebooks, whose loss was known to only a few. Discovering their whereabouts became a priority. Gardner sought advice from the national-security adviser for the Arts Council England and an expert with the Metropolitan Police and others who have worked on high-profile cases of cultural theft around the world. The message was consistent: “Go public.” In November, 2020, the university came clean, publishing a description of the notebooks and the presentation case in which they had been kept; Interpol was informed.

Sixteen months later, on March 9th, at around eight in the morning, Gardner arrived at her office on the fourth floor of the library’s seventeen-story main tower to begin a string of Zoom meetings. At this time, the library’s head of communications, Stuart Roberts, would typically be making his morning cup of tea in the kitchen across the corridor from Gardner’s office, but that day a doctor’s appointment made him late: “A bit of a bugger,” he said.

When Gardner’s personal assistant, who has chosen to remain anonymous, arrived at half past nine, she spied a bright-pink gift bag on the floor outside the librarian’s office, an area surveyed by a couple of seventeenth-century oil portraits but, at the time, no CCTV camera. There was a large brown envelope inside the gift bag and a card that read, “Librarian. Happy Easter. X.” Believing it to be a present for her boss, the assistant took the package to Gardner’s office. A little while later, she checked the parcel again and realized it was something else entirely.

For five days, Cambridgeshire police conducted tests on the packaging. Secord was at home when the authorities returned the notebooks to the library. He took a call from the deputy director for research collections, who said, simply, “They’re back.” The deputy asked Secord, who claims that he can occasionally identify nineteenth-century newspapers by font alone, to offer an initial appraisal. Secord raced to the library. “They looked like the real thing,” Secord recalled thinking. “I mean, what forger would have known how the metal clasps were slightly decayed?” While Darwin was alive, he removed some of the pages from the notebooks, to be filed elsewhere, so archival experts in the University Library checked that no additional pages had been kept by the thief as a memento. None were missing. Still, Secord remained professionally guarded, concerned that he might become infamous like Hugh Trevor-Roper, the Cambridge professor who authenticated documents purported to be Hitler’s diaries before they were shown to be forgeries. “You can just imagine,” he said.

At the time of the notebooks’ disappearance, they had been digitized, and the paper and ink assessed by specialists. “The loss to scholarship was pretty minimal,” Secord said. Still, for any archivist or historian, there is a difference between seeing a document on a screen and holding it in hand, just as its author once had done. “It’s the immediacy of the physical object, the knowledge that Darwin carried them in his pocket at the pub, or whatever,” Secord said.

The question of who took and returned the diaries—a disgruntled former employee, a larcenous academic—remains unsolved. (Cambridgeshire police told me they have closed the file, pending further information.) Secord doubts, however, that it was the work of organized criminals. “You know how paintings are sometimes used as collateral in Mafia deals?” he said. “With the Darwin notebooks, you’d just have to do too much explaining about what they are, really.” Whatever the reason, the return of the documents was fortuitously timed. The university had been planning an exhibition of Darwin’s papers for more than five years. The notebooks could now form the centerpiece.

In the basement room at the Cambridge University Library, close to where Darwin once studied, a photographer for the exhibition—which is scheduled to visit the New York Public Library next year—finished taking pictures. The conservationist who had removed the books from the glass case then softly closed the notebooks with blue-gloved hands, and laid each document on a small cushion inside the display cabinet, which is lined with moisture-absorbing beads and kept at a consistent temperature.

Four months after Gardner first saw the notebooks, bound in cling wrap, she still becomes emotional. “This is genuine,” she said, finally. “They had been missing, and now they are home.” For Secord, the value of their return is more illustrative than materialistic. “For me, what really matters is the fact that Darwin made his discoveries in a big city like London, rather than out in the middle of the wilds of nature,” he said, watching the relics return to their vault. “That’s an important message: what it means to have a scientific community around you.” ♦

New Yorker Favorites

A Harvard undergrad took her roommate’s life, then her own. She left behind her diary.

Ricky Jay’s magical secrets .

A thirty-one-year-old who still goes on spring break .

How the greatest American actor lost his way .

What should happen when patients reject their diagnosis ?

The reason an Addams Family painting wound up hidden in a university library .

Fiction by Kristen Roupenian: “Cat Person”

Sign up for our daily newsletter to receive the best stories from The New Yorker .

By signing up, you agree to our User Agreement and Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

By Rebecca Mead

By Louis Menand

By Elizabeth Kolbert

Join or Sign In

Sign in to customize your TV listings

By joining TV Guide, you agree to our Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy .

TV Listings

• Cast & Crew

Darwin's Lost Voyage

• Documentary, Science

Charles Darwin's groundbreaking expedition aboard HMS Beagle is retraced. Included: a look at his personal diary and field notes, which detail the discoveries that helped shape his controversial theory of natural selection.

