Admiral Sir George Henry Richards, (13 January 1820 – 14 November 1896), was Hydrographer to the British Admiralty. A portrait of him by Stephen Pearce, dated 1865, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London.
Richards joined the navy in 1832. He served in the Opium Wars against China, in South America, the Falkland Islands, New Zealand and Australia. He was promoted to Captain in 1854 and from 1857-60 he was in charge of HMS Plumper and from 1861-64 HMS Hecate, two surveying ships.[1]
He was the Second British Commissioner to the San Juan Islands Boundary Commission and a hydrographer on the coast of British Columbia in 1857-62. He is responsible for the selection and designation of dozens of placenames along the British Columbia coast. In the Vancouver area, for example, he named False Creek. In 1859, after his engineer Francis Brockton found a vein of coal, he named Brockton Point and the area of Coal Harbour. In 1860, he named Mount Garibaldi after Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other landmarks in the area named by him are the Britannia Range, and Brunswick Mountain and many features in the Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast, and Jervis Inlet areas.
In 1864 he was appointed Hydrographer and held that position until 1874 when he retired. Richards was knighted in 1877, received the KCB in 1881 and became an Admiral and a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1884.
External links
- Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
- Simon Fraser University Archaeology Local History
References
- ^ Little, Gary. "Capt. George Henry Richards: 1860 Sunshine Coast Survey"
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