Robert FitzRoy was an extraordinary man in many ways. He rose to admiral in England's Royal Navy, earning respect from his men and fellow officers along the way. He circumnavigated the world in the age of exploration. He was governor of New Zealand. And he invented the modern weather forecast.
Yet today, those who know of him at all recall him merely as captain of the Beagle, the ship that carried Charles Darwin on the voyage that led him to develop his theory of natural selection as the means of evolution.
That's a shame that John and Mary Gribbin seek to put right in their biography "FitzRoy," a close look at this man who devoted himself to duty, suffered unwarranted criticism from others and - intensely religious - was dismayed at what he saw as Darwin's error.
FitzRoy made his reputation as a stickler for accuracy on a first trip in the Beagle, sent to survey the little-known coasts of southern South America in the 1830s - no easy task in an era before satellites and modern tools.
Having identified a bay as a potential safe haven for ships, he took bearings from two different mountaintops and, with his lieutenant, took the latitude eight times using four different sextants. "As they all agreed, within 15 seconds, I supposed their mean to be nearly correct," he reported.
Considering such attention to detail, the Gribbins write, it's not surprising that FitzRoy's charts were still in use more than a century later during World War II.
It was FitzRoy who gave Darwin the opportunity for his groundbreaking research. Knowing he was inclined to depression, FitzRoy decided he needed someone to talk to on his next survey trip and invited the young naturalist along on the five-year voyage.
That trip is detailed in the book, which includes a mini-biography of Darwin, whose life became so entwined with that of FitzRoy.
But there was more to the admiral, who later served as a member of Parliament and as governor of New Zealand, where he angered colonists by seeking fair treatment for the native Maoris.
And his attention to the weather on sailing voyages led to his final job, that of collecting weather data for the Navy and merchant marine and, eventually, issuing storm warnings that saved lives around the English coast.
Indeed, FitzRoy, in effect, invented the modern weather forecast, and was one of the first to feel the wrath of criticism on those occasions when predictions go wrong.
In the end, plagued by illness, depression and criticism from others, and distressed that he had played a vital part in what he saw as Darwin's undermining of religion, FitzRoy took his own life.
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