Read Evolution's Captain Online
Authors: Peter Nichols
Early on February 4, two of the men set out with a ship's biscuit each for the fifteen-mile paddle to windward. Twenty hours later, at three in the morning of the fifth, exhausted, hungry, their wicker boat nearly sinking, they heard the barking of one of the dogs aboard the
Beagle
and found their way into the cove and to the ship. The men on the
Beagle
were amazed they had come so far in what appeared to them all to be nothing more than a large basket.
FitzRoy lost not a moment in going after the stolen boat. Into another five-oared whaleboatâalso newly made by carpenter May at Chiloéâhe piled two tents and two weeks' provisions for eleven men. While it was still dark he set off with six others to Cape Desolation. They reached Murray and his three companions just before midday. FitzRoy immediately asked to be shown where and how the lost boat had been mooredâhe still couldn't believe the natives had the nerve to take it; far more likely, he thought, it had broken away from its mooring in the gale and been blown out to sea. But when he saw the protected mooring place, and heard from his sailing master, in whom he had a nearly unwavering trust, how the boat had been secured, he was convinced of Murray's story.
The eleven men climbed into the whaleboat and set off on what would prove to be one of the most fateful pursuits in history.
F
itzRoy has been characterized as going after the Fuegians
who stole the whaleboat out of anger, pique, even imperial arrogance, to punish the natives for their theft, to teach them a lesson. He may have been angry, even furious, but the enormity and difficulty of his task, the length of the coastline assigned to him to survey, the constantly delaying weather, precluded the possibility of any side trip other than one facilitating the absolute need to continue his work.
A ship's boats comprised by far the most vital part of her gear. They enabled the crew to get ashore, to fuel and reprovision, and, if the ship foundered, offered the only hope of survival. For survey work, particularly as FitzRoy was now using the boats to explore islands and channels while the ship remained at anchor, they were as essential as a sextant or theodolite. The
Beagle
's commission could not have been carried on without numbers of them.
While she was away from England between 1826 and 1830, the
Beagle
generally carried six boats, and she needed every one of them. The yawl, the largest at twenty-eight feet long, nearly a third of the ship's length and probably weighing three tons, had been smashed by a wave while being towed astern off the Patagonian coast the year before, deepening Pringle Stokes's depression and
sense of failure. That left the ship's cutter, a 23-foot rowing and sailing gig; the jolly boat, 14 feet long; and usually three whaleboats, about 25 feet long, the same fast-rowing peapods carried aboard whaling ships. The jolly boat, a sort of general-purpose dinghy, hung over the stern in davits. The cutter and a whaleboat hung over each stern quarter. Two more whaleboats and the yawl, until it was lost, were carried on deck, taking up considerable room and restricting movement of the crew. While several whaleboats might be away from the ship for days at a time on survey work, all the other boats would have been in constant use going between ship and shore. “The people employed wooding ashore” was a daily recurring entry in the
Beagle
's logbook whenever she was at anchor, referring to the shore party felling and chopping trees and gathering dried wood for the incessant demand of the ship's galley, forge, and other fires. Additional groups would be out every dayâweather permittingâhunting and fishing to augment the basic rations of salted beef and ship's biscuit. The
Beagle
carried its own small, constantly busy fleet to serve its needs, and there was no room aboard for superfluous or extra craft. Every boat was vital. For survey work, none surpassed the efficiency of the light whaleboats: “Our cutter required too many men, and was neither so handy, nor could she pull to windward so well as a whaleboat.”
The
Beagle
had left England with enough seasoned planking for its carpenter to make several new boats, and in time he used up every foot of it, for in four years six boats were lost. By now, early 1830, there was not enough wood left in the ship's hold to build new boats. FitzRoy could not afford the loss of another. He needed it, so he set off with the greatest determination to get it back.
The very first place we went to, a small island about two miles distant, convinced us still more decidedly of the fate of our lost boat, and gave us hope of retrieving her: for near a lately used wigwam, we found her mast, part of which had been cut off with an axe that was in the boat.
After finding the first signs of the stolen boat, they pulled and sailed (the whaleboats had short collapsible masts and sails to be used when the wind allowed) northeast, into a large bay dotted with many islands. Toward dusk, they drew level with a canoe being paddled by two Fuegians, a man and a woman. They indicated to the Englishmen, by signs, that they'd seen several boats heading into the northern part of the bay. “This raised our hopes, and we pushed on,” FitzRoy wrote.