Loading. Please wait...

My cable/satellite provider:

There are no TV airings over the next 14 days. Add it to your Watchlist to receive updates and availability notifications.

Latest News See All

Popular shows see all shows, what happened in oslo, roger waters: the wall, meetinghouse: the heart of washington, new hampshire, who killed my son, north star: minnesota's black pioneers, nuclear family.

• Cast & crew

Darwin's Lost Paradise

The story of Charles Darwin's great voyage on board the Beagle is a story of initiation and discovery. It remains one of the most significant scientific expeditions undertaken in history for... Read all The story of Charles Darwin's great voyage on board the Beagle is a story of initiation and discovery. It remains one of the most significant scientific expeditions undertaken in history for it was during the voyage that Darwin developed his theory of evolution. This is the story... Read all The story of Charles Darwin's great voyage on board the Beagle is a story of initiation and discovery. It remains one of the most significant scientific expeditions undertaken in history for it was during the voyage that Darwin developed his theory of evolution. This is the story of the journey, Darwin's personal transformation and the scientific revolution it ignited... Read all

User reviews

• February 8, 2009 (Australia)
• Darwins Reise ins Paradies der Evolution
• Chapman Pictures Pty Limited
• Films à Trois
• Monaco Film GmbH
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 31 minutes

Related news

Contribute to this page.

• See more gaps
• Learn more about contributing

More to explore

Recently viewed

Darwins Lost Voyage (2009) Stream and Watch Online

Need to watch ' Darwins Lost Voyage ' on your TV, phone, or tablet? Searching for a streaming service to buy, rent, download, or watch the Geoffrey Luck-directed movie via subscription can be difficult, so we here at Moviefone want to take the pressure off. We've listed a number of streaming and cable services - including rental, purchase, and subscription alternatives - along with the availability of 'Darwins Lost Voyage' on each platform when they are available. Now, before we get into the fundamentals of how you can watch 'Darwins Lost Voyage' right now, here are some specifics about the National Geographic documentary flick. Released January 1st, 2009, 'Darwins Lost Voyage' stars Josh Charles , Tom Hiddleston The movie has a runtime of about 50 min, and received a user score of 75 (out of 100) on TMDb, which collated reviews from 2 experienced users. Interested in knowing what the movie's about? Here's the plot: "Along the wild edges of the Earth against a stunning backdrop of aerial underwater and wildlife photography evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi leads us on an unforgettable journey retracing the adventure and uncovering the evidencethat inspired Darwins revolutionary work On The Origin of Species" .

'Darwins Lost Voyage' Release Dates

Popular documentary movies.

Featured News

Movie Reviews

Follow Moviefone

Movie trailers.

Darwin's Lost Voyage

Streaming in:

We checked for updates on 126 streaming services on December 30, 2023 at 1:37:51 p.m.. Something wrong? Let us know!

Darwin's Lost Voyage - watch online: streaming, buy or rent

Currently you are able to watch "Darwin's Lost Voyage" streaming on Knowledge Network for free.

Where can I watch Darwin's Lost Voyage for free?

Darwin's Lost Voyage is available to watch for free today. If you are in Canada, you can:

• Stream it online on Knowledge Network

If you’re interested in streaming other free movies and TV shows online today, you can:

• Watch movies and TV shows with a free trial on Apple TV+

Along the wild edges of the Earth, against a stunning backdrop of aerial, underwater, and wildlife photography, evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi leads us on an unforgettable journey retracing the adventure- and uncovering the evidence-that inspired Darwin's revolutionary work, On The Origin of Species.

Production country

People who liked darwin's lost voyage also liked.

Popular movies coming soon

Upcoming Documentary movies

Similar Movies you can watch for free

Darwin's Secret Notebooks

From docuwiki, [ edit ] general information.

History Documentary hosted by Josh Charles and published by National Geographic in 2008 - English narration

also known as

• Darwin's Lost Voyage

[ edit ] Cover

[ edit ] Information

Along the wild edges of the Earth, against a stunning backdrop of aerial, underwater, and wildlife photography, evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi leads us on an unforgettable journey retracing the adventure - and uncovering the evidence - that inspired Darwin's revolutionary work, On The Origin of Species.

On Feb. 12, the world celebrated the 200th birthday of the "father of evolution," and to commemorate the occasion, Leroi and the National Geographic Channel retraced Darwin's famed voyage on the HMS Beagle.

They discovered that the story often repeated around the dinner table isn't entirely true.

Using Darwin's own diary and field notes, Armand goes beyond the Galapagos to explore forgotten shores. Travelling from South America to the South Pacific, and beyond he replicates the journey that inspired Darwin's seminal work to witness the very creatures, fossils, and places that captivated the young naturalist's imagination - and changed the world forever.

