I absolutely reccommend This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson to anyone looking for a juicy and riveting read this summer. It tells the story of Robert Fitzroy's two journeys captaining the Beagle to South America and beyond, the second with Darwin on board. The friendship between the two men, and the testing of that by their diverging views on religion and the natural world, are wonderfully explored. Having been recently converted to the maritime novels of Patrick O'Brien, this pushed all those tall-ship buttons also. The other characters are brilliantly fleshed out from historical fact, especially the Fuegians Fitzroy brought back to England.