He may well have been angered by the theft of his boat, but he was clearly not disposed to think too badly of Fuegians in general.
The womanâ¦was the best looking I have seen among the Fuegians, and really well-featured: her voice was pleasing, and her manner neither so suspicious nor timid as that of the rest. Though young she was uncommonly fat, and did justice to a diet of limpets and muscles. Both she and her husband were perfectly naked.
After two days of fruitless searching, they came across a native family in two canoes near the head of the bay, thirty miles east-northeast of Cape Desolation. Something in these Fuegians' attitude prompted the Englishmen to search their canoes, which they had not done to the paddling naked couple. In one of the canoes they found the lost whaleboat's leadline.
We immediately took the man who had it into our boat, making him comprehend that he must show us where the people were, from whom he got it. He understood our meaning well enough.
This was all FitzRoy wrote about his first taking of a hostage. For him it was an act that required no justification. It was a quick, practical decision, a tactic born of the necessity of the situation, but it was a signal moment of change in FitzRoy's relationship with the Fuegians.
It was probably accomplished by implicit rather than actual
force. The native canoe was being held alongside the much larger whaleboat while the sailors searched it. At a word from FitzRoy, two or three uniformed Royal Marines would have risen and, with a leg in each boat, “helped” the Fuegian who “had” the leadline into the whaleboat. With signs, FitzRoy would have indicated what he wanted, and the Fuegian “understood our meaning well enough.” Then the Englishmen, with their captive, pulled away from the canoes.
The Fuegian led them to a cove containing a camp with wigwams and two more canoes on the beach, a third being built. At the sight of the Englishmen, the Fuegians ran into the nearby bushes with as many of their belongings as they could carry, then returned, empty-handed and naked, and huddled together on the beach.
FitzRoy's men found more of the missing boat's gearâa shredded piece of sail, an oar that had been broken in two (the shaft hacked into a seal club, the blade used as a paddle), and the boat's axe and toolbag. FitzRoy was convinced he had found the group responsible for the theft. Apart from an old man and a boy aged about seventeen, there were only women in the camp. Their men, he reasoned, were away in the whaleboat on a seal hunt.
He took a second captive, who may or may not have joined the Englishmen as cheerfully as FitzRoy described.
The women understood what we wanted, and made eager signs to explain to us where our boat was gone. I did not like to injure them and only took away our own gear, and the young man, who came very readily, to show us where our boat was, and, with the man who had brought us to the place, squatted down in the boat apparently much pleased with some clothes and red caps, which were given to them.
With their two hostages providing directions, the Englishmen rowed away. They pulled hard against a rising wind through the
long twilight, heading deep into Courtenay Sound, a star-shaped bay of many fjordlike arms surrounded by high snowy hills. Four hours later, too dark to go on, they beached the boat for the night and made camp.
The two Fuegians seemed, to FitzRoy's eyes, quite at ease, so he decided not to “secure our guides as prisoners” for the night but let them sleep near the fire while the man on watch kept an eye on them. But in the predawn dark, they slipped away into the bushes, naturally taking with them the two tarpaulin coats they had been given to sleep under.
With daylight, the Englishmen rowed back along shore looking for their runaways. They returned to the “boat stealers' family” camp where they had taken the second hostage the day before. Again the Fuegians took to the woods as they approached. The Englishmen landed and destroyed the natives' canoesâto prevent news of their search for the stolen whaleboat traveling beyond the immediate area, FitzRoy wrote, but this act reeks of vengeful frustration.
For the next few days they rowed and sailed as best they could around the protected arms of Courtenay Sound while a strong gale blew from the south. They found nothing. FitzRoy decided to return once more to the “boat stealers' family” camp, but this time to take them by surprise and capture as many hostages as possible for the return of the stolen whaleboat.
The Fuegians had quite sensibly gone. But scouting from a hill the Englishmen spotted them: they'd moved their camp to another cove. The attack was planned for the following day.
Not knowing if the family's absent men had returned, FitzRoy armed each of his ten sailors and marines with a pistol or musket, a cutlass, and a length of rope to secure a prisoner. When morning came, they crept through the bushes toward the cove. They had nearly surrounded the camp when the Fuegians' dogs smelled them and began barking. The Englishmen rushed the camp.
