Charles Darwin got the glory – and the controversy – when he published his scholarly tome The Origin Of Species. But what about the man who helped him do his research, and who sailed him around the world collecting samples? Er… No, we hadn’t really wondered either.
But Focus Features has, with the company buying the rights to Peter Nichols’ book Evolution’s Captain: The Dark Fate Of The Man Who Sailed Charles Darwin Around The World.
Writer Chase Palmer has been hired to script and direct an adaptation (naturally shortened to just Evolution’s Captain), which will track the 30-year friendship between Darwin and Captain Robert FitzRoy of the HMS Beagle, the ship that ferried Darwin around the globe.