For this service H.M.  Sloop Beagle was commissioned at Woolwich, in the second week of February 1837 by Commander Wickham, who had already twice accompanied her in her wanderings over the least known and most boisterous waters of the globe; first, in her sister ship of discovery, the Adventure, Captain King, and afterwards as first lieutenant of the sloop now entrusted to his command.  Under Captain Wickham some of the most important objects of the voyage were achieved, but in consequence of his retirement in March 1841, owing to ill health, the command of the Beagle was entrusted to the author of the following pages; and as, by a singular combination of circumstances, no less than three long and hazardous voyages of discovery have been successfully completed in this vessel, some account of her here may not be wholly uninteresting.  The reader will be surprised to learn that she belongs to that much-abused class, the 10-gun brigs—­coffins, as they are not infrequently designated in the service; notwithstanding which, she has proved herself, under every possible variety of trial, in all kinds of weather, an excellent sea boat.  She was built at Woolwich in 1819, and her first exploit was the novel and unprecedented one of passing through old London bridge (the first rigged man-of-war that had ever floated so high upon the waters of the Thames) in order to salute at the coronation of King George the Fourth.

Voyages of the Beagle.

Towards the close of the year 1825 she was first commissioned by Commander Pringle Stokes,* as second officer of the expedition which sailed from Plymouth on the 22nd of May, 1826, under the command of Captain Phillip Parker King; an account of which voyage, published by Captain R. Fitzroy, who ultimately succeeded to the vacancy occasioned by the lamented death of Captain Stokes, and who subsequently commanded the Beagle during her second solitary, but most interesting expedition—­has added to the well-earned reputation of the seaman, the more enduring laurels which literature and science can alone supply.

(Footnote.  Not related to the author.)

Death of Captain Stokes.

Though painful recollections surround the subject, it would be hardly possible to offer an account of the earlier history of the Beagle, and yet make no allusion to the fate of her first commander, in whom the service lost, upon the testimony of one well qualified to judge, “an active, intelligent, and most energetic officer:”  and well has it been remarked by the same high authority, “that those who have been exposed to one of such trials as his, upon an unknown lee shore, during the worst description of weather, will understand and appreciate some of those feelings which wrought too powerfully upon his excitable mind.”  The constant and pressing cares connected with his responsible commanded—­the hardships and the dangers to which his crew were of necessity exposed during the survey of Tierra del Fuego—­and in some degree the awful gloom which rests forever on that storm-swept coast—­finally destroyed the equilibrium of a mind distracted with anxiety and shattered by disease.