MEMOIRS 07 HYDROGRAPHY INCLUDING Brief Biographies of the Principal Officers who have Served in H.M. NAVAL SURVEYING SERVICE BETWEEN THE YEARS 1750 and 1885 COMPILED BY COMMANDER L. S. DAWSON, R.N. I 1s t tw o PARTS. P a r t II.—1830 t o 1885. EASTBOURNE: HENRY W. KEAY, THE “ IMPERIAL LIBRARY.” iI i / PREF A CE. N the compilation of Part II. of the Memoirs of Hydrography, the endeavour has been to give the services of the many excellent surveying I officers of the late Indian Navy, equal prominence with those of the Royal Navy. Except in the geographical abridgment, under the heading of “ Progress of Martne Surveys” attached to the Memoirs of the various Hydrographers, the personal services of officers still on the Active List, and employed in the surveying service of the Royal Navy, have not been alluded to ; thereby the lines of official etiquette will not have been over-stepped. L. S. D. January , 1885. CONTENTS OF PART II ♦ CHAPTER I. Beaufort, Progress 1829 to 1854, Fitzroy, Belcher, Graves, Raper, Blackwood, Barrai, Arlett, Frazer, Owen Stanley, J. L. Stokes, Sulivan, Berard, Collinson, Lloyd, Otter, Kellett, La Place, Schubert, Haines,' Nolloth, Brock, Spratt, C. G. Robinson, Sheringham, Williams, Becher, Bate, Church, Powell, E. J. Bedford, Elwon, Ethersey, Carless, G. A. Bedford, James Wood, Wolfe, Balleny, Wilkes, W. Allen, Maury, Miles, Mooney, R. B. Beechey, P. Shortland, Yule, Lord, Burdwood, Dayman, Drury, Barrow, Christopher, John Wood, Harding, Kortright, Johnson, Du Petit Thouars, Lawrance, Klint, W. Smyth, Dunsterville, Cox, F. W. L. Thomas, Biddlecombe, Gordon, Bird Allen, Curtis, Edye, F. Robinson, Bourchier, Orlebar, Mercer, Veitch, Alldridge, Glover, Felix Jones, Whitelock, M o n tr io u ...................................................................................................... CHAPTER II. Washington, Progress 1854 to 1863, Smith, Sanders, Selby, Grieve, E. E. Calver, Pullen, Aird, Hoskyn, Jeffery, Richards, Sidney, Skead, Usbome, Scott Taylor, Burstal, Cudlip, A. D. Taylor, Constable, Creyke, Ward, Heathcote, Stanton, Bewsher, Sweny, F e l l ..................................................................... CHAPTER III. Richards, Progress 1863 to 1874, Mansell, Davis, Whish, Parsons, Ward, Bullock, Brooker, Chimmo, Inskip, McDougal, Haii, Mayne, Reed, Pender, Wilkinson, Nares, Wilds, Hutchison, Hull, May, St. John, Collingwood, Howard, Bedwell, Gray ................................................................................... CHAPTER IV. Evans, Progress 1874 to 1884, Appendix, Marine Surveys of India, United States Coast Survey, Chronological Table of Discovery, Early History of Chrono­ meters and their Introduction as Aids to Navigation in the Royal Navy REAR-ADMIRAL SIR FRANCIS BEAUFORT, K.C.B., D.C.L., F.R.S., Hydrographer, 1820 to 1855. CHAPTER I. Fitzroy, Belcher, Graves, Raper, Blackwood, Barrai, Arlett, Frazer, Owen Stanley, J. L. Stokes, Sulivan, Berard, Collinson, Lloyd, Otter, Kellett, La Place, Schubert, Haines, Nolloth, Brock, Spratt, C. G. Robinson, Shenngham, Williams, Becher, Bate, Church, Powell, E. J. Bedford, Elwon, Ethersey, Carless, G. A. Bedford, Frazer, James Wood, Wolfe, Balleny, Wilkes, W. Allen, Maury, Miles, Mooney, R. B. Beechey, P. Shorti and, Yule, Lord, Burdwood, Dayman, Drury, Kerhallet, Montravel, John Wood, Harding, Kortright, Johnson, Du Petit Thouars, Lawrence, Klint, W. Smyith, Dunstervüle, Cox, F. W. L. Thomas, R. B. Beechey, Biddlecombe, Gordon, Bird Allen, Curtis, E ÿ e , F. Robinson, Bourchier, Orlebar, Mercer, Veitch, Alldridge, Dayman, Glover, Felix Jones, Wnitelock, Montriou. Francis Beaufort, born in 1774, was second son of the late Rev. Daniel A. Beaufort, D.D., Rector of Navan, county Meath, and Vicar of Coilon, county Louth, a divine of great learning and piety, descended from an ancient and noble French family, and author of one of the best maps of Ireland, and of a valuable memoir on the topographical and civil and ecclesiastical state of that country. His sister was the fourth wife of the late Richard L. Edgeworth, the celebrated writer on education and inventions, father by a former marriage of Miss Maria Edgeworth, the distinguished novelist. He entered the Navy 21st June, 1787, his name being borne as a volunteer on the books of the Colossus, but his first voyage was made in the Vansittart , East Indiaman, as a “ guinea pig”—that is in virtue of the payment of a hundred guineas, and here he afforded valuable assistance to his commander, Captain Lestock Wilson, in surveying the Strait of Gaspar. This survey was just completed when the Vansittart struck upon a rock off the island of Banca, near the spot where the Transit went down in 1857. A hole was stove, and all effort had to be made to keep the ship afloat, till the flat shore of Sumatra could be reached. She was run aground on an island, seven miles from Banca, the crew escaping in the boats, with the loss of six lives. This occurred in August, 1789. 