A Neglected and Misunderstood Man

Like many people, my knowledge of Robert Fitzroy has long been limited to the sole fact that he was the captain of the H.M.S. Beagle during Charles Darwin’s famous voyage upon it. I’d read in Darwin’s own writings that he had held Fitzroy in high esteem, as well as passing mentions elsewhere that Fitzroy and Darwin later fell out over Darwin’s Origin – something to do with Fitzroy having religious objections to the ideas it proposed – but beyond that, for as far as I was aware, he simply seemed to disappear into the mists of history. Then I read John R. Gribbin’s and Mary Gribbin’s Fitzroy; the Remarkable Story of Darwin’s Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast and discovered just how insufficient my knowledge of the life and accomplishments of this remarkable man truly were.

Vice-admiral Robert Fitzroy, FRS, was a career naval officer and scientist, a skilled surveyor and pioneering meteorologist, the first English governor of New Zealand, a devout Christian and dedicated family man, and perhaps most of all, a sincerely moral person whose dedication to the pursuance of the public good led to him being highly regarded by those who knew him yet simultaneously disregarded by those in whose name and under whose authority he served for the majority of his life.

It may come as a surprise to many, but Fitzroy’s voyage around the world on the Beagle was not his first. He previously sailed on her on her previous, and first, voyage to South America, on which journey he observed many of natural wonders to be found on that then still largely unexplored continent, and pledged to himself that if he ever made a return voyage there, he would bring with him a naturalist whose job it would be to explore and record the many discoveries there to be made.

The maps he and the crew of the Beagle created, based on their surveying measurements, during his two South American journeys were astonishingly accurate, and his innovations in surveying and navigation – such as the carrying of what seemed to others an excessive number of chronometers aboard ship to ensure accurate measurements – are in part what eventually led him later to develop the process for the systematic collection and recording of weather observations that would eventually become – under his leadership – the first nation-wide weather reports, followed by the first weather forecsts. Even some of the instruments that made it possible for remote, non-scientist observers to accurately collect and record these observations themselves, so as to be then transmitted to a central office – later to become the Met Office – by telegraph, were of his creation. It is for this latter work that his name is still most commonly known (and why one is more likely to find a copy of this book in the meteorology section of a bookshop than under any other heading).

Then, of course, there is his governorship of New Zealand. Replacing the previous “official resident” of the then only recently (and somewhat haphazardly) colonized islands, Fitzroy was given the honor of being the first governor – but not the honor of any resources to use in governing the nascent colony. Faced with a population composed of the remaining Maoris – recently diminished to half their previous numbers by then recently introduced diseases as well as by a dramatically increased level of violence among one another made possible by the similarly recent introduction of firearms to them – , a much smaller collection of missionaries, and finally a number of enthusiastically profit-seeking adventurers, Fitzroy worked tirelessly in his attempts to improve the lives of all of these groups through the creation of an effective and fair system of government on the islands. The problem was that most of the population there at the time was only interested in improvements that benefited themselves more than the others. The final straw came when Fitzroy made an official judgement that agreements signed with the Maori should actually be honored. Promptly removed, he was replaced in the position by someone possessing half his talents who was given all the resources denied to him, and who subsequently succeeded in the job.

Like all those who lived in that metaphorical country so foreign to all of us – the past – where they do things so very differently, Fitzroy’s ideas and actions don’t quite sit squarely with the way many understand the world and society today. Born into a minor aristocratic family with traceable ties – betrayed by his name – to the monarchy, he was a dedicated Tory, once even serving as an MP for that party. Yet he also held ideas that might be in ways considered socially reforming – although perhaps not quite in the manner we might think of social reforms today. He unequivocally believed that British culture was the pinnacle of human existence, but rather than that it should perpetually rule over other cultures, he wanted to share it with those he found living in societies more (dare I use the word?) primitive than his own. Rather than force – in which many of his contemporaries may have put their trust – Fitzroy believed in, as Gribbin and Gribbin so nicely describe it, “moral persuasion” for the “elevation” of those he encountered in his travels. He trusted that if given the opportunity to acquire the education and habits of British culture, all those not yet fortunate enough to be part of it already would most certainly wish to become so.

His interest in the Fuegians is particularly notable. On his first voyage, he returned to England with four Fuegians, whom he intended to educate with the intent of one day returning them to their homeland in order to share the benefit of what they learned with their fellow countrymen and women. Readers of Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle (originally written, by the way, as the second volume of a three volume work, the first volume of which was Fitzroy’s own narrative of the journey) will recall the return of three of these, Fuegia Basket, York Minster, and Jemmy Button, to Tiera del Fuego; the fourth having died in England during their sojourn in England. Now, some indeed may see this as inexcusable cultural imperialism of the most heinous order, yet it should be recalled that the spirit that led him to undertake this project – much of it at his own expense – is the same spirit that led him to see the Maoris in New Zealand as equal, in humanity if not in societal progress, to the settlers and whose rights must therefore be equally respected as such.

His religious “conversion” – of a sort, for he was always a Christian, but following the second voyage of the Beagle his Christianity shifted from the conventional form to one of a Biblically literalist perspective – is another of the now seemingly irresolvable contradictions in his story. A dedicated engineer and natural philosopher, with particular interests in geology and astronomy, is his adoption of an Ussherian position on the history of the Earth. Yet considered in his own times, what with the established order of things being first challenged by Lyell’s, and then by Darwin’s, ideas proposing a dramatic reassessment of the very age of the planet itself and of all the life living upon it, perhaps his shift to a defensively literalist position is not quite so unintelligible. Indeed, in his own letters he proclaims how his interest in, and knowledge of, geology and astronomy helped him in his literal and inspired understanding of the Bible.

It is far too easy in our own cynical, jaded age to put Fitzroy aside for what may now seem to be some of his contradictory (or perhaps even naive) ideas, or condemn him for imperialism, colonialism, or any of a number of other popularly excoriated -isms. Yet how many of our own ideas and beliefs will one day be treated likewise? Fortunately the authors of Fitzroy do not do so. In this book he is presented as a man in his own time; and as such he is shown for what I think it safe to say that he truly was: a hard-working, deeply serious, highly moral person whose very instinct in life was to exert all his mortal effort for the belefit of others in any way he found he could. He sought neither fame nor fortune, and as so tragically often happens in this world, by the end of his life neither of these were his.

The life of Robert Fitzroy is indeed one upon which to think long and seriously. It is a mirror into which all who would seek their own improvement are encouraged to gaze, for what it may reflect back to the observer may not be quite what is expected. Gribbin and Gribbin are most heartily to be commended for presenting it as thoroughly and engagingly as they have in this book, and I highly recommend it to all who would be curious to acquire a better understanding of this too-long neglected and misunderstood man.

Title: FitzRoy; the Remarkable Story of Darwin’s Captain and the Invention of the Weather Forecast