[5] In January 1866 he was appointed Professor of Natural History in the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester, but resigned in June in consequence of being appointed by the Admiralty upon the recommendation of Joseph Dalton Hooker, to collect plants as naturalist on board HMS Nassau under the command of Richard Charles Mayne,[6] then commissioned for the survey of the Straits of Magellan and the west coast of Patagonia.
This voyage started on 24 August 1866 from the Thames,[5] and on 18 February 1867 she arrived in Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands to coal, departing again on 2 March, much to Cunningham's regret.
[4] In all, Cunningham published 18 scientific papers before 1872 his first which was about gannets was his theses but the others were mainly on his observations from voyage of the Nassau.
[1] In 1871 Cunningham was appointed Professor of Natural History at Queens College, Belfast where he spent the following 31 years as a university teacher.
During his time in Belfast he was an enthusiastic naturalist, taught botany, geology and zoology, ran excursions and had museum curation duties.