An archeologist and a space scientist are on a mission to track down timber from Charles Darwin’s ship HMS Beagle.

Marine archaeologist Dr Robert Prescott and Professor Colin Pillinger, the lead scientist behind the UK’s Beagle 2 Mars Probe Project, launched an appeal on Radio 4’s Today programme for leads to find the wood.

HMS Beagle was the ship used by Darwin to gather material around the world for his ground-breaking work on evolution “Origin of the Species”. Prof Pillinger and Dr Prescott described it a is a “key artefact” for British science and said it would be fitting to find the remains in the year that its namesake space probe was launched.

It is thought that the vessel was broken up by Essex shipping scrap specialists in the 1870s. The only surviving timber that is known about was made into an inscribed box which is now at the National Maritime Museum.

“The lower parts would have had little resale value and would have been dumped where the ship was broken up and we believe we may have found the site in the Essex marshes,” said Prof Pillinger. “If we find remains we will be able to cross match them with other possible finds of the salvageable wood that was sold on.”

&#8220As we speak, someone could be sitting at a table made from HMS Beagle”

Professor Colin Pillinger, Beagle 2 Mars Probe Project

The search has also identified the names of the possible salvagers, Murray and Trainer, and tracked down their descendents in Australia.

Prof Pillinger said that he would be interested in any information that could help them track down further remnants of the ship. “We have admiralty plans and manifests, so we know quite a lot about what was on board and how it was built,” he said. “Interestingly there was quite a lot of mahogany used so, as we speak, someone could be sitting at a table made from HMS Beagle.”