2 MEMOIRS OF On Beaufort’s return to England from the.East he became midshipman of the Latona 38, and afterwards the Aquilon 32, one of Lord "Howe’s repeaters in the action off Brest of the ist of June, 1794. Upon the return of Lord Howe to Portsmouth with six French ships of the line, the King and Royal Family, who came to inspect the captures, went on board the Aquilon to sail round the fleet. It was probably about this period that he so nearly perished from drowning—(he described himself “ as a youngster at Portsmouth in one of the king’s ships”)—no record of the year is given, but in a letter to Dr. Wollaston describing the sensations experienced on the occasion, published in the Autobiography of Sir John Barrow, he states that the principal events of his past life passed before him as in a panorama, each act being accompanied by a consciousness of right or wrong. He was saved, however, and after undergoing the process of emptying the water he had swallowed by letting his head hang downwards, being bled, chafed, and having gin administered he recovered. The feelings as consciousness returned, being described by him, as the reverse in every point to those which he had just experienced. Interesting in itself, the story is valuable as coming from one, as singularly truthful in recording experience, as skilled in detailing it. For some years Beaufort was the sole surviving officer of Lord Howe’s action previously alluded to. Following his captain, the Honble. Robert Stopford, to the Phaeton he was serving in that ship when Cornwallis made his celebrated retreat from the French fleet, 17th June, 1795. In this ship he performed a deed of great gallantry, boarding with the barge and two cutters under his orders, and capturing after an obstinate resistance the Spanish polacre-rigged ship, San Joseph , of 24 guns, 34 seamen, and 22 soldiers, moored under the protection of 5 guns of the fortress Frangerola, near Malaga, and flanked by a French privateer. For this affair Lieutenant Beaufort, who had received a wound in the head and several slugs through his left arm and body, was rewarded with a Commander’s commission, and a pension of 12s. 6d. ; this was increased in 1815 to ^125 per annum. From November, 1803, to June, 1804, he gratuitously devoted his time to the formation of a line of telegraphs between Dublin and Galway, an object of great importance as long as Ireland was liable to invasion from continental enemies* For this, declining any other acknowledgment, he received the thanks of Government. In June, 1805, he obtained command of the Woolwich 44, armée en flute in which he con­ voyed from India, sixteen Indiamen, in 1806. In 1807, he was engaged in surveying the River Plate, proceeding thence to the Cape and Mauritius. In 1809, in command of the Blossom sloop-of-war, he was employed on the coast of Spain, at Quebec and in convoying merchant vessels. Obtaining post rank in May, 1810, he was appointed to command me frigate Fredericksteen , but he did not join until December, in the meantime being occupied in protecting the outward-bound trade to Portugal, Cadiz, and Gibraltar in accompanying two Spanish line-of-battle ships to Minorca ; and in acting for some months as Captain of the Ville de Paris , a first-rate, in the fleet off Toulon, under Sir Edward Pellew. In 1811, Beaufort was selected to survey the coast of Karamania, the result of which was, not only a capital survey, but a review of the country as illustrated by the remains of antiquity. Beaufort’s “ Karamania ” was the great book of travels of its day—sound, substantial, and learned, and full of interest, both to the man of science and the scholar. It was this book that induced Fellowes, Spratt, Forbes, and Charles Newton, to Asia Minor, to relate of the works of art extant there, and to bring over the Kalicarnassian marbles to the British Museum. After much hazardous service against the pirates in Greek waters, Captain Beaufort commenced the survey of the coast of Syria, in the course of which he nearly lost his life. In June, 1812, his party were surrounded by armed Turks, led by a crazy Dervish, and he was wounded in the hip-joint so seriously, that the wonder was that he ever walked again. It was a severe struggle, between life and death, and in the following October, when the ship paid off, he was still undergoing much pain fron) the exfoliation of the bone. HYDROGRAPHY. 3 He employed his enforced leisure by preparing for the Admiralty, a set of charts of the coasts of Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Black Sea, and Northern Africa, finished and arranged so as to be fit for engraving without further aid. In 1829, Sir John Barrow recommended Captain Beaufort to Lord Melville for the post of Hydrographer, declaring that he had no equal in that line and very few in most other branches of science.