Charles Darwin's voyage on HMS Beagle

On 27th December 1831 HMS Beagle, a naval sloop that that had been converted to a brig by the addition of an extra mast, set sail from Plymouth, its five-year mission being not so much to explore new worlds as to conduct a survey of the coasts of South America for navigational purposes.

The young commander, Lieutenant Robert Fitzroy, was keen to take with him a companion who would be his equal in terms of intellectual ability and with whom he could therefore hold intelligent conversations about the discoveries that they might make. Enquiries were made and a young naturalist from Cambridge University was found who jumped at the chance to see the world at first hand instead of just reading about it in books.

This was 22-year-old Charles Darwin, who had become interested in the natural world when studying at Cambridge. He was also interested in geology, and this was initially his main interest during the Beagle voyage. Whenever the ship docked, which it often did for quite lengthy periods, Darwin would go ashore to collect samples of rocks and fossils, which would form the raw material for the three books on geology that he would write on his eventual return to England.

However, his focus changed completely when the ship reached the Galapagos Islands on the west coast of South America. Here, Darwin was fascinated by the animals and birds that he found there and he was struck by the fact that there were marked differences between the flora and fauna of individual islands.

However, it was not until he had returned to England and started to study his collected specimens in detail that the significance of these differences started him thinking about the reasons why they might have occurred. Why, for example, should the finches on one island have stronger bills than those on another island? Could the fact that the nuts growing on trees on the first island were tougher to open than those on the other island have anything to do with it? If so, how did this situation come to be as it was?

Darwin’s thought processes took a long time to mature into a general theory, and it was even longer before he was ready to publish what would be one of the most earth-shattering scientific works ever to get into print, namely “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection”, which only appeared in 1859, some 38 years after the Beagle set sail.

Darwin’s observations were the proof he needed for the belief that species evolved over time to fit the environment in which they found themselves. He was well aware that this did not fit with the commonly accepted view, based on the Book of Genesis, that all species were created, in their final form, by God on one of the days of Creation. By extension, this would also imply that Man was the product of evolution, although Darwin did go not this far in his original publication.

Because we now have tools at our disposal that Darwin did not have, in particular the knowledge of how genes and DNA are passed on and sometimes distorted from generation to generation, his theory is nothing like as shocking to modern readers as it was to Victorian England. Fortunately it is only a few religious nutcases, who prefer to believe ancient myths rather than the revelations of science, who now refuse to accept the truth of Darwin’s work, which had its genesis in the voyage that began in 1831.

© John Welford

Balboa, the first European to see the Pacific Ocean

26th September 1513 was the day on which a European first set eyes on the Pacific Ocean, as far as is known. This was Vasco Núñez de Balboa (c.1475 – 1519), one of the Spanish “conquistadors”, although the 19th century poet John Keats, in his “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, mistakenly attributed the feat to “stout Cortez”.


Balboa’s quest

Balboa had arrived at Darien on the isthmus of Panama in the hope of making money to clear his debts. He became the military commander of the small Spanish community there and was soon making trips inland in search of gold and slaves.

The reputation of the conquistadors in historical terms is not a good one, as they were responsible for many acts of murder and cultural vandalism in imposing their will on local populations. Balboa was probably one of the more enlightened of them, although he cannot be left off the hook entirely in this respect. He was not above using strong-arm tactics when it suited him, and once had 40 natives torn to pieces by dogs because they opposed him.

In 1513 Balboa heard that there were vast reserves of gold further inland, and he was determined to find them. It was neither the first nor the last time that a journey of exploration would be inspired by a story of treasure and riches to be found in a distant place. Usually the treasure turns out to be mythical, but sometimes a discovery of a different kind is made, as in Balboa’s case.

Balboa set off on 1st September at the head of 190 Spaniards and many more Indian guides and porters. The journey was extremely difficult, as they had to hack their way through thick jungle. For days on end they could not even see the sky through the forest canopy.


A peak in Darien

After 25 days they emerged in sight of a mountain (Keats’s “peak in Darien”). Balboa climbed the mountain alone and saw from the top the distant Pacific Ocean. He then invited the others to join him at the top. The expedition had crossed the narrow isthmus that connects North and South America and they could now see that there was another ocean that might, for all they knew, be even greater than the one the conquistadors has sailed across to reach the Americas from Spain.

