[BITList] Fwd: Forceful personality - Oxford DNB Life of the Day

[John Feltham]

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Beaufort, Sir  Francis  (1774-1857), naval officer and hydrographer, was born on 27 May 1774 at Flower Hill, Navan, co. Meath, the second son of the Revd Daniel Augustus Beaufort  (1739-1821), rector of Navan, a topographer and architect of some distinction, and his wife, Mary Waller of Allenstown, co. Meath. His sister Frances was the fourth wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, and thus the stepmother of Maria Edgeworth, the novelist. Having been rejected by a school in Cheltenham on the ground that his Irish accent would corrupt the speech of the other boys, he entered, soon after 1784, Bates's Military and Marine Academy in Dublin. In 1788 he studied for five months under Dr Henry Ussher, professor of astronomy at Trinity College, Dublin. From early boyhood he had determined to go to sea, and in March 1789 he sailed in the East Indiaman Vansittart, commanded by the experienced surveyor Captain Lestock Wilson. While surveying the Gaspar Strait the Vansittart was wrecked, but Beaufort with most of the crew survived. He returned in time for the 1790 mobilization, when his father's friend Lord Courtown got him aboard the frigate Latona (Captain Albemarle Bertie). From her he moved next year into the Aquilon, commanded by Courtown's son Captain the Hon. Robert Stopford, which was one of the repeating frigates in Lord Howe's action of 1 June 1794. He followed Captain Stopford to the Phaeton (38 guns), and in her he saw much active service, including Cornwallis's retreat, on 17 June 1795, and the capture of the Flore on 8 September 1798. Beaufort was made a lieutenant on 10 May 1796. On 28 October 1800, when first lieutenant of the Phaeton, under Captain James Nicoll Morris, he commanded her boats when they captured the Spanish ship San Josef from under the guns of Fuengirola Castle, near Malaga; in this service he received nineteen wounds in the head, arms, and body, three sword cuts and sixteen musket shots, and dearly won his promotion to the rank of commander, which was dated 13 November, as well as a wound pension of £45. For some years after this he was unemployed at sea, and in 1803-4 assisted his brother-in-law Richard Edgeworth in establishing a telegraph line from Dublin to Galway. In June 1805 he was appointed to the command of the armed store-ship Woolwich, in which he made a voyage to Bombay, and helped to evacuate the defeated British troops from Buenos Aires in 1807. In May 1809 he was appointed to the sloop Blossom, employed in convoy duty on the coast of Spain.

By now Beaufort's gallant record and his scientific talents had made him well known throughout the navy. Lord Elgin said he had never met one 'who had read more, or to better purpose'  (Friendly, 96), while his surveys, notably of the Rio de la Plata, were highly praised by Dalrymple, the hydrographer of the navy. He had to wait for the change of administration in 1810, however, for his merits to be recognized. At the same time he became engaged to Alicia Magdalena Wilson (1782-1834), daughter of his first captain. On 30 May 1810 he was advanced to post rank, and appointed to the frigate Frederiksteen. During the two following years he was employed in surveying the south coast of Turkey and exploring the spectacular classical ruins, then quite unknown to Europeans. His work was brought to an untimely end by an attack by some Turks on his boat's crew on 20 June 1812. Beaufort was badly wounded in the hip, and after months of danger and suffering at Malta was obliged to return to England, and the Frederiksteen was paid off on 29 October. Two months later, on 3 December, he married Alicia Magdalena Wilson; their youngest daughter was Emily Anne Smythe, Viscountess Strangford.

Beaufort later published his account of his survey and exploration of the southern Turkish coast as Karamania, or, A brief description of the south coast of Asia minor, and of the remains of antiquity (1817). For many years after his return to England he was engaged in constructing the charts of his survey, with his own hand, and the charts were engraved directly from his drawings. The book was an instant success both with the learned and with the ordinary reading public, while Beaufort's extraordinarily accurate and thorough charts aroused the admiration of sailors and geographers. He was offered several surveying tasks of importance, but he declined them all for various reasons. His marriage was deeply happy and his scientific interests absorbing, but he had always been easily embittered by supposed neglect, and unemployment did not bring out the best in him. When Captain Hurd, the hydrographer of the navy, died in May 1823 Beaufort was rejected as his successor, probably because J. W. Croker, the first secretary of the Admiralty, an enemy to hydrography as a consumer of public money, did not choose to appoint a candidate whose public and professional standing was so high. When the post next fell vacant in 1829 Beaufort's claims were irresistible.

