To the Edge of the World

Description:

The year is 1828. Brilliant young naval officer Robert Fitzroy is given the captaincy of HMS *Beagle*, surveying the wilds of Tierra del Fuego, aged just twenty-three. But Fitzroy hides a dark secret: hereditary manic depression that can strike at any time. He is seized by two ambitions -- that he can prove, contrary to the spirit of the age, that black and white men are equal; and that he can prove the truth of the Book of Genesis. To this end, he takes a passenger: a young trainee cleric and amateur geologist named Charles Darwin. This is the story of a deep friendship between two men, and the twin obsessions that tore it apart, leading one to triumph and the other to disaster... *This Thing of Darkness* is not just an epic historical novel. By turns gripping, funny, satirical and heartbreaking, it is also a novel about race, religion, science and colonialism that sheds many a light on the state of our world today. It is also one of history's great untold true stories, a tale of men under sail who were prepared to risk their very lives to get at the truth.

subjects: Ship captains,  Beagle Expedition (1831-1836),  Seafaring life,  Fiction,  Voyages and travels,  History,  Naturalists,  Fiction, historical,  Fiction, historical, general,  Argentina, fiction,  Chile, fiction,  Beagle Expedition (1831-1836) (uri) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n50077067 (uri) http://viaf.org/viaf/sourceID/LC|n50077067

People: Charles Darwin (1809-1882),  Robert Fitzroy (1805-1865)

Places: Patagonia (Argentina and Chile),  South Atlantic Ocean

Times: This novel is closely based upon real events that took place between 1828 and 1865.,  19th century