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What role did Charles Darwin have on HMS Beagle?

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Charles Darwin served on the second voyage of the HMS Beagle (1831–1836) not as a professional ship's surgeon-naturalist, but as a self-financed gentleman companion to the captain, Robert Fitzroy.1

Captain Fitzroy, who feared the isolation of command, invited Darwin to join the expedition to provide intellectual company during the long voyage. While his formal role was that of a companion, Darwin functioned as a naturalist, using the opportunity to collect extensive fossils, plants, and animal specimens. The observations and materials he gathered during this circumnavigation of the globe provided the essential foundation for his later development of the theory of evolution by natural selection.12