This Thing of Darkness

This Thing of Darkness was the debut novel of Harry Thompson, published in 2005 only months before his death in November of that year at the age of 45. Set in the period from 1828 to 1865, it is a historical novel telling the fictionalised biography of Robert FitzRoy, who was given command of HMS Beagle halfway through her first voyage. He subsequently captained her during the vessel’s famous second voyage, on which Charles Darwin travelled as his companion. The novel was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Its title comes from Prospero's line "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine" in Act V, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

Born to an aristocratic family, Robert FitzRoy joined the Royal Naval College, Portsmouth aged 12 and entered the Royal Navy the following year, rising rapidly through the ranks. The novel begins in 1828 with the suicide of the commander of HMS Beagle, Pringle Stokes, and FitzRoy’s subsequent appointment as the vessel’s (temporary) captain at the age of twenty-three.

Whilst conducting Beagle’s mission of surveying Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, during which he proved to be a meticulous surveyor, he captured four native Fuegians and brought them back to England when Beagle returned in October 1830. FitzRoy’s intention was that they should be educated and Christianised before being returned to their homelands, where they would be able to act as interpreters – with the aim of establishing friendly relations between their fellow countrymen and the British – and also use their new knowledge to improve the lives of their compatriots. The captives became celebrities and were presented to King William IV; one later died from smallpox.