About Darwin's Secret Notebook

As Darwin traveled beyond the Galapagos Islands to South America with Captain FitzRoy, he came to discover several fossils and unknown buried treasures. Throughout his journey he wrote what he saw and encountered in his seceret diary.

• In the early 1800s, the British Empire was eager to locate new resources to fuel their industrial revolution, and had an interest in the mineral wealth of South America. New trade relations required creating accurate charts and maps of the region.
• Charles Darwin's future ship, the H.M.S. Beagle, was commissioned for this map-making purpose. The captain, Robert FitzRoy, assumed command after the former captain commited suicide at sea.
• During the summer of 1831 Captain FitzRoy foresaw that the next Beagle voyage would present an ideal opportunity for collecting specimens of natural history. Captain FitzRoy sought the advice of John Stevens Henslow, Professor of Botany at Cambridge. Henslow recommended a young and promising student, a naturalist named Charles Darwin.
• On the morning of December 27, 1831; the H.M.S. Beagle, sailed out of Plymouth harbor under a calm easterly wind and drizzling rain. Darwin became seasick almost immediately and started to have second thoughts about the voyage.
• Upon arriving in Brazil, Darwin was disgusted at the sight of black slaves, and got into a quarrel with Captain FitzRoy about the ethics of treating humans as property. FitzRoy flew into a temper and forbid Darwin to share his dinner table with him. After a short cooling off period, Captain FitzRoy apologized to Darwin restored his dining privileges.
• Always eager to get off the ship, Darwin spent many weeks collecting fossils in Patagonia, and found huge fossil bones in a cliff at Punta Alta. Darwin knew little about paleontology, but figured any fossils he collected may be of interest to the experts back in England.
• Captain FitzRoy had difficulty understanding why Darwin was bringing all sorts of "useless junk" on the ship. The fossils he collected at Punta Alta turned out to be giant rodent-like animals, armadillo shells, ground sloths and giant teeth, most of which were entirely unknown to science at the time.
• In Chile, Darwin was curious about the geology of the river valleys he traversed. The walls had layers of sea shells embedded in them. Darwin theorized that the cliffs of the river valley and the Andes Mountains themselves had been slowly rising above sea level. The evidence for a planet in a state of constant flux was becoming stronger and stronger.
• On March 4th the Beagle entered the Harbor of Talcuhano near Concepcion. Darwin found fresh marine rocks that had risen a few feet above sea level due to a recent earthquake. Darwin became excited because it was direct evidence that the Andes mountains and all of South America may be very slowly rising above the ocean.
• Darwin's observations provided much evidence to geologist Charles Lyell's theory that land masses rose up in tiny increments over extremely long periods of time. Given this fact, Darwin accepted the idea that the Earth must be extremely old.
• In Argentina, the crew went onshore to visit a military stronghold just south of Bahia Blanca. The Major in charge of the fort eyed them with suspicion, especially Darwin with his odd-looking instruments. He thought they were spies sent to reconnoiter the fort, and ordered his soldiers to watch them.
• In Tierra del Fuego, a small group of Fuegians met the landing party. After a futile attempt at verbal communication, the crew gave the Fuegians some bright red cloth and they immediately became friendly with them. They patted the crewmen on their chests, evidently a sign of friendship.
• During the voyage, Darwin spent most of this time exploring on land: three years and three months on land, 18 months at sea.
• In Cape Town, Darwin went to visit Sir John Herschel. They had many conversations about volcanoes, earthquakes, the movement of continents, the origin of mankind and how new species came into being. Darwin would end up buried next to Sir John Herschel in Westminster Abbey, London.
• On October 2nd, 1836; the H.M.S Beagle finally arrived home after a voyage of four years, nine months and five days.

[ edit ] Screenshots

[ edit ] Technical Specs

Source: DVD Video Codec: XviD 1.1.2 Final Video Bitrate: 1763 kbps Video Resolution: 720x400 Video Aspect Ratio: 1.800:1 Frames Per Second: 29.970 Audio Codec: 0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3 Audio Bitrate: 192kb/s CBR 48000 Hz Audio Streams: 2 Audio Languages: English RunTime: 49:43.977 Part Size: 700MB Subtitles: English Ripped by: twiftwix

[ edit ] Links

[ edit ] release post.

