Henry Foster

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Henry Foster (born August 1796 in Woodplumpton near Preston , Lancashire , † February 5, 1831 in Río Chagres , Panama ) was a British naval officer, geoscientist and participant and leader of Arctic and Antarctic expeditions.

Life

As the eldest son of an Anglican clergyman, Henry Foster was supposed to have a career in the Church, but he joined the Royal Navy in 1812 and initially served on HMS York . Promoted to sub-lieutenant in 1815 , after the end of the Napoleonic wars, he increasingly turned to astronomical and geodetic studies. From 1817 to 1819 he drove on the HMS Blossom and surveyed the mouth of the Columbia River . In 1819 he mapped the northern bank of the Río de la Plata . In 1823 he drove on the HMS Griper under Captain Douglas Clavering and with this charted the Greenland east coast between 72 ° 30 ′ and 74 ° North. On this trip he also assisted Edward Sabine , who examined the earth's gravitational field using the reversion pendulum in order to indirectly measure the shape of the earth . Foster continued Sabine's work on further voyages. He was elected a member of the Royal Society in 1824 and was awarded the Copley Medal in 1827 for his scientific observations in the fields of geomagnetism and astronomy as well as for his pendulum experiments on gravitation .

In 1824 he took part under William Edward Parry on board the HMS Hecla in an expedition to find the Northwest Passage . In 1827 he took part in the British North Pole Expedition, which was also led by Parry. During that tried to reach the North Pole, mapped Foster the northern part of Hinlopen Strait , the Strait between the two main islands of Spitsbergen -Archipels.

From December 1827 to 1831 he was Commander of HMS Chanticleer and led the first purely scientific Antarctic expedition. He was the first to measure the South Shetland Islands, south of Cape Horn , at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula . On the return trip he took possession of Trinity Island in South Georgia for the English crown. Foster drowned in 1831 while surveying the Río Chagres in Panama.

Port Foster on Deception Island , Mount Foster on Smith Island , Cape Foster on James Ross Island , Foster Bay in East Greenland and the Foster Islands in the Hinlopen Strait are named after him.

literature

  • WHB Webster: Narrative of a Voyage to the Southern Atlantic Ocean, in the Years 1828, 29, 30 Performed in HM Sloop Chanticleer, under the Command of the Late Captain Henry Foster, FRS & c. by Order of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty . 2 volumes. Bentley, London 1834 (English) Volume 1  - Internet Archive
  • LS Dawson: Memoirs of hydrography, including brief biographies of the principal officers who have served in HM Naval Surveying Service between the years 1750 and 1885 . Henry W. Keay, Eastbourne 1885, Part 1, p. 122 f. (English) Textarchiv - Internet Archive
  • John Stewart: Foster, Henry . In: Antarctica - An Encyclopedia . Volume 1. McFarland & Co., Jefferson / London 2011, ISBN 978-0-7864-3590-6 , pp. 576 f. (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anthony K. Higgins: Exploration history of northern East Greenland . (PDF; 2.9 MB). In: Exploration history and place names of northern East Greenland (= Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland Bulletin , 21). 2010, ISBN 978-87-7871-292-9 , p. 21 (English)
  2. ↑ Foster, Henry . In: James Grant Wilson, John Fiske (Eds.): Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography . tape 2 : Crane - Grimshaw . D. Appleton and Company, New York 1887, p. 510 (English, Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
personal data
SURNAME Foster, Henry
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naval officer
DATE OF BIRTH August 1796
PLACE OF BIRTH Woodplumpton at Preston , Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH February 5, 1831
Place of death Río Chagres , Panama