I Salute Admiral FitzRoy – for 30th April

 

FitzRoy's grave at All Saint's, Upper Norwood (nr. Crystal Palace)

I have the deepest respect for ‘Captain FitzRoy’, whose anniversary – of death by his own hand – was on 30^th April (I’m a few days late due to a big family wedding).

An absolute aristocrat (the Fitzroy name comes as being a direct descendant of the ‘Merry Monarch’ at his merriest), he cared deeply, as second Governor of New Zealand,  for the indigenous Maori during a rapacious colonial period - and was sacked as a result. In the navy from 12, he was appointed temporary commander of HMS Beagle at 23 as a result of the madness and suicide of Captain Stokes, and had another suicide, by throat-slitting, in his family. So very wise to take along a gentleman companion on Beagle’s second voyage to keep him sane, on a ship refitted at his own expense (he kept doing that). His friend Beaufort (inventor of the ‘Force 10’ scale) came up with some suggestions. He got his second choice, Charles Darwin, and – fatefully – thrust a copy of Charles Lyell’s ‘Principles of Geology’ into 22yr old Charles' hands, thereby giving Darwin a vision of Deep Time (in a way, a bit like the Deep Time I am proposing for the Amity Project, although I only need 60 Million Years).

You’d think that giving Darwin his big, lucky break (again, own expense) would be enough for fame – and indeed there’s plenty more on this aspect, including his brave, principled rejection of Darwin later (including brandishing a bible at the famed Oxford Debate of 1860), and indeed his later reconciliation with Darwin (though not with evolution). But he had to continue his noblesse-oblige-from-own-pocket by founding the Met. Office and inventing Weather Forecasting (including the very term). Perhaps inspired by Beaufort systematising wind-speeds, and with the new technology of barometers and telegraph, his can-do entrepreneurialism led to the first ever weather forecast of 31/7/1861 in his own hand, which was published in the Times. His forecasts saved the lives of many ordinary sailors.

You can tell this is going to end badly. He’d betrayed God (by being Darwin’s unwitting stooge), lost his colonial job, lost his family fortune (died effectively broke), and then the trolling started. Yes, they had trolls before the internet. We used to call such newspaper letter-writers as ‘Angry of Tunbridge Wells, but the trolls included scientists who apparently thought that no forecast was preferrable to an imprecise one. From the Met. Office site:

“The constant criticism took a severe toll on FitzRoy's health and his frequent absence from the office can be traced through the increasingly sporadic presence of his handwriting in the weather reports. His final entry was written on 20th March 1865, just a few weeks before he took his own life on 30th April 1865”.

It’s rather horrible to think of a man – such a great and principled figure - haunted by those earlier suicides and visions of razor-blades, and being inevitably driven into the depression where he would follow their example.

Here’s a small example of my musical write-up mentioning his first interaction with Darwin. I had long intended to pay my respects at his grave, which I was luckily able to do while visiting family close to St Margaret / All Saints, Norwood (near Crystal Palace) recently. The grave was apparently renovated by the Met. Office in 1981 and the strange (Fuegian?) plant has grown since then. I enjoyed popping into ‘his’ church and testing the acoustics with Fr. Antonio, vicar-in-charge, who supplied interesting chat and directed me to FitzRoy’s (very modest) end-of-terrace two hundred meters down Church Road (with a green plaque).

A bit of recitative within the fugato 'Shooting, Dogs & Rat-catching'

Picture credits:

FitzRoy's grave: David F. Gahan

Musical extract: David F .Gahan