How did HMS Beagle contribute to our understanding of the ocean?

The answer

HMS Beagle is famous for carrying Charles Darwin on its second voyage (1831-1836), but the ship's primary mission was hydrographic surveying, charting coastlines and ocean depths for the British Admiralty. Commander Robert FitzRoy produced extraordinarily accurate charts of South America's coast that remained in use for over a century. Darwin's observations during the voyage led not only to his theory of evolution but also to his theory of coral atoll formation, which proposed that atolls form as volcanic islands slowly sink while fringing reefs grow upward, a hypothesis later confirmed by deep drilling in the 1950s. The Beagle also made important meteorological observations that contributed to FitzRoy's later founding of the Met Office.