"... a promising and capable naval officer. FitzRoy's family connection with the Londonderrys would perhaps have led in any case to a successful career (he rose to be Vice-Admiral), and his election to Parliament and appointment as Governor of New Zealand were no doubt helped by this connection: but his most notable achievements were professional, whether as brilliant naval surveyor, inventor of the FitzRoy barometer, or head of the first national meteorological service. Behind the public and professional figure we find a strange, moody, obstinate yet unpredictable man -- a man who could share Darwin's experiences and observations and yet come to the unshakeable conclusion that they pointed to the literal truth of Genesis; whose compassion led him to sponsor, with extraordinary persistence, the welfare of three primitive natives from Tierra del Fuego, and to jeopardise his official position in New Zealand by treating Maoris as human beings; whose natural melancholy and sense of failure led to suicide ..." -- Inside front cover.