26 June 1832: Beagle gets bigger teeth

Charles Darwin's HMS Beagle diary records his rejoining the ship after a stay ashore in Rio de Janeiro:

Rode to the city & went on board in order to make final arrangements for living in the ship after my long absence. I dread this process nearly as much as I did at Devonport. There have been several alterations in the ship. Amongst others we have 2 long nine-pounders; this will make us much more independent: several cases occurred during the last war where very small vessels terribly injured large ones, from having one great gun & keeping out of range of the other. I am sorry to see so many new faces on the deck, in the whale boat which took me ashore there was not one old-hand.

Hmmmm. Nunatak is blithering on about wanting a continuous plankton recorder for the Beagle. If she gets one of those to play with aboard I want a 9 pounder cannon. Just for authenticity, you understand.

This entry lifted from the Darwinbeagle blog, where Roger kindly serves up Darwin's daily entries from Darwin's Beagle journal for our pleasure. The originals can be seen at the (my superlative mine is exhausted when talking about it) Complete Works of Darwin Online website.