William Fitzwilliam Owen

William Fitzwilliam Owen (born September 17, 1774 in Manchester , Great Britain , † November 3, 1857 in Saint John , New Brunswick , Canada ) was a British naval officer and researcher. He explored the coasts of West and East Africa , discovered the Seaflower Channel off the coast of Sumatra and surveyed the Canadian Great Lakes .

Career

William Fitzwilliam Owen was the illegitimate son of Captain William Owen . He became an orphan at the age of four. His father's friend, Rear Admiral Sir Thomas Rich , therefore took care of himself and his older brother Edward (1771-1849). He began his maritime career in 1788, at the age of 13, as a midshipman on Rich's ship, HMS Culloden . In the beginning he often had difficulties because he was headstrong and cocky. Owen served at home and on ships in the East Indies . In 1797 he received an officer's license to become a lieutenant . In 1803 he was in command of the brig Seaflower . Armed with 16 cannons, he sailed to the East Indies, where he served under Rear Admiral Sir Edward Pellew , Commander-in-Chief in East India. In 1806 he explored the Maldives and in the same year discovered the Seaflower Channel between the islands of Siberut and Sipora off the west coast of Sumatra. He fought against the Dutch in the East Indies, became a prisoner of war and was held captive by the French between 1808 and 1810 in Mauritius . During this time he was promoted to commander. After his release, he was promoted to post-captain in May 1811 before returning to England in 1813. Between 1815 and 1816 he surveyed the Upper Canadian Great Lakes together with Lieutenant Henry Bayfield. He named a tributary in the southern Georgian Bay "Owen's Sound" in honor of his older brother, Admiral Sir Edward William Campbell Rich Owen. Between October 26, 1815 and May 31, 1816 he was Senior Royal Navy Officer in the Great Lakes. Between 1821 and 1826, Owen mapped the entire East African coast from the Cape of Good Hope to the Horn of Africa with the sloop HMS Leven and the brig HMS Barracouta . During this time Owen established a one-man protectorate of Mombasa with the purpose of interrupting the slave trade , but was forced to abolish it after only three years on royal orders. By the time he returned in 1826, he had made 300 new maps spanning about 30,000 miles of coastline, and more than half of his original crew had died of tropical diseases. In 1827 he was responsible for colonizing a colony on the island of Bioko . During the first year he was assigned to Lieutenant James Holman , who was known as "the Blind Traveler" at the time. Due to little prospect of further promotions, he then moved with his family to New Brunswick in the mid-1830s. He secured the claim to Campobello Island granted to his grandfather and was Lord Proprietor there. He was also involved in other investments in New Brunswick. From 1841 he held the post of justice of the peace and the post of judge at the Inferior Court of Common Pleas . He sat in the New Brunswick House of Assembly for Charlotte County between 1837 and 1842 . During this time he was promoted to Rear Admiral in 1841. After his defeat in his re-election to the House of Representatives, he was appointed to the New Brunswick Legislative Council in December 1843 , where he served until 1851. In 1844 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In his last job in his naval career, he was in charge of the major survey of the Bay of Fundy for the Admiralty between September 1842 and December 1847 . Some maps of the area are still based on his surveys today. In 1854 he was promoted to Vice Admiral. Owen Island in the archipelago of the South Shetland Islands in Antarctica has borne his name since 1935 .

family

Owen was married twice: in January 1818 he married Martha Evans, with whom he had two daughters. After her death, he married Amy Nicholson, nee Vernon, on December 11, 1852, widow of Captain Thomas L. Nicholson. His daughter Cornelia was married to Captain John James Robinson (1811–1874).

literature

• Herman, Arthur: "To Rule the Waves", Hodder and Stoughton, 2004 ISBN 978-0-340-73419-3
• Burrows, EH: "Captain Owen of the African Survey", AA Balkema, 1978 ISBN 90-6191-034-X

Web links

• Dictionary of Canadian Biography - William Fitzwilliam Owen