A fresh breeze, the sounds of gulls calling, cold sea spray touching the cheeks, the slightest hint of rotten eggs in the air.

What was going through the mind of 26-year-old Charles Darwin on 15 September 1835, as he stood on the deck of HMS Beagle with the shapes of the Galápagos islands approaching? 

His letters home suggest two things. First, that he was homesick. Understandable after nearly four years away from England, which he had left at 22 years old – he truly was the pioneer of the gap year. He was also incredibly excited.

What Charles Darwin observed during his five week visit to the Galápagos would plant the seeds that would eventually grow into his Theory of Natural Selection.   

In this article we will explore who Darwin was, how he came to be on the Galápagos, and the sparks of inspiration that he found there for his theory of evolution.  

Who was Charles Darwin? How did he end up on the Galápagos? 

Charles Darwin was nearly a little-known priest in Shropshire, in England. His father wanted Charles to get good employment, either following his footsteps to become a doctor or to become a man of the church. Aged 16, his father sent him to medical school in Edinburgh. His foray into the medical world was brief, however. After witnessing the brutality of surgery without anaesthetic (on a child), Charles knew he was not to be a doctor. He left the course after only two years.  

In those two years, Edinburgh did give him some important foundations; Darwin was taught geology, biological classification and taxidermy. He was also exposed to the radical ideas of the day. These denied the Divine design of humans and suggested that animals shared human mental abilities, like thinking, remembering or making decisions.  

On leaving Edinburgh he went to Christs College, Cambridge University, to complete a degree and take holy orders – ministry beckoned. He breezed through the degree and enjoyed his time at Cambridge. He would go out drinking, shooting and beetle collecting. College folklore claims the sounds of his shotgun would ring out as he fired blanks to extinguish candles in his rooms. 

It was at Christs that he met Professor John Stevens Henslow. Professor Henslow encouraged discussion around natural philosophy and introduced Darwin to some of the greatest minds of the era.  

It was Professor Henslow who got Charles Darwin on the voyage to the Galápagos. The Professor had been approached to be a naturalist and gentleman companion to accompany Captain Robert FitzRoy on a ship called HMS Beagle. His wife was… unwilling to let him go, so he instead recommended his protege, Charles Darwin.  

What was the mission of the HMS Beagle? 

The Beagle was sent on a two-year mission to map South America. It ended up being a five-year circumnavigation of the globe. Captain FitzRoy had completed a similar mission the year previous, and had thought a ‘naturalist’ would benefit the scientific productivity of the voyage. Few could argue with the scientific output of the Beagle.  

It was the Ocean that really started Darwin’s thinking about evolution.

While at Edinburgh Charles Darwin would collect sea slugs and sea pens, and was mentored by Robert Grant, an expert on sponges who encouraged him to study marine invertebrates. He began exploring classification and gave talks on his findings at the university.  

Onboard the Beagle, he made himself a plankton net with which he drew up trawls full of Ocean life. He wrote, “Many of these creatures, so low in the scale of nature, are exquisite in their forms and rich colours. It creates a feeling of wonder that so much beauty should be apparently created for such little purpose”.  

If the accepted worldview of the time was correct, and God made everything for humankinds’ benefit, why do these tiny organisms exist out at sea where no one sees them? The Ocean was creating Darwin’s first glimmers of insight.  

What are the Galápagos Islands? 

About 1,000km off the coast of Ecuador in the Pacific, are a group of islands called Islas Encantas, or Enchanted Isles. They are better known as the Galápagos.

The initial descriptions of the islands are at odds with the image of “enchanted islands”. The first man to discover the Galapagos, Fray Tomás de Berlanga, speaks of the inhospitality and lack of water on the islands.  

Captain Fitzroy, leader of the expedition Charles Darwin was part of, describes the first viewing of the Galapagos: “Black, dismal-looking heaps of broken lava, a shore fit for pandemonium”. Darwin himself compares them to the iron-foundries of Staffordshire, or the furnaces of Wolverhampton. Hardly flattering for either party.

So, not a tropical paradise. 

The word galápagos comes from the Spanish word for saddle, the shape of some of the shells of the most famous residents of the islands – tortoises.  

Darwin reported that locals could determine the island tortoise by the shape of its shell. The implications of this did not occur to Darwin until later.

Unfortunately for science, and the tortoises, they were an excellent food source for long voyages. The Beagle collected 50, none of which made it back to England.  Tortoises became extinct on the island of Floreana in the 1840s, just ten years after Charles Darwin’s visit. However, careful genetic analysis and targeted breeding has created the possibility of de-extinction (click here for more). 

The names of the islands and the tortoises immediately hint at the special nature of the Galápagos.