Being a Spanish conqueror, Balboa’s first instinct was to carve the name of King Ferdinand on a tree, thus claiming the mountain for Spain. He reached the coast four days later and proceeded to wave his sword and claim the ocean for Spain as well.

Unfortunately for Balboa, his achievements caused jealousy in others. Six years later he was accused by the colony’s leader of treason, on a trumped-up charge, and he was beheaded in the main square of Darien. It was an ignominious end for one of the world’s most notable explorers.

© John Welford

Napoleon Bonaparte's escape from Elba

On 26^th February 1815 Napoleon Bonaparte escaped from his exile on the island of Elba and began his “100 days” revival that would end with final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

After a series of defeats, Napoleon had been forced to abdicate on 6^th April 1814. The allies sent him to Elba, a small island in the Mediterranean between Corsica and northern Italy. He was allowed to retain the title of Emperor, but his empire now constituted a mere 75 square miles of hills and coastal bays. He could have lived in retirement in some degree of luxury, having been granted a stipend of two million francs a year, but he had other ideas.

He was worried by the rumours he heard that some of his enemies were planning to send him much further afield. Another concern was that he was separated from his wife, Marie-Louise, who he believed was being kept from him by the new rulers in France. However, what he did not know was that Marie-Louise was heartily glad to have parted company with him and was happily involved in a liaison with an Austrian count.

So, on the evening of 26^th February, Napoleon gave his captors the slip and, accompanied by some 800 loyal soldiers, left the island in a fleet of sailing boats that landed on the coast of France near Cannes on 1^st March.

Gathering supporters as he went, Napoleon marched towards Paris. The recently restored King Louis XVIII fled, and Napoleon was once again the Emperor of France.

After his defeat at Waterloo on 18^th June 1815 the allies did not make the same mistake again. This time Napoleon was sent somewhere far less luxurious and much more escape-proof, namely the South Atlantic island of St Helena, where he died in May 1821.

© John Welford

Tsarina Elizabeth of Russia

Pre-Revolutionary Russia was ruled by a long series of Tsars who were often intriguing characters who did remarkable things. During the 18^th century a surprisingly high proportion of them were women. One of these was Tsarina Elizabeth, who seized the throne on 25^th November 1741 and ruled for 20 years.

Elizabeth of Russia

Elizabeth was a daughter of Peter the Great, who died in 1725 when Elizabeth was 16. The crown passed to Peter’s wife Catherine and then to his grandson (by his first wife) who ruled as Peter II. Another female ruler was Tsarina Anna, Peter the Great’s niece, and when she died in 1740 her nominated successor was her grandnephew Ivan, who was only one year old.

Elizabeth was now 32 years old and was witnessing the crown slipping down the generations and out of her reach. She took action by persuading a regiment of the Russian guards to march to the Winter Palace in St Petersburg and arrest the Tsar and his parents. It was a bloodless coup that proved to be popular with just about everyone, thus leaving Elizabeth as the undisputed ruler of Russia.

At first sight, Elizabeth might not have seemed suited to such an important role. She was lazy, vain and licentious, taking any lover she wanted including footmen and coachmen. She was also highly religious, so was able to console herself that she could be absolved of sin by attending mass every day. The morality of such a line may be questionable, but you can get away with quite a lot when you are the absolute monarch of a huge country.

However, she also seemed to have inherited Peter the Great’s talent for government and made some wise choices of people to govern on her behalf when she was otherwise engaged in bed or in church. To be fair, her endeavours also included the rebuilding of the Winter Palace, at vast expense, to produce the edifice that can be seen today.

She proved to be an enlightened ruler in that she abolished the death penalty, but less so in that a favourite punishment for people who offended her was that their tongue should be cut out.

Elizabeth never married and so had no direct heir. She selected her nephew Peter to succeed her, but was well aware that Ivan, the young prince she had usurped, was still alive and had a far better claim to the throne. She therefore gave orders that, should an attempt be made to free Ivan from the prison where he had languished for almost the whole of his life, that life would be forfeit - thus breaking her rule about the death penalty, it would seem.

When Elizabeth died in 1762 Peter did indeed become Tsar, as Peter III, but he only lasted for six months before he was overthrown and died in mysterious circumstances. The way was now clear for another redoubtable woman to take the throne, namely Catherine the Great who, incidentally, managed to complete Elizabeth’s threat by having Ivan executed.

