George Mecham | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | George Frederick Mecham |
| Born | 14 November 1827 Cove of Cork, Ireland |
| Died | 17 February 1858 (aged 30) Honolulu, Kingdom of Hawaiʻi |
| Branch |  Royal Navy |
| Service years | 1841–1858 |
| Rank | Commander |
| Commands | |
George Frederick Mecham (14 November 1827 – 17 February 1858) was an Irish naval officer and explorer who participated in the search for Franklin's lost expedition.
George Frederick Mecham was born in 1827 at Cove of Cork, Ireland. [1]
He joined the Royal Navy in 1841 and was promoted to lieutenant on 8 March 1849. As a lieutenant he served from 1850 to 1852 in Assistance under Erasmus Ommanney and from 1852 to 1854 in Resolute under Henry Kellett, both of whom were searching for the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin.
Mecham was the first European to discover Prince Patrick and Eglinton Islands in 1853, both of which he charted in the spring of that year. [2] He was promoted to commander on 21 October 1854 and commanded the paddle sloop HMS Salamander on the west coast of Africa from 1855 to 1857, and the paddle sloop HMS Vixen in the Pacific from 1857. [1]
Mecham died of bronchitis on 17 February 1858 at Honolulu. [1]
Vice-Admiral Sir George Strong Nares was a Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. He commanded the Challenger Expedition, and the British Arctic Expedition. He was highly thought of as a leader and scientific explorer. In later life he worked for the Board of Trade and as Acting Conservator of the River Mersey.
HMS Resolute was a mid-19th-century barque-rigged ship of the British Royal Navy, specially outfitted for Arctic exploration. Resolute became trapped in the ice searching for Franklin's lost expedition and was abandoned in 1854. Recovered by an American whaler, she was returned to Queen Victoria in 1856. Timbers from the ship were later used to construct the Resolute desk which was presented to the President of the United States and is located in the White House Oval Office.
Bathurst Island is one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Nunavut, Canada. It is a member of the Arctic Archipelago. An uninhabited island, the area is estimated at 16,042 km2 (6,194 sq mi), 185 to 188 km long and from 101 km (63 mi) to 116 km (72 mi) to 149.5 km (92.9 mi) wide, making it Canada's 13th largest island. It is located between Devon Island and Cornwallis Island in the east, and Melville Island in the west. Four small islands of Cameron, Vanier, Massey and Alexander lie in its northwest.
A member of the Arctic Archipelago, Prince Patrick Island is the westernmost of the Queen Elizabeth Islands in the Northwest Territories of Canada, lying northwest of Melville Island. The area of Prince Patrick Island is 15,848 km2 (6,119 sq mi), making it the 55th largest island in the world and Canada's 14th largest island. It has historically been icebound all year, making it one of the least accessible parts of Canada. Located at the entrance of the M'Clure Strait, Prince Patrick Island is uninhabited.
Vice-Admiral Sir Robert John Le Mesurier McClure was an Irish explorer who explored the Arctic. In 1854 he traversed the Northwest Passage by boat and sledge, and was the first to circumnavigate the Americas.
Eglinton Island an uninhabited island of the Arctic Archipelago in the Northwest Territories, Canada. Eglinton is one of the Queen Elizabeth Islands. Located at 75°48'N 118°30'W, it measures 1,541 km2 (595 sq mi) in size, 73 kilometres (45 mi) long and 44 km (27 mi) wide in measurements. It lies on the north side of the M'Clure Strait, just south of the much larger Prince Patrick Island and is uninhabited with some human activity in the 1970s in the form of natural gas drilling.
Sir Horatio Thomas Austin was a British Royal Navy officer and explorer.
Sir Alexander Armstrong was an Irish naval surgeon, explorer, naturalist and author. After obtaining a medical degree he joined the Royal Navy and was stationed on board HMS Investigator, tasked with finding the lost expedition of explorer Sir John Franklin. Investigator was trapped in the ice at Mercy Bay in 1851 and Armstrong spent several winters in the Arctic before he returned to London.
Sherard Osborn was a Royal Navy admiral and Arctic explorer.
Vice Admiral Sir Henry Mangles Denham was a Royal Navy officer who went on to be Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Station.
Admiral Sir Sydney Colpoys Dacres, was an officer of the Royal Navy who saw service during the Greek War of Independence, when he was involved in an attack on the Turkish forces at Morea, and later during the Crimean War. Born into a substantial naval dynasty during the Napoleonic Wars, he eventually rose to the rank of Admiral and became First Naval Lord. His only significant action as First Naval Lord was to press for the abolition of masts. He went on to be Visitor and Governor of Greenwich Hospital.
Admiral Sir Richard Vesey Hamilton was a Royal Navy officer. As a junior officer he twice volunteered to take part in missions to search for Sir John Franklin's ill-fated expedition to find the Northwest Passage. He also took part in the Battle of Fatshan Creek in June 1857 during the Second Opium War.
Sir Erasmus Ommanney was a Royal Navy officer and an Arctic explorer of the Victorian era.
The Fox was an 1854 steam yacht commanded by Leopold McClintock on a privately funded 1857–1859 expedition to the North American Arctic Archipelago to search for clues about the fate of Franklin's lost expedition.
Rochfort Maguire was an Irish Royal Navy officer who served as captain of HMS Plover from 1852 to 1853 during the Franklin search expedition.
The McClure Arctic expedition, one of many attempts to find the missing Franklin expedition, was significant for being the first to successfully discover and transit the Northwest Passage, which it accomplished by both boat and sledging.
HMS Herald was an Atholl-class 28-gun sixth-rate corvette of the Royal Navy. She was launched in 1822 as HMS Termagant, commissioned in 1824 as HMS Herald and converted to a survey ship in 1845. After serving as a chapel ship from 1861, she was sold for breaking in 1862.
Vice-Admiral Sir Charles George Frederick Knowles, 4th Baronet was an officer of the Royal Navy, who saw service during the Second Burmese War and was in command of the Niger expedition and quelling uprising at Santa Cruz, eventually rising to the rank of vice-admiral.
HMS Cyclops was a paddle wheel steam frigate built for the Royal Navy and launched in 1839 and taken out of service in 1861 and sold for breaking in January 1864. She saw action in the Syrian War in 1840 and the Crimean War in 1854, later being involved in laying the first Transatlantic telegraph cable in 1858.
HMS Desperate was originally slated to be built to the Sampson designed steam vessel rated as a Steam Vessel First Class (SV1); however, the Admiralty, first rerated the vessels as First Class Sloops on 19 April 1845 then on the 9 May 1845, she was ordered as First-Class screw sloops to be built from a design of Sir William Symonds, Surveyor of the Navy. She would be a 10-gun vessel with 400 NHP engines. She served in the Baltic during the Crimean war, and as a store ship to Edward Augustus Inglefield's Arctic expedition. She was broken up by 1865.
