The Beagle Project

During my journey with Darwin, I’ve found several great online resources. Many of Darwin’s original works, including his correspondence, have been put on line and are easy for anyone to access. Below is a list of some that I have found particularly helpful. I’ll continue to update this list as time goes on, and eventually post some great books and multimedia resources, as well.

The Complete Works of Darwin Online
This site has all of Darwin’s major and minor works, and several other related resources. Along with transcribed versions, many of the original documents have been scanned and can be viewed in Darwin’s own hand.

Some resources I use quite frequently on this site:

• Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary
• Voyage of the Beagle
• On the Origin of Species
• Zoology of the Voyage of the Beagle –
  • Part 1 Fossil Mammalia by R. Owen
  • Part 2 Mammalia by G. R. Waterhouse
  • Part 3 Birds by J. Gould
  • Part 4 Fish by L. Jenyns
  • Part 5 Reptiles [& Amphibia] by T. Bell
• The structure and distribution of coral reefs
• Geological observations on the volcanic islands visited during the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle
• Geological observations on South America
• FitzRoy’s Narratives of the Voyage of the Beagle
• Darwin’s Zoological Notes from the HMS Beagle

Darwin Correspondence Project
Here you can find Darwin’s many correspondence. The site has almost half of them (over 7,000) posted and is gradually adding more each day. Darwin sure had a lot of “pen pals”.

AboutDarwin.com
An extensive web site created by amateur historian David Leff. It collects a ton of material “about Darwin” in one online location.

Charles Darwin’s Beagle Diary (in blog format)
Richard R. (can’t find more details than that) has posted Darwin’s entire diary (without any annotation) in the form of a online blog.

HMS Beagle Project
This is the site for the non-profit organization in the UK that is promoting science and working to raise funds to rebuild the HMS Beagle. I whole-heartedly support this idea – wouldn’t it be amazing to see the Beagle sail again! (Sorry for any confusion here – I was not aware of that project when I named by blog.)

Beagle Crew List
A fairly thorough crew list that is located on the Usborne Family Tree web site. (An Usborne was the Master’s Assistant on the Beagle.) Another crew list can be found here.

Principles of Geology
Charles Lyell’s classic geology textbook that inspired Darwin the geologist. (Interestingly, one of the best online versions of this text is found on “The Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online”.)