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The episodes that will be considered herein took place, as already stated, during two expeditions aboard His British Majesty’s vessels. The first voyage (between May 22, 1826, and October 14, 1830) which reached South America and went back included the main ships Adventure and Beagle while the second one (between December 27, 1831, and October 2, 1836) included only the latter. Other vessels joined the two already mentioned main ones, for several periods: some schooners such as Adelaide, La Paz, and La Liebre (the first one to sail Fuegian channels and the last two hired in Bahia Blanca for a coastal survey); two sealing vessels (the Uxbridge and the Adeona); and one decked boat (the Hope), together with other minor ships.

The first voyage was under the command of Captain Philip Parker King; his Commander (and Surveyor) of the Beagle was Pringles Stokes. The young man Robert Fitz Roy was the first lieutenant until Stoke’s death when he became chief mate and was in command of the Beagle. This is Captain King’s account of the extreme situation which ended, among other things, in Stoke’s suicide:

The severity of the weather brought a most disagreeable accompaniment. Scurvy appeared, and increased; while the accidental death of a seaman, occasioned by falling down a hatchway, followed by the decease of two others, and also of Mr. Low, of the Adeona, whose body was brought to me for burial, tended to create a despondency amongst the crew that I could in no way check. The monotony of their occupations, the chilling and gloomy appearance of the country, and the severity of the climate, all tended to increase the number of the sick, as well as the unfavourable symptoms of their disease. The Beagle’s term of absence was, however, drawing to a close, and I caused a rumour to be spread, that upon her appearance we should quit Port Famine. (Narrative, Volume I, p. 144)

King had decided to appoint William Skyring the Beagle Commander after Stoke’s death, but once in Rio de Janeiro the station commander (Sir Robert W. Otway) rejected King’s decision and appointed Fitz Roy as Commander of the Beagle to come back to England. Stoke’s suicide had deeply affected the crew and King himself, and conditioned future Captain Fitz Roy to choose a partner from his social class for the journey he would undertake years later. That partner, an unknown young man then, who will turn out to be one of the most renowned scientists in the modern world, was Charles Darwin.

The missions of the first expedition were to conduct a hydrographic survey of South America’s southern extreme and map the coastline between Montevideo and Chiloé, mainly the Fuegian channels; and at the same time to collect animal, vegetable and mineral samples from those regions. Captain King, some pilots, a surgeon, volunteers, a botanic collector, one gunner, a carpenter, fifteen marines and about forty “seamen and pages” (about 76 people) were on the Adventure (“a roomy ship, of 330 tons burthen, without guns, lightly though strongly rigged, and very strongly built”), while on the Beagle (“a well-built little vessel, of 235 tons, rigged as a barque, and carrying six guns”), Commander Stokes, surgeons, volunteers, some officers, about ten marines and also about forty “seamen and pages” (about 63 people). Throughout the journey, there were many changes including those mentioned with the expedition command.

Initially, the second expedition started only with the Beagle, with some structural modifications as regards the previous journey, and other ships were integrated later, as it was already mentioned. This vessel, according to Fitz Roy’s evidence, set sail with the young naturalist Charles Darwin, thirteen crew members—officers and their assistants—, one doctor, one carpenter, “seven privates,” thirty-four sailors, six cabin boys, Darwin’s servant (Syms Covington, who escorted him to his on-horseback journeys through Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina), Reverend Richard Matthews, the already renowned draughtsman Augustus Earle (who left the expedition in Montevideo and was replaced by Conrad Martens, author of some of the best-known expedition’s paintings, and who also left the expedition in 1834, in Chile), and the three Fuegians. Naturally, there were some changes with the on-board crew over those significant five years.

Darwin briefly specifies the objectives¹ of the H.M.S Beagle expedition:

The object of the expedition was to complete the survey of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, commenced under Captain King in 1826 to 1830—to survey the shores of Chile, Peru, and of some islands in the Pacific—and to carry a chain of chronometrical measurements round the World. (Darwin, 1839, p. 1)

As it was already mentioned the double British expedition is part of large series of voyages to different regions of the globe as an expansion strategy designed and developed throughout the nineteenth century (which some historians name as “Imperial century”), with the already known result, the British Empire—the largest in history—dominated in the early twentieth century about twenty-five percent of the population and a twenty percent of the world’s territory, apart from other forms of diplomatic and commercial domination. The colonial empires, which formal and administratively had occupied a vast quantity of territories around the world under the leading European powers (UK, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium) and the USA were consolidated. Most of those territories emerge out of the disintegration of both Spanish and Portuguese empires.

Out of the five-year-long second journey, approximately one year took place in Argentinian lands. Darwin states that on July 24, 1833, the expedition set sail south from Maldonado in Uruguay, and on June 10, 1834, the Beagle sailed across the Strait of Magalhaens to the Pacific Ocean towards the Chilean central region.

They witnessed the Concepcion devastating earthquake, in 1835. While in Santiago de Chile, Darwin crossed the Andes to Mendoza Province (Argentina). He spent there several days and one night in the Lujan de Cuyo region, he was attacked by lots of “Benchucas”². This episode has fostered the never-confirmed version that Darwin would have died from Chagas disease caused by the Trypanosoma cruzi parasite transmitted by the above-mentioned insect.