Pringle Stokes
[a][2] Stokes served as a lieutenant on board the frigate HMS Owen Glendower, which left England for South America in November 1819.
[6] The ship remained in Pacific waters off Chile and Peru until October 1821, when it sailed from Valparaiso, rounded the Horn again in rough weather, and returned to England via Rio de Janeiro, arriving in January 1822.
[10] On 3 July 1823 he led a party of boats up the New Calabar River, where they found an abandoned schooner that had been loaded with slaves but now only held seven in irons.
[13] In 1824 Stokes was involved in a dispute over the Spanish slaving schooner Fabiana, which had been captured by the ship's boats under Lieutenant Gray on the Bonny River ten days after Sir Robert Mends died.
The opposing view, which apparently prevailed, was that the ship's boats had been dispatched under the orders of Sir Robert Mends, whose estate would be entitled to the prize money.
[17] It was said of Stokes when he was appointed to command the Beagle "though he was not practised in professional science, he had been studying in Edinburgh to attain mathematics, and he was moreover an indomitable seaman.
"[19] On 22 May 1826 the Beagle left Plymouth along with the larger HMS Adventure under the overall command of Captain Phillip Parker King on a voyage of exploration of the southern coast of South America.
[20] The two ships left Montevideo on 19 November 1826, and surveyed the coasts of southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego around the Strait of Magellan until April 1827, returning to Rio Janeiro in June 1827.
[22] In December that year the two ships sailed south again, this time accompanied by a schooner named Adelaide, and in January 1828 made their base at Port Famine (Puerto del Hambre).
From there, Stokes was directed to "proceed to survey the western coasts, between the Strait of Magalhaens and latitude 47° south, or as much of those dangerous and exposed shores as he could examine".
Scholl and the other officers, he vainly endeavored to reach the western entrance, and was constantly driven back, exposed as we were to the heavy swell of the great Pacific, which rolled in upon us with unabated violence ... on the morning of the 31st January the wind howling around us, and the atmosphere dense and cheerless, we put to sea.
The lofty, bleak, and barren heights that surround the inhospitable shores of this inlet, were covered, even low down their sides, with dense clouds, upon which the fierce squalls that assailed us beat, without causing any change... Around us, and some of them distant no more than two-thirds of a cable's length, were rocky inlets, lashed by a tremendous surf; and, as if to complete the dreariness and utter desolation of the scene, even the birds seemed to shun its neighbourhood.