At first the Indians began to run away, but hearing us shout on both sides, some tried to hide themselves by squatting under the banks of a streamâ¦. The foremost of our party, Elsmoreâ¦in jumping across this stream, slipped, and fell in just where two men and a woman were concealed: they instantly attacked him, trying to hold him down and beat out his brains with stones; and before any one could assist him, he had received several severe blows, and one eye was almost destroyed by a dangerous stroke near the temple. Mr Murray, seeing the man's danger, fired at one of the Fuegians, who staggered back and let Elsmore escape; but immediately recovering himself, picked up stones from the bed of the streamâ¦and threw them from each hand with astonishing force and precision. His first stone struck the master with much force, broke a powder-horn hung round his neck, and nearly knocked him backwards, and two others were thrown so truly at the heads of those nearest him, that they barely saved themselves by dropping down. All this passed in a few seconds, so quick was he with each hand; but, poor fellow, it was his last struggle; unfortunately he was mortally wounded, and, throwing one more stone, he fell against the bank and expired.
After some struggling, and a few hard blows, those who tried to secrete themselves were taken, but several who ran away along the beach escaped. So strong and stout were the females, that I, for one, had no idea that it was a woman whose arms I and my coxswain endeavoured to pinion, until I heard some one say so. The oldest woman of the tribe was so powerful that two of the strongest men of our party could scarcely pull her out from under the bank of the stream.
The Englishmen had bagged eleven prisonersâtwo men, three women, six childrenâamong them the young man taken from the camp several days earlier. And when the dead, defiant, furiously stone-throwing Fuegian was examined, they recognized their first hostage: the man taken from the canoe because he had appeared to be in possession of the missing boat's leadline; who had seemed so happy with clothes and a red hat.
FitzRoy may have misread the Fuegians' docility, but he felt genuine remorse at having killed one. “That a life should have been lost in the struggle, I lament deeply; but if the Fuegian had not been shot at that moment, his next blow might have killed Elsmore, who was almost under water.”
It was the first record of such a death at British hands, as FitzRoy surely knew, and this undoubtedly distressed him. He was there for survey work, and killing the locals was an unsanctioned departure from his job description, however he might justify it. It would not commend him to his superiors. But there was more to his regret than that, as his later actions would prove.
The prisoners appeared anxious to tell the Englishmen where the missing boat was, pointing now in another direction, to the southeast, not to Courtenay Sound. But with twenty-two people in a 25-foot whaleboat, FitzRoy was not going on another long chase. They headed instead for the
Beagle
, reaching it two days later, on February 15. The hostages were fed and clothed, and the
Beagle
weighed anchor and sailed southeast to Cape Castlereagh, in the direction the hostages had last indicated, and also where his survey might continue.
On February 17, FitzRoy and Murray set out to search again, in two boats, with a week's provisions and Fuegian hostage-guides in each, including two stout women, mothers of children left aboard the
Beagle
. “As far as we could make out, they appeared to understand perfectly that their safety and future freedom,” and the safety of their children aboard the ship, “depended upon their showing us where to find the whaleboat.”
Tantalizingly, in the first cove he came to, only two miles from where the
Beagle
was now anchored, FitzRoy found another piece of the missing boat's leadline in a “lately deserted” wigwam. They found more signs of a large party of Fuegians among several islands nearby, and he became hopeful that he would soon find his stolen boat. They camped ashore, and again FitzRoy decided not to tie up his prisoners for the night, reason
ing that the children back aboard the
Beagle
would bind the women more securely than any rope.
I kept watch myself during the first part of the night, as the men were tired by pulling all day, and incautiously allowed the Fuegians to lie between the fire and the bushes, having covered them up so snugly, with old blankets and my own poncho, that their bodies were entirely hidden. About midnight, while standing on the opposite side of the fire, looking at the boats, with my back to the Fuegians, I heard a rustling noise, and turned round; but seeing the heap of blankets unmoved, satisfied meâ¦another rustle, and my dog jumped up and barking, told me that the natives had escaped. Still the blankets looked the same, for they were artfully propped up by bushes.
For another week the two boats searched the Stewart and Gilbert Islands, a labyrinth of coves and channels where they now believed the stolen whaleboat might be. They saw fires, found deserted camps, they even saw Fuegians running off at their approach, but no boat. They finally returned to the
Beagle
on February 23, to learn that all the ship's hostages, except for three children, had escaped.