Place

St Helena

South Atlantic provisioning stop visited by Endeavour and later by HMS Beagle, where Darwin studied its volcanic landscape and introduced vegetation.

Coordinates-15.94, -5.72

Related expeditions

27 December 1831–2 October 1836

Voyage of HMS Beagle

HMS Beagle sailed on a five-year Royal Navy surveying voyage under Robert FitzRoy. Charles Darwin travelled as a self-funded naturalist, spending long periods ashore collecting specimens and recording the geology, plants, animals, and societies he encountered.

26 August 1768–12 July 1771

James Cook’s First Voyage

Lieutenant James Cook commanded HMS Endeavour on a joint Royal Navy and Royal Society voyage to observe the 1769 transit of Venus at Tahiti. Under further Admiralty orders, the expedition then circumnavigated and charted New Zealand, followed the eastern coast of Australia, and returned to England through Batavia and the Cape of Good Hope.

Sources and further reading

Darwin’s Itinerary on the Voyage of the Beagle, The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online. Day-by-day chronology, historical place names, coordinates, ports, shore excursions, and Beagle positions.
Joseph Banks: Scientist, Explorer and Botanist, Natural History Museum. Banks’s role, scientific party, collecting programme, major voyage regions, and the expedition’s imperial context.

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