Robert FitzRoy was born in 1805, a descendant of King Charles II, joined the Royal Navy at 12, and became the first officer to score full marks on the lieutenant’s exam. In 1828, in his early 20s, he took temporary command of HMS Beagle off Tierra del Fuego after Captain Pringle Stokes died by suicide, a loss that left him with a lifelong fear of breaking down under the isolation of command. When local people took one of his boats, he seized hostages and carried four Fuegians to England, renaming them Fuegia Basket and Jemmy Button among others, and presented them to King William IV and Queen Adelaide. Returning them meant sailing again, so he sought a gentleman companion and chose Charles Darwin. The pair clashed most bitterly over slavery in Brazil, and FitzRoy’s temper earned him the nickname Hot Coffee.

The mission in Tierra del Fuego failed, and FitzRoy briefly resigned his command after the Admiralty refused to repay a surveying ship he bought with his own money. After the voyage ended in 1836 he embraced biblical literalism, defending Noah’s flood in his narrative. As governor of New Zealand from 1843 he sided with the law after the Wairau Affray, issued unbacked promissory notes, watched Hone Heke cut down the flagpole at Kororareka four times, and was recalled. In 1854 he took charge of a three person weather office, the forerunner of the Met Office. After the 1859 Royal Charter Storm he used the telegraph to gather barometer readings from 15 coastal stations, coined the term weather forecast, and hoisted storm cones at ports. At the 1860 Oxford meeting he raised a Bible and begged the audience to believe God rather than man.

• Fishing fleet owners resented his warnings because ships held in port earned nothing.
• Queen Victoria sent messengers for his forecasts before crossing to the Isle of Wight.
• He spent his own fortune on the weather service and died on April 30, 1865.
• Darwin contributed to a fund for his widow and daughter, and the Queen granted them an apartment at Hampton Court Palace.
• In 2002 the shipping forecast area Finisterre was renamed FitzRoy.