The early nineteenth century was a heroic age for British maritime exploits. Small naval vessels were sent around the world to make charts, plot the oceans and ease the way for empire. One such vessel was the Beagle. The Admiralty despatched it to Tierra del Fuego - some of the wildest and most dangerous seas in the world - to chart the waters. The first captain, Stokes, committed suicide, dying slowly and painfully from his gunshot wounds. The second, Robert FitzRoy was little happier. He was a sailor in the heroic mould, but his plan to take four 'savages' hostage when one of the Beagle's dinghies was stolen went drastically wrong. York Minster, Jemmy Button, and two others were taken to Britain to be educated as Christian gentlefolk. And then to be returned to their native lands on the next expedition - the one made famous by the presence on the boat of Charles Darwin. Like all the best made plans, it did not work out like that. This true story is intriguing history, reveals great science in the making and reads like the best historical fiction. A quite exceptional story.
Peter Nichols is the author of the national bestsellers "A Voyage for Madmen" and "Evolution's Captain" and three other books of fiction, memoir, and non-fiction. He spent ten years at sea working as a professional captain and has taught creative writing at Georgetown University. NYU in Paris, and Bowdoin College. After living in France and Maine, he is astonished to find that he lives in Tucson, Arizona.
"Not an unswerving literary trajectory. I've wanted to write - and to be a writer - since childhood. In my 20s I worked at writerly jobs in advertising and journalism while I wrote two unpublished novels. Then I stepped aboard a friend's yacht and my life swung away toward boats and the sea for a decade. I became, in turn, a boat bum, a U.S. Coast Guard-licensed commercial captain, and a proficient navigator with sextant. At age 33, the leaky 27-foot, engineless wooden sailboat that had been my home for 5 years, in which I'd twice crossed the Atlantic, sank near the end of my third crossing (I was alone). But I had found a subject.
I was rescued and crawled ashore in Los Angeles where, naturally, I began writing screenplays. I was fatally encouraged: I found agents and made a little money, but never saw my screenplays (they were full of leaky projects and rootless characters) turned into films. Unhappy with my screenwriting career (and my non-writing career of many jobs, including being a 'ship wrangler' in Borneo for a bad pirate movie), I fled LA to a shack in Northern California. Desperate to write something good and see it become real somehow (and unqualified for any other work), I wrote what became a memoir of my years afloat and the twinned sinkings of my boat and first marriage (Sea Change). In the next ten years I published a novel and three more books of non-fiction - all about not so much the sea and sailors, but fringe characters who have retreated to the water's edge and have nowhere else to go.
Being published changed everything. I went fairly quickly from being a yachtie, shepherd, carpenter, ship wrangler with literary delusions to a visiting professor of creative writing at some good colleges. I've been fortunate to have wonderful students. I love teaching because I can tell young writers what it took me decades to learn - simply, that yes, you can, if you really believe in yourself and don't give up. I dreamed of becoming a writer and I became one. And if I did it, they can too." PN, 2010
