Philip Carteret

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Philip Carteret
Rear Admiral
Commands heldSwallow
Endymion
RelationsCarteret family

Rear-Admiral Philip Carteret, Seigneur of Trinity (22 January 1733, Trinity Manor, Jersey – 21 July 1796, Southampton) was a British naval officer and explorer who participated in two of the Royal Navy's circumnavigation expeditