Emmie felt tears prickle her eyes, and when Farthing huffed and made that rumbling hooting sound, the sob in her throat turned into a laugh.
‘Pa told me all about you, Farthing. You’re . . .’ she faltered, ‘you’ve . . . grown.’
Pa chuckled, and stroked Farthing’s scales next to Emmie’s hand.
Then Farthing raised her head and they both stepped back. She reared up on her hind legs and unfurled her wings. With a few almighty flaps, she took flight and hovered in the air above them, and then she was soaring, circling, releasing joyful hoots so loud they vibrated through the ground and up Emmie’s legs.
‘She’s so happy to see you,’ said Emmie.
Pa squeezed her hand tight. ‘All these years . . . and really she hasn’t changed at all.’
Farthing swept down towards them again, but this time her claws stretched out, tensing, and she hovered briefly above their heads. She circled and dived, flexing her front claws again.
‘What is she doing?’ Emmie asked Pa.
‘Wait here,’ he said, ‘and stay bricky.’
Emmie didn’t like the sound of that but didn’t have time to argue. Pa ran back to the fumarole and hopped up on to the rim of it, catching his balance. She stared at him in disbelief, as he raised both his arms and waved up at Farthing, who was now circling them.
The next time the dragon swept down, she came straight as an arrow, and Pa stood upright, both his hands in the air.
He couldn’t be planning to . . .
‘Pa!’
Farthing swerved sideways and snatched him up, her giant claws wrapped around his middle. Emmie couldn’t take it in, Pa had lost his mind! She ran after them, in the dragon’s shadow.
‘No fear . . . I trust her with my . . . life . . .’ Pa’s voice whipped away as he was swept into the sky. He waved, his other arm clutching a claw as long as his forearm.
Emmie covered her mouth, as the dragon – Farthing – swept her own pa up and over the ocean, and then circled back towards her. She took her eyes from them just long enough to find the eyeglass on top of Pa’s knapsack. She stared through it as they passed overhead, and Pa’s face came into focus, grinning like one of the town boys riding a go-cart down the hill. Beyond Farthing, in the distant blue, she caught another flash of gold.
Emmeline Covington counted one, two . . . seven more dragons, weaving and wheeling a glittering trail across the sky.
PEOPLE AND PLACES IN DARWIN’S DRAGONS
THE PEOPLE
Syms Covington
In this story, Syms Covington (Syms was short for Simon) is a fictional character, based on a real person. Historians don’t know for sure when the real Syms was born, and it is likely he was a little older than he is in my story. But in the 1830s, boys as young as eight years old could sign on to a ship as cabin boy. Syms really did start as cabin boy and ship’s fiddler on HMS Beagle, and was promoted to Charles Darwin’s assistant around two years into the voyage. Syms returned with Darwin to London, and they worked together until he moved to Australia. They continued to write to each other, and although the writing is formal, as it was in Victorian times, it seems to me they had definitely become friends. Syms wrote a very brief journal during the Beagle voyage, but there was a gap in it during the journey around the Galapagos Islands, which I jumped upon. I had just the adventure to fill those pages.
Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin was only twenty-two when he set sail on the Beagle, so in this story he would be a young man of twenty-six, nothing like the bushy-bearded grandpa in the photos we are used to seeing. One of my favourite things about Darwin is that he ended up doing something very different with his life than was planned for him. He was supposed to be a doctor, but didn’t like blood; then was supposed to be a vicar, but wasn’t interested in that either, and hated exams. Darwin was full of curiosity and wonder, and from a very young age, loved collecting animals. It was when he started following his dreams that wonderful things happened.
In Charles Darwin’s time, most people in Europe and America believed what the Bible told them was fact – that God created the world in six days. But during his voyage on the Beagle, Darwin began to observe nature very closely and question everything he’d been taught. He found evidence that living things could naturally change over very long periods of time . . . which eventually led to his groundbreaking theory of evolution. Darwin knew that his ideas would shock people, and would anger and upset many, but today, scientists accept that evolution is a fact. Charles Darwin changed history, and it all started with the strange and wonderful things he saw during his voyage on the Beagle, and especially in the Galapagos Islands.
Queen Victoria
In June 1837, the eighteen-year-old Victoria became Queen. She is another historical person we mostly associate with being an older lady, dressed in black and looking rather grim. But in my book she is lively and curious, still a teenager, just finding her way as the new Queen of England. Queen Victoria had a very strict, controlled upbringing called The Kensington System, where she wasn’t ever allowed to be alone, had to sleep in her mother’s bedroom, was kept away from other children, never allowed sweet foods and barely ever left the palace. I imagine she would have been delighted with her new freedom when she became Queen of England, able to boss everyone else around for a change, and ready for an adventure that took her outside the prison-like palace. Victoria really did love animals and definitely met Jenny the orangutan.
Mary Anne Whitby
In Darwin’s time, there were not many opportunities for women to work in Science, but Mary Anne Whitby and Darwin wrote letters to each other later in his life. She was a silkworm breeder, and her experiments helped Darwin develop his theory of natural selection.
Emmeline Covington
Emmeline really was Syms Covington’s youngest daughter. Very little is known about her, so I have given her a fully-fictional adventure.
