Researchers on Exploratory Ships 2 Centuries Ago

choi

Michael Fathers, Bobbing Boffins; 'Experimental Gentlemen' joined some of the great 18th- and 19th-century voyages of exploration to collect exotic flora and fauna. Wall Street Journal, Feb 2, 2014
online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304477704579256171376783160
(book review on Glyn Williams, Naturalists at Sea; From Dampier to Darwin. Yale University Press, 2013)

Quote: "scientific travelers, or 'experimental gentlemen,' as they were known in Georgian England

Note:
(a) boffin (n)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/boffin
(b) "The story begins in 1651 with the birth of Englishman William Dampier. * * * He served, mostly on pirate ships * * * For modern readers his most striking observation may be his discovery of marijuana in 1688 on the Indonesian island of Sumatra."

I am clueless about why he reviewer comments Mr Dampier "discover[ed] marijuana, whcih has been used for millinnia. See Cannabis (drug)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cannabis_(drug)
(section 6 History)

(c) "The first voyage involving professional scientists was made by the Russians, sponsored by their modernizing czar Peter the Great, who was impressed with the activities of Britain's and France's scientific societies. Shortly before Peter died in 1725 he appointed the Danish-born Vitus Bering [departing St Petersburg 1725, returning there 1730] to lead an expedition to determine the extent of the Asian continent. Sailing north from the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia's Far East, Bering reached [in 1728] the strait dividing Asia and America that now bears his name. But he did not sight the Alaskan coast. A second voyage in 1740 [again starting from St Petersburg] set sail to observe whatever lands and peoples they came across and to investigate the prospects for trade. It reached America but ended in disaster, shipwreck and the death of Bering [in Kamchatka Pennisula, having fallen ill].
(i) Vitus Bering
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitus_Bering
(1681-1741; In 1704, he enrolled with the rapidly expanding Russian navy of Peter the Great)
(ii) Vitus
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitus
(iii) The north German surname Bering means son of a man with "Germanic personal name Ber (meaning ‘bear’)." (similar to Manning)

(d) "When Charles Darwin joined the Beagle and its supportive captain, Robert Fitzroy, in 1831, the 'descriptive sciences'—based on collecting, drawing and measuring species during short bursts ashore—were being challenged by a new generation of naturalists led by Alexander von Humboldt, the Prussian geographer."
(i) Robert FitzRoy
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_FitzRoy
(1805-1865; achieved lasting fame as the captain of HMS Beagle during Charles Darwin's famous voyage, FitzRoy's second expedition to Tierra del Fuego and the Southern Cone [1831-1836])
(ii) Alexander von Humboldt
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_von_Humboldt
(1769-1859)