On this day 180 years ago an epic journey began from The Lion Hotel in Shrewsbury that was to have worldwide implications.
On Monday, September 5, 1831, twenty-two-year-old Charles Darwin left the hotel in haste by stagecoach to London on his way to join HMS Beagle for a five-year trip.
The reason he left in such a rush was that a second person had been offered the job as naturalist on the ship on what had planned to be a two-year survey of South America.
Darwin had accepted the position a week earlier but his father, Robert, supported by Charles’ sisters, refused to let him go saying the trip would get in the way of him becoming a clergyman.
After what must have been a heated family discussion his father relented and said he could go, if he could find a man with common sense who thought it would be a good idea.
The next afternoon Charles rode over to see uncle, Josiah Wedgwood II, at his home at Maer Hall, just over the border in Staffordshire, where he wanted to put his case to the member of the famous pottery family.
The plan worked. His uncle wrote to Darwin’s father answering all the objections and Robert agreed to support his son financially.
Since the Whitehall Admiralty hadn’t heard from Darwin (pictured below) for a few days, they presumed he had changed his mind and offered the job to someone else.
Darwin hurried off to London on the first available stagecoach from The Lion to see Captain Robert FitzRoy who asked him if he was still interested in the job, as the other person had turned it down.
Charles again accepted the job, and was told to report to Plymouth in time for the new sailing date of October 10, although the ship didn’t eventually leave until 11am on Tuesday, December 27, on the expedition which in the end took more than five years.
Eventually, the HMS Beagle reached the Galapagos Islands on September 16, 1835, the scene of Darwin’s major research on the origin of species and his evolution theory, before returning to Falmouth on October 2, 1836, where Charles caught the stagecoach back to The Lion Hotel.
Back in England he wrote his book on evolution, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, which earned him international fame and 180 years later his theory is still being talked about.
If you want to read more about Darwin’s story email John@jbutterworth.plus.com to order an autographed copy of Four Centuries at The Lion Hotel, Shrewsbury, for the special price of £5 plus £1 postage, cheques payable to J Butterworth.
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