Beaufort was the ideal candidate for the great and urgent task that presented itself: that of making the seas of the world, most of them (including almost the entire coastline of Britain and Ireland) uncharted or badly charted, safe for the rapidly increasing quantity of British and foreign shipping. For twenty-six years he presided over the hydrographic office with unwearied care, planning and directing surveys, guiding and encouraging the surveyors, correcting and publishing their charts. Although the public connects his name only with his wind scale, among seamen and especially hydrographers Beaufort's achievement is remembered with awe. More than one thousand charts were issued during his time; from 1835 to his retirement in 1855 the average was sixty-eight new charts a year. He had many other duties besides. He served on the Parliamentary Boundary Commission delineating the new constituencies of the 1832 Reform Act; he belonged to commissions dealing with pilotage, life-saving, and harbour construction; he was deeply involved in the affairs of the Royal Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Royal Geographical Society, which he helped found; he had a share, usually an important one, in almost every important project of scientific research of his day, and he effectively directed the 'sacred cause' of discovering Sir John Franklin or his fate [see Arctic council]. In April 1835 he was a member of a commission on the employment of pilots, and in January 1845 of one on United Kingdom harbours, shores, and rivers. On 1 October 1846 he was made a rear-admiral on the retired list, and on 29 April 1848 a KCB for his civil services as hydrographer. He retired in 1855, and died at Brighton on 17 December 1857. He was buried at Hackney church.

Beaufort was completely fulfilled in his work, and fortunate that it continued into his eighty-first year. His private happiness never recovered from the death of his beloved wife in 1834. For some years his unmarried sister Harriet kept house for him; for a while before he remarried their relationship became incestuous. His second wife was Honora Edgeworth (1792 - February 1858), his stepniece, whom he married on 8 November 1838. The marriage was contented, if not passionate, but she became increasingly disabled, and was paralysed and demented by the time of his death. Beaufort's son Francis Lestock Beaufort  (1815-1879)  served in the Bengal civil service from 1837 to 1876, was a Calcutta judge, and wrote Digest of the Criminal Law Procedure in Bengal (1850).

J. K. Laughton 

N. A. M. Rodger 

Sources  A. Friendly, Beaufort of the Admiralty (1977) + C. Lloyd, Mr Barrow of the admiralty (1970) + A. Day, The admiralty hydrographic service, 1795-1919 (1967)
Archives CUL, papers relating to testimonial + Duke U., Perkins L., account book + Hunt. L., corresp., journals, and papers + Hydrographic Office, Taunton + RGS, corresp. and papers | Bodl. Oxf., corresp. with Maria Edgeworth and family + CUL, corresp. with Sir George Airy + CUL, letters to Sir William Whewell + Meteorological Office, Bracknell, Berkshire, National Meteorological Archive, weather logs + NL Ire. + NMM, letters to Sir Richard Collinson + priv. coll., Edgeworth MSS + TNA: PRO, letters to Sir John Ross, BJ2 + RBG Kew, letters to Sir William Hooker + RGS, letters to Sir George Back + RS, letters to Sir John Hershel + RS, letters to Sir John Lubbock + UCL, letters to Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge
Likenesses  W. Brockedon, black and red chalk, 1838, NPG · daguerreotype, 1848, repro. in Friendly, Beaufort of the admiralty · S. Pearce, oil on millboard, 1850, NPG · S. Pearce, group portrait, oils, 1851 (The Arctic Council planning a search for Sir John Franklin), NPG · S. Pearce, oils, 1855-6, NMM [see illus.]




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