The officers and sailors
Captain Fitzroy commanded the Beagle, and all sailors in this book – the marine Robbins, the ship’s surgeon Bynoe, the cook and the ship’s boy – were on the Beagle’s papers; real members of crew.
THE PLACES
The Galapagos Islands
The Galapagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands situated across the equator in the Pacific Ocean. They are part of Ecuador in South America, and are now a national park and marine reserve. Many animals that live there are not found anywhere else in the world, so are very rare.
Narborough Island is a real place, now known as Fernandina Island. It is the second largest island of the Galapagos, but Darwin never went there. Fernandina does have an active shield volcano, which erupted ten years before my story is set, plus lava tube tunnels. It has no source of fresh water and nobody lives there permanently, even now. The Galapagos animals Syms encounters are also all real, and it is reasonable to imagine they could have lived on Fernandina at the time. Including the dragons, of course!
The Beagle
The Beagle was a brig – a wooden ship, powered by sails, and was considered to be the fifth-fastest vessel in England at the time. But it was small, at around twenty-eight metres long, which is only the length of two double-decker buses! Between sixty and seventy-three crew were onboard the Beagle, so living conditions were very cramped. Darwin slept in the tiny poop cabin, in a hammock he strung up every evening over the table where the officers read their charts.
Under the orders of Captain Fitzroy, the Beagle had been fitted with a new, raised deck which helped keep it stable in the water. He did this as this type of ship had such a bad habit of sinking – they were known as ‘coffin brigs’. I am guessing they probably didn’t tell Charles Darwin that!
It may seem strange to name a ship after a breed of dog, but naming ships after animals is common in the British Royal Navy. Some of my favourite navy ship names are HMS Greyhound, HMS Bulldog, HMS Bat, HMS Beaver, HMS Ferret and HMS Peacock!
AN INTERVIEW WITH LINDSAY GALVIN
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How did you come up with the idea to combine dragons with Charles Darwin’s famous voyage?
This planet was once home to the magnificent dinosaurs, so why not dragons?
The plan for this story was about real-world dragons, animals that felt like they could exist and weren’t fantastical. My publishers asked me to add a small historical part, and I immediately thought of Darwin’s famous voyage, as I already knew a bit about it from teaching the evolution topic to year six. I started to research the voyage of the Beagle, and discovered that Darwin promoted the cabin boy and ship’s fiddler, Syms Covington, to be his personal servant, and to assist on expeditions and with collecting specimens. When I wrote Syms’ part of the story, it just felt right somehow; Darwin’s Dragons had hatched!
This is your first historical novel. Did that make it more difficult to write?
I am fascinated by the past and read a lot of historical books for adults and children, but never thought I could write one myself. It was hard enough getting a story right without having to research a different time as well! So I was surprised when the voice of Syms flowed out quite easily. No matter what the story is, for me, the characters come first. It was only once I had written the first draft and my characters and plot were in place, that I began researching to get the historical details right. That took me months! But I didn’t mind as I loved learning more about this era. During the 1800s the steam train, electric lighting, matches, bicycles, stamps and so much more, were all invented. Louis Pasteur came up with his germ theory, Michael Faraday discovered the connection between electricity and magnetism and Mary Anning was digging up dinosaur bones on the west coast of England. It seemed a perfect time to discover dragons.
How did you research the story?
It was huge fun. I read lots of books and researched on the internet as I wrote. Then I visited the Natural History Museum, and took a tour behind the scenes where I saw the actual specimens collected on the Beagle. I went to Downe House, where Darwin lived for most of his life, and stood in Darwin’s study, then I spoke to some amazing experts who described Darwin’s life after the Beagle. I visited Chislehurst Caves and some caves in Portugal, to inspire the underground scenes. I watched David Attenborough’s wondrous Galapagos TV series many times. And I read Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. I observed, and gently handled, lizards at a reptile sanctuary, to watch their behaviour and movement, and visited Marwell Zoo and London Zoo.
How much of the story is true?
I’ve tried to keep it as accurate as possible – the equipment, the boat and the settings. Everything outside of Darwin’s interactions with Syms, the lizards and Queen Victoria actually happened.
I also added in historical facts I discovered in my research. Darwin really was very seasick and hated the sight of blood, which stopped him becoming a doctor. He did have a home-made eyeglass, like the one in this story, I saw it on display at his home, Downe House. And he really did ride a giant Galapagos tortoise.
Syms Covington and Farthing have a very special bond. Did you have any pets growing up?
My first pet, at age nine, was Chestnut the hamster, who lived to nearly four years old – over one hundred in hamster years! Then we had Baggins, the African grey parrot, who used to soak his seeds and titbits in water and throw them at me from his cage, and shout my name in my dad’s voice. Now I have my two cats, brother and sister, Buster and Flinty, who fill my house with fluff and cuddles, fight over who can leave the most fur on my desk chair and tell miaowing tales on each other.
Tell us about the dragons . . .