• MVGroup.org (ed2k)
• MVGroup.org (torrent)
• DocuZone.net
• DonkeyHeaven.com
• Ed2k4Ever.com
• FileHeaven.org
• P2P-United.org
• ShareVirus.com

[ edit ] Related Documentaries

• Into Dinosaur Valley
• Galapagos With Liz Bonnin
• Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life (BBC 1080p)
• Darwin's Struggle: The Evolution of the Origin of Species (BBC)
• Darwin: The Welshman and the Conspiracy
• Galapagos: Islands of Change
• Darwin's Dangerous Idea
• Darwin (BBC 1998)
• Darwin's Struggle - The Evolution of the Origin of Species
• Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life
• The Mark Steel Lectures - Charles Darwin
• The Genius of Charles Darwin
• What Darwin Didn't Know
• Charles Darwin: The Story of
• Galapagos: Beyond Darwin

[ edit ] ed2k Links

National.Geographic.Darwins.Secret.Notebooks.XviD.AC3.MVGroup.org.avi (699.85 Mb) Subtitles : [eng]

Retrieve Share Stats

Categories : History | Josh Charles | National Geographic | 2008 | English | Name | Darwin and Evolution Josh Charles Language > English Name Publisher > National Geographic Subject > History Theme > Darwin and Evolution Year > 2008

Personal tools

• Random Page
• Latest Additions
• Recent Changes
• Contribute/Register
• Add new page
• Missing Docus
• Crosspost this page
• Rename this page
• Broadcasting Series
• What links here
• Related changes
• Upload file
• Special pages
• Printable version
• Permanent link

• This page was last modified 01:50, 9 August 2023.
• This page has been accessed 17,920 times.
• Privacy policy
• About DocuWiki
• Disclaimers

Darwin’s Lost Voyage

Darwin’s Lost Voyage: Contrary to conventional belief, Darwin’s greatest epiphanies do not occur on the Galapagos islands . Instead, they are a cultivation of years exploring the wilds of South America where forests become the cathedral of Darwin’s religion. Encountering a world like he’s never seen before, Darwin’s senses are overwhelmed by a world teeming with life, but what he finds along the way is perplexing to a 19th century naturalist.

He questions why do the fossils he discovers look like giant versions of the sloths and armadillos still living nearby; why do the penguins and other birds he sees use their wings as flippers, fins or sails – but not for flying; how could sea shells be found embedded in rock layers more than 100 miles from the sea? It is not until after he leaves the Galapagos – where mockingbirds, not finches capture his attention – that he is able to fully appreciate everything he has encountered and pull together his masterwork: The Origin of Species.

Along the wild edges of the Earth, against a stunning backdrop of aerial, underwater, and wildlife photography, evolutionary biologist Armand Leroi leads us on an unforgettable journey–and uncovering the evidence–that inspired Darwin’s revolutionary work, “On The Origin of Species. Its the story we havent heard. Though he circled the world on the H.M.S. Beagle for five years, Darwin spent only five weeks on the famed Galapagos. He had no epiphany there, no Newton’s apple falling from the tree. So what was it? What certain facts from the voyage led this young Creationist to propose a theory so radical it remains controversial (though widely proven) 150 years later?

“Darwin’s Lost Voyage” brings passages from Darwin’s writings to life, as we see the clues he saw while listening to his words and watch in wonder as CGI animates his ideas, focusing us on critical details and revealing the lucid epiphanies of a magnificent mind. Using Darwin’s own diary and field notes, Armand Leroi goes beyond the Galapagos to explore forgotten shores to witness the very creatures, fossils and places that captivated the young naturalist’s imagination… and changed the world forever.

Darwin’s Lost Voyage

Charles Robert Darwin was an English naturalist, geologist and biologist, best known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended from common ancestors is now widely accepted and considered a fundamental concept in science. In a joint publication with Alfred Russel Wallace, he introduced his scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection, in which the struggle for existence has a similar effect to the artificial selection involved in selective breeding. Darwin has been described as one of the most influential figures in human history, and he was honoured by burial in Westminster Abbey.

Darwin published his theory of evolution with compelling evidence in his 1859 book On the Origin of Species. By the 1870s, the scientific community and a majority of the educated public had accepted evolution as a fact. However, many favoured competing explanations that gave only a minor role to natural selection, and it was not until the emergence of the modern evolutionary synthesis from the 1930s to the 1950s that a broad consensus developed in which natural selection was the basic mechanism of evolution. Darwin’s scientific discovery is the unifying theory of the life sciences, explaining the diversity of life.

Related Posts

Atlantic The Wildest Ocean on Earth episode 1

Atlantic The Wildest Ocean on Earth is a three-part BBC nature documentary series exploring the natural history of the Atlantic Ocean.

Read More »

Atlantic The Wildest Ocean on Earth ep.2

In the vast South Atlantic, huge pods of dolphins, massive penguin colonies and the largest gathering of marine mammals on earth pack chains of extraordinary islands, created by powerful volcanic forces far below them.

Atlantic The Wildest Ocean on Earth ep.3

In Atlantic The Wildest Ocean on Earth we explore a vast ocean that stretches nearly 10,000 miles, from Arctic to Antarctic.

The Falls of Iguacu

The story follows animals native to this Atlantic rainforest habitat, including kamikaze-like swifts who live behind and fly through the thundering masses of falling water, as well as spotted jaguars and a family of coatis.