John Maurice Herbert was a close friend of Darwin’s at Cambridge University. He was affectionately called ‘Cherbury’ by Darwin, a reference to the seventeenth-century philosopher Edward Herbert, Baron Cherbury, who, like John Herbert, hailed from Montgomeryshire in Wales. Darwin must have used this nickname so consistently that when addressing a letter to Herbert in October 1828, he had to confess ‘I cannot recollect your Christian name, so I shall Christen you G’.

George Waterhouse was born on 6 March 1810 in Somers Town, North London. His father was a solicitor’s clerk and an amateur lepidopterist. George was educated from 1821-24 at Koekelberg near Brussels. On his return he worked for a time as an apprentice to an architect, but his self-taught knowledge in natural history won out.

George Keen (1794–1884) was born in England. He had arrived in Buenos Aires by 1820, making him one of the earliest settlers from Britain. In 1821 he married Mary Yates (1802/3–72), the sister of John, William and Elizabeth Yates, another family of early settlers from England. In 1825 Elizabeth Yates married Edward Lumb, with whom Darwin stayed in Buenos Aires in 1833.

When Charles Darwin embarked on the Beagle voyage in 1831, Syms Covington was ‘fiddler & boy to Poop-cabin’. Covington kept an illustrated journal of his observations and experiences on the voyage, noting wildlife, landscapes, buildings and people and, frequently, food.

Edward Lumb was born in Yorkshire. According to the memoirs of his daughter Anne, Lady Macdonell, he travelled to Buenos Aires aged sixteen with his merchant uncle, Charles Poynton, and after some fortunate enterprises set up in business there. In 1833 while voyaging on the Beagle Charles Darwin stayed with Edward Lumb, and he wrote to his sister Caroline that it was strange to sit in an English merchant’s house and watch a lady making tea amid English furnishings.

King was born in Parramatta, New South Wales on 31 October 1817, son of Captain Phillip Parker King and Harriett (Lethbridge). His grandfather, also named Philip Gidley King, had been governor of New South Wales. As a child, King travelled to England with his father and in 1824-5 attended school near Deptford in London. From 1826 to1830 he sailed under his father’s captaincy aboard MS Adventure, on a voyage to survey the coast of South America. The ship was accompanied by a smaller vessel, HMS Beagle, on her first voyage.

John Lort Stokes, naval officer, was Charles Darwin’s cabinmate on the Beagle voyage – not always an enviable position.  After Darwin’s death, Stokes penned a description of their evenings spent working at the large table at the centre, Stokes at his navigation charts and Darwin at his microscope: