Robert FitzRoy - Death and Legacy

Death and Legacy

In 1863 FitzRoy was promoted to Vice-Admiral due to seniority, but in the coming years internal and external troubles at the Meteorological Office, financial concerns as well as failing health and his struggle with depression took their toll. On 30 April 1865, Vice-Admiral FitzRoy committed suicide. FitzRoy died having exhausted his entire fortune (£6,000, the equivalent of £400,000 today) on public expenditure. When this came to light, in order to prevent his wife and daughter living in destitution, his friend and colleague Bartholomew Sulivan began an Admiral FitzRoy Testimonial Fund which succeeded in getting the government to pay back £3,000 of this sum (Darwin contributed a further £100). Queen Victoria gave the special favour of allowing his widow and daughter the use of apartments at Hampton Court Palace, until her death.

FitzRoy is buried in the front church yard of All Saints Church in Upper Norwood, London. His memorial was restored by the Meteorological Office in 1981.

The book Sailing directions for South America of FitzRoy led Chilean hydrographer Francisco Hudson to infer the possible existence of sailing route through internal waters from Chiloé Archipelago to Straits of Magellan, but Hudson was however the first to realise that the Isthmus of Ofqui made this impossible.

Mount Fitz Roy (Argentina–Chile, at the extreme south of the continent) was named after him by the Argentine scientist and explorer Francisco Moreno. It is 3,440 m (11,286 ft) high. The aboriginals had not named it, and used the word Chaltén (meaning smoking mountain) for other peaks as well. Fitzroy River, in northern Western Australia, was named after him by Lieutenant John Lort Stokes who, at the time, commanded HMS Beagle (previously commanded by FitzRoy). The impressive South American conifer Fitzroya cupressoides is named after him as well as the Delphinus fitzroyi, a species of dolphin discovered by Darwin during his voyage aboard the Beagle. Fitzroy, Falkland Islands and Port Fitzroy, New Zealand are also named after him.

A memorial to FitzRoy is erected atop a metamorphic outcrop beside the Bahia Wulaia dome middens on Isla Navarino, in the Chilean part of Tierra del Fuego archipelago, South America. It was presented in his bicentenary (2005) and commemorates his 23 January 1833 landing on Wulaia Cove. Another memorial presented also in FitzRoy's bicentenary commemorates his Cape Horn landing on 19 April 1830.

On 4 February 2002, when the shipping forecast sea area Finisterre was renamed to avoid confusion with the (smaller) French and Spanish forecast area of the same name, the new name chosen by the UK's Meteorological Office was "FitzRoy", in honour of their founder.

In 2005, a novel entitled This Thing of Darkness by Harry Thompson was published. The novel's plot followed the lives of FitzRoy, Darwin and others connected with the Beagle expeditions, following them between the years of 1828 and 1865. It was a nominee on the long list for the 2005 Man Booker Prize (although Thompson died in November 2005).

FitzRoy has been commemorated by the Fitzroy Building at the University of Plymouth, used by the School of Earth, Ocean and Environmental Science.

Vice-Admiral Robert FitzRoy was commemorated on two stamps issued by the Royal Mail for the Falkland Islands and St Helena. The weather ship Weather Advisor (formerly HMS Amberley Castle) was renamed Admiral Fitzroy in 1976.

In 2010 New Zealand's National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) named its new IBM supercomputer "FitzRoy" in honour of Robert FitzRoy.