© John Welford

Al Capone, aka Scarface

25^th January 1947 was the day on which Al Capone died at the age of 48, from a stroke complicated by pneumonia and syphilis.

He started his criminal career in New York, where an encounter with the brother of a woman he had insulted led to the facial injury that earned him the nickname of Scarface, but at the age of 20 he moved to Chicago where he soon became the leading mobster in the city, with earnings coming from gambling, prostitution and fixing horse races, although the era of Prohibition was what really propelled him to the top.

It is believed that Capone’s industrial-scale activities involving the manufacture and sale of illegal alcohol earned him around $100 million a year, and he took every step he could to protect that income by eliminating his rivals.

The most notorious event in his catalogue of crime occurred on 14^th February 1929 (St Valentine’s Day) when four members of his gang turned up at a Chicago garage that was the headquarters of a rival bootlegger named Bugs Moran. Fortunately for Moran he was across the street when Capone’s men arrived, but six of Moran’s men, plus a garage attendant who had the misfortune to be there at the time, were not so lucky as they were lined up against a wall and shot dead.

Capone’s ability to intimidate and bribe his way to wherever he wanted meant that pinning any sort of criminal charge against him was virtually impossible until somebody pointed out that he had never filed an income tax return. The master criminal of Chicago therefore went to jail for tax evasion.

Capone spent more than eight years in jail, firstly at Atlanta where he bought special privileges for himself, but then at the much tougher fortress prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay.

He was a broken man when he was finally released in 1939 and was able to retire to his estate in Florida. The effect of syphilis and his time in jail was to bring on mid-life dementia, which meant that he was no threat to anyone during his final years.

© John Welford

Charles Darwin publishes "The Origin of Species", 1859

“On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” may not sound like the catchiest of titles, but it was to prove to be the greatest and most influential scientific work to be published in the 19th century, and the day of publication was 24th November 1859.

Despite being written in a far from readable style, Charles Darwin’s book sold 1,250 copies on the first day and has never been out of print.

“The Origin of Species” only dealt with the evolutionary principle as it affected animals, and it was not until 1871 that he filled in the blanks by extending it to mankind in “The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex”.

Darwin knew that his theories would cause controversy, which was one reason why he had delayed publication for many years, but perhaps even he would be amazed by the fact that, more than 150 years later, there would still be people who preferred to believe the mythological account of creation in the Book of Genesis to his application of science to what was clearly observable in the natural world.

To the literal believer in the Genesis account, Darwin’s theories were heretical, and he attracted huge amounts of hostility from Church authorities for his assertion that mankind was not created “in the image of God” as a perfectly formed being but was in fact closely related to several species of ape with which man must have had a common ancestor.

However, it is now generally accepted that Darwin was right, and that the Genesis story, written by people who were making up a story to fit what they saw as the facts, must be read symbolically, like any myth, and not as a literal account of what happened. There are very few Christians or Jews in the civilised world today who do not accept Darwin’s theories, although the proportion of opponents in the United States does seem to be much higher than in most of the rest of the world. Why? A very good question!

© John Welford

The death of Queen Elizabeth I

24^th March 1603 was the day on which Queen Elizabeth I died. It was therefore also the day on which the crowns of England and Scotland were united in the person of Elizabeth I’s successor.

Queen Elizabeth was only a few months short of 70 years old. She hated the idea of growing old and had done everything she could to pretend to herself that this was not happening. For example, she wore luxuriant tawny wigs to disguise the fact that the fiery red hair of her youth was now grey and thinning. She so hated to see herself as an old woman that she had all the mirrors removed from her palace at Richmond.

However, she knew that her time was running out and, during her final months, reconciled herself to the idea of dying. For days on end she refused to go to bed, being instead propped up on cushions while she meditated in silence.

On 23^rd March she announced: “I wish not to live any longer but desire to die”, and at three o’clock the next morning that is what she did. Her coronation ring was so tightly fixed to her finger that the digit had to be cut off before the ring could be released.

On the death of the last of the Tudors the crown passed to the son of her cousin, Mary Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth had had executed in 1587. James Stuart had been King James VI of Scotland since 1567 (when only one year old) and he now added the title of King James I of England and Ireland. The effective creation of the United Kingdom has lasted to the present day, although whether it will continue for much longer is a contentious point.

© John Welford