My instinct is always to try to make things as believable as I can, with lots of science involved. The world is so full of weird and wonderful creatures so I took all my inspiration from nature and started by researching those flying prehistoric giants, the pterosaurs, and studying the behaviour of other dinosaurs. I gave my dragons a very strange life cycle, stolen from creatures like frogs and butterflies, which go through a metamorphosis – the features of their body changing as they grow. I combined this with the ability to survive over very long periods, like the Greenland shark, which can live to 500 years old.
I hope that I have made breathing fire seem real. Because, why not? Animals have evolved many defences that seem magical; from stings and bites, spitting venom and acid, to electrocution. All fire needs is a spark, fuel and oxygen. I invented a dragon with sharp plates in the back of its throat, that could grind together to make a terrible scream, and friction that produces a spark. Then I gave my dragon a special chamber above its stomach, to store flammable gases released by digestion, which would act as fuel. The spark meets the fuel and hits the oxygen in the air . . . let there be fire!
How does this story, based 185 years ago on Darwin’s voyage on the Beagle, relate to what is happening in the world today?
Syms Covington discovered a frightening fact; that most people refuse to believe what they haven’t seen with their own eyes. Today we have a similar situation with the slow but steady differences we are noticing due to climate change. A threat much more frightening than any dragon.
Science often tells us things we don’t want to hear. The Victorians didn’t want to believe in evolution; to hear that humans descended from apes. The Bible had taught them humans were different and better than other animals. So, Charles Darwin waited twenty-three years before publishing his groundbreaking book On the Origin of Species, because he didn’t want to cause trouble and upset his family and friends. Now his findings provide the basis of nearly all the biology we study.
There are scientists in the same position as Darwin was, right now, but this time their findings are very urgent. It’s taken activists, like the brilliant sixteen-year-old, Greta Thunberg, to show us that we must listen to scientists, even if it is hard to hear what they tell us. Darwin had time to spare. We do not. It might not be affecting most of our lives yet, but climate change is a fact, and every one of us can do something about it.
Young people, like you, are willing to believe what they cannot see, and are as fiercely protective of our planet as a dragon over her eggs. It is you who will stop us burning. Thank you.
CHARLES DARWIN TIMELINE
1809 12th February. Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, a small village in England. His father was a doctor and his mother the daughter of a famous china factory owner, and they lived in a large house.
As a small child, he spent most of his time outside and collected birds’ eggs (only one from each nest) and pebbles. He also loved to read.
1817 Darwin’s mother died. His three older sisters and older brother helped looked after him and his younger sister.
1818 Darwin was sent away to boarding school, age nine. He hated being away from home and wasn’t a good student – he couldn’t remember all the things he was supposed to. But he loved science and made a chemistry lab in a tool shed in his garden at home! His friends nicknamed him ‘Gas’.
1825 Darwin was not doing well at school, so was sent to Edinburgh University medical school with his older brother, who was becoming a doctor. Darwin hated watching operations and finally confessed to his father, a year later, that he didn’t want to be a doctor.
1828 Darwin was sent to Cambridge to train to be a vicar, as many vicars studied nature as a hobby. He didn’t enjoy studying and spent most of his time outside again, collecting beetles.
1831 Darwin was given the chance to be a ‘gentleman companion’ and naturalist (someone who studied nature) on Captain Fitzroy’s round-the-world voyage on the Beagle, which would be away for at least two years.
On 27th December the Beagle left Plymouth.
1832 January. The Beagle reached Cape Verde, north of the equator off Africa. Darwin started reading about geology and the ideas of a geologist called Charles Lyell, who believed the earth had formed over a long period of time. He decided to collect specimens, explore and ask questions, to investigate this idea.
September. Darwin discovered fossils off the coast of
Argentina.
1832-35 Darwin visited Patagonia, Rio de Janeiro, Uruguay, Chile and climbed the Andes mountains, all the while collecting specimens, observing the mountains and rocks, and witnessing an earthquake.
1835 15th September. The Beagle arrived at the Galapagos Islands. Darwin collected the famous Galapagos finches and many other unusual animals.
1836 October. After visiting Tahiti, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa, the Beagle returned to England.
1837 Darwin pursued his career as a scientist. He turned his Beagle diary into a book and had the help of experts to identify the specimens he collected.
1838 Darwin visited Jenny the orangutan at London Zoo. By October, he was developing a theory about how animals can change over generations – as all animals of a species are unique, some are better-adapted to survive than others. Those are the animals that have offspring of their own, passing on these adaptations to the next generation . . . this would end up being called ‘natural selection’. He kept his work secret, so as not to upset people.
1839 29th January. Darwin married his cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and moved to the country to have a family, living at Downe House in Kent.
Darwin published his Journal of Researches, based on his Beagle diary.
1858 By now, Darwin had a large family and was a very relaxed and fun father, compared to most Victorian dads. He even made a slide for his children on the stairs! Sadly, three of his ten children died – this was much more common in those days, before antibiotics and other medicines had been invented.
Darwin received a letter from Alfred Russell Wallace, who lived in Malaysia, showing he had the same ideas about natural selection. Darwin decided to reveal his theory, but wanted to be fair to Wallace, so both theories were read aloud at a scientific meeting when neither scientist was there. Darwin had written his notes in 1844 so he was considered the man to discover evolution.
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