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was sent back to Woolwich dockyard for repairs and much else that was needed for her coming voyage. The bulwarks were lowered to allow water to drain off more easily; a chartroom was built over the quarterdeck, more cabins built forward of this new poop deck for additional storage and an assistant surveyor; skylight hatches were fitted over the captain’s cabin and the gun-room, where the officers slept, to make the long months and years aboard less gloomy. A mizzenmast, carrying two fore-and-aft (rather than square) sails, was added to her stern, greatly increasing her maneuverability. This changed her rig from a two-masted brig to a barque.
    Six months after she went into the dockyard, on May 22, 1826, HMS Beagle sailed from England on her first mission toTierra del Fuego, under the command of her first captain, Pringle Stokes.
    Designed for war, one of a bunch built for a price, she sailed away to explore the unknown world, into maelstroms of unholy wind and weather, and she proved herself one of the ablest little ships in history.

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    I n January 1829, HMS Adventure , with Captain King, HMS Beagle , with her new captain, Robert FitzRoy, and a smaller schooner, HMS Adelaide , sailed south again on their surveying mission. (Not often mentioned, the Adelaide , named for England’s queen, the wife of William IV, had been purchased by Captain King earlier in the expedition, and had accompanied the Adventure for much of 1828. Being a “fore-and-after” rather than a square-rigged vessel, she was a handier sailer, able to point closer to the wind than either of the other two ships, and was used for survey work in tighter channels and harbors.)
    Captain FitzRoy encountered misfortune early in his command. On January 30, off Maldonado on the coast of Uruguay, the Beagle was caught by a pampero , a vicious squall blowing off the pampas, later said to be the worst in many years. It lasted only twenty minutes, but the Beagle , newly loaded to the brim with supplies, exacerbating the already top-heavy tendency of her class, was knocked over on her beam, and lay pinned by blasts of wind for long minutes, during which it appeared she might capsize. Topmasts, topsails, all sorts of sails and small spars, were torn away and blown to pieces. Two seamen who had been furling sail high in the rigging were blown away with them into the sea and lost.
    Such sudden “white squalls” can catch a ship by surprise and knock it down in seconds, long before its captain has time to notice what’s coming and take in sail. The incident was not FitzRoy’s fault (though in later years he was to blame his inexperience for not being more alert and ready for such a possibility), but to lose men so early in his command would have had his crew (seamen are a highly superstitious lot) wondering if their new skipper had the curse of being unlucky.
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    Two months later, the ships reached the eastern entrance to the Strait of Magellan.
    On April 13, as the Beagle was beating down into the strait near Cape Negro against a light southerly breeze, the crew spotted some natives: two women and a child in a canoe near the shore, two men and their dogs close by on the beach. FitzRoy had a whaleboat lowered and a crew of seamen pull him shoreward for a closer look, the people “being the first savages I had ever met.”
    To Englishmen, they appeared remarkably unattractive. “hideous…filthy and most disagreeable” was Captain King’s first and lasting impression.
    To the Fuegians, the British naval officers and their crew, appearing from seaward in their grand and intricate vessels, with their elaborate clothing, their gadgets, and their inexplicable powers, were as otherworldly as little green men coming out of a spaceship—except that the locals were no longer astonished. Such visitors had been turning up for some time; the occasional glimpses of the Magellans, Sarmientos, and Schoutens had increased to nearly