Owen Stanley ( 1811 - 1850 )

Birth: 13 June 1811 Death: Sydney, Australia (13 March 1850) Education: Royal Naval College (entered 1824) Career: Embarked as a volunteer aboard Druid frigate stationed in the Channel (1826); became midshipman in the Ganges and spent the next four years on the coast of South America, serving chiefly in small ships on surveying work; employed under Phillip Parker King in the sloop Adventure on a survey of the Straits of Magellan; served in the Mediterranean Station under Sir John Franklin for five years (1831); joined the Arctic expedition which left the Orkneys in June 1836, in charge of astronomical and magnetic observations during the Polar expedition in the "Terror" (1836-1837); died in the arms of Thomas Huxley (FRS 1851); was given a state funeral As a lieutenant at 26 he received his first independent command, the brig Britomart, in which he sailed in 1838 for the East Indies Station and Australasian waters, chiefly on surveying work; When the expedition to establish a northern colony at Port Essington sailed in September 1838, the Britomart accompanied it, Stanley being made a magistrate and a commissioner of crown lands for the purpose.