From their discovery, the Galápagos were renowned for their rich biodiversity. 

Whalers came to benefit off the many sperm whales that gathered there, and tales of the lizards that lived there reached across the globe. 

It is important to clarify that Darwin was not struck with a bolt of genius immediately on seeing the islands.  

He was inquisitive, curious and observant about the natural world. He saw many things in the Galápagos, and documented and collected evidence he would later use to build and justify his arguments for evolution. 

But what was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution? 

Darwin’s thinking was radical at the time. He was opposing the accepted position that species were ‘fixed’ – unchanging. This was tied into the strong Christian influence of the time – God had created all life, and it hadn’t changed since – with humankind superior to all. 

His work was an attack on the accepted views of his time: that man was supreme by divine making, and the order of the world was fixed. 

Observing the animals of the Galápagos and beyond, Darwin’s theory of natural selection proposed that the natural world was ever-changing, evolving.  

Within this, the idea that species change over time. Further, he suggested a world in which animals were not below humans, but simply different, surviving using different strategies.  

Darwin himself recognised that his theories opposed widely held beliefs. He likened publishing his work to confessing a murder. 

What did Charles Darwin find on the Galápagos? 

Darwin was in the archipelago (an area that contains a group of islands) for five weeks. During that time, he explored the islands, at one stage camping for nine days with only a few others, and collected specimens.  

Birds, reptiles, plants and plankton were all stashed in crates on board the Beagle. He was intrigued by what he found, writing in his journal, “the natural history of these islands is eminently curious, and well deserves attention”.  

What’s the deal with Darwin and finches? 

If you have heard of Darwin, you have probably heard something about finches. He collected loads of finches from the Galápagos, and they became an iconic example of his theory of natural selection.  

The birds would even come to be named after the naturalist – Darwin’s finches. 

Far from being an example of his genius, the finches are an example of Darwin being human.  

He misidentified many of the finches he collected as blackbirds, wrens and “gross-bills”, and did not write down which bird came from which island. It was ornithologist John Gould of the Zoological Society of London who reported that this collection were all finches.  

After this realisation, Darwin looked again, and the differences in their beaks does lead him to comment “one might really fancy… [that] one species had been taken and modified for different ends”. However, his poor documentation meant they could not be used as evidence in his work, and they do not appear in his book.  

Modern work has made the beaks of finches a poster child for natural selection. It was a clear visual example of the adaptions that can allow different animals to survive.  

On the Origin of Species: Darwin’s work, published 

Darwin held the Galápagos dear for the rest of his life. On The Origin of Species, his seminal work on natural selection, was not published until 1859, 23 years after returning to England.

The first sentence of the book affirms the importance of the voyage in developing his theory of evolution:  

“When on board H.M.S. ‘Beagle,’ as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.” 

In the interim, Darwin had been gathering evidence and forming arguments, bracing for the backlash and interrogation his theory would receive.  

How was Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution received?  

Darwin’s theories certainly made a splash.  

The book sold out the first edition before being released, and divided opinion.  

Predictably, the Church took a strong stance against it, along with some prominent scientists such as Darwin’s former Cambridge peer, Adam Sedgewick. International press put out cartoons and insults, often focused on the idea that humans descended from apes.  

But many scientists, especially geologists, supported Darwin’s work. Atheists were especially enthusiastic.  

Charles Darwin kept in close correspondence with supporters and opponents alike. Debate continued for decades after, until his theory was general accepted in the 1940s. 

The book went to six editions during Darwin’s lifetime and is now seen as one of the most important scientific books ever written.  

It fundamentally changed how people viewed the natural world and the place of humans within it; a lifetime’s work, from a man that explored and observed, inspired by the Ocean and the Galápagos.  

Quotes from Charles Darwin: Even the best scientists have bad days  

We can all relate to Darwin, on a very personal level, after reading some of his journal inserts and letters. Here are a few quotes that remind us even the brightest minds have down days:  

“But I am very poorly today & very stupid & hate everybody & everything.” – C. Darwin, letter to Charles Lyell 1861 

“I am rather low today about all my experiments, – everything has been going wrong” – Letter to W. D. Fox 1855 

“I beg a million pardons. Abuse me to any degree but forgive me- it is all an illusion (but almost excusable) about the Bees. I do so hope that you have not wasted any time for my stupid blunder. – I hate myself I hate clover & I hate Bees-” Letter to John Lubbock, 1862 

“I am very tired, very stomachy & hate nearly the whole world. so good night, & take care of your digestion which means Brain” – Letter to T. H. Huxley, 1860 

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Thank you to Prof David Norman of Christ’s College for his time and writing.