Talk:HMS Beagle

In case it's not obvious, Beagle is one of those early RN ships so famous that it should "own" the unmodified name. Stan 00:03, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC) "made famous for the second voyage she made with Charles Darwin aboard." Does this mean that it was the second voyage with Charles Darwin, or it's second voyage total? Ambiguous!

We should have more than one sentence describing this second voyage. Townmouse 10:00, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

This needs to be moved to its proper name

This needs to be moved to its proper name. All of the other RN ships have the main ship name as a dab page, so this needs to be consistent. Dunc|☺ 12:41, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

When I set up the naming rules, I specificially allowed for exceptions in the case of the most famous ships, which are this one and HMS Victory. The analogy is with Paris and London, which are both the names of many different places, but only the most perverse suggest that they should be qualified with some kind of disambiguator. So in a handful of cases, the ship naming convention yields to the more general WP convention of not adding a disambiguator to the most common possibiity for a topic. Stan 13:30, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Port Famine is Puerto Hambre (actually Punta Arenas (Chile)

There is an error in the related first voyage. Port Famine is on Magellan Straignt (not on Beagle Channel).

ta. sorted. ...dave souza 22:33, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Dining with officers

Wait a minute: since when did captains not dine with officers? That's a very great change from customs only twenty years before, where it was expected that the wardroom invite the captain to dinner quite often, and for the captain to have officers and midshipsmen to dinner the rest of the time.

It was actually the captain's prerogative to go either way, but I'm thinking that it had more to do with social class - a vessel with such a small complement might not have had anybody that the captain considered "gentlemanly" enough to dine with regularly. (It would have been considered a hardship for a scion of a noble family to eat day after day with people lacking knowledge of classical authors, for instance.) The connected articles don't mention anything about dining arrangements as a motivation, so it would probably be judicious for this article not to try to bring it up, at least not without a very specific citation. Stan 14:01, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure the story that his rank would bar him from dining with his subordinates came from Darwin by Adrian Desmond and James Moor, but the book isn't to hand and a different emphasis appears in the foreword to Voyage of the Beagle, Charles Darwin, Penguin Books, London 1989 ISBN 0-14-043268-X, so this may have been misinterpretation by me and I'll modify it more to the Penguin version. ....dave souza: talk 21:22, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

RMS

Just something I'll offer for others to comment on... I've seen the ship under the name of RMS Beagle more often than I have as HMS Beagle, including scientific writings about Darwin. 88.107.72.23 21:13, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Not sure about this. The Voyage of the Beagle, at least the version Gutenberg has transcribed, refers consistently to HMS; there's no appearance of the term RMS, abbreviated or expanded. Royal Mail Ship says the term has only been in use since the 1840s, when Beagle was being taken out of service, and the first OED cite for the term is 1850. Plus, a hydrographic survey ship seems a very odd choice for carrying mail... Shimgray | talk | 21:23, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Further... I could find a few reference to "His/Her Majesty's Ship Beagle", even "...survey ship Beagle", but no "...mail ship Beagle" or "RMS Beagle" in the archive of the Times. Shimgray | talk | 21:30, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Flag

Does anybody know what flag the HMS Beagle used? The topic shows the White Ensign, but this wasn't formal until 1864. BoH 21:57, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

The 1840s picture shows red at the stern, and Red Ensign concurs that this was worn by ships ... sailing under independent command. I guess we could change it to Image:Civil Ensign of the United Kingdom.svg. Shimgray | talk | 20:07, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Very interesting and informative: however the white ensign's effectively an RN logo, and to the casual reader a red ensign could imply a merchant ship An explanatory note would be needed, and this might best be done by adding the image under the infobox, with suitable description. Would it have been a blue ensign from 1864 - 1870? ;) ..dave souza, talk 23:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Thing is, the white ensign isn't standard for the RN before 1864 regardless - the flag flown would have changed depending on squadron. Either we do a lot of reworking of all these articles, or we just pick an anachronistic one and live with it... Shimgray | talk | 23:08, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Spell me

Dear & Kemp's Oxford Companion to Ships & the Sea have it "Fitzroy". Who's right? (Or is it a matter of variation...?) Trekphiler 06:44, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, it seems that Dear & Kemp are wrong, though the name sometimes appears as one word in capitals then is (automatically?) rendered as Fitzroy. Here we've followed Charles Darwin's biographers Desmond & Moore and Browne in using FitzRoy, as Darwin did in his 1839 Journal and Remarks. However, "Voyages Vol 1" edited by ROBERT FITZ-ROY published at the same time uses Fitz-Roy, and Darwin's 1845 Journal of Researches uses Fitz Roy. To confuse things, the Bibliographical introduction by R. B. Freeman uses Fitzroy, so it's not uncommon. ... dave souza, talk 08:07, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Then evidently, Dear & Kemp aren't wrong, just using a different variant, seeing how there doesn't seem to be consensus on it... Trekphiler (talk) 06:07, 1 January 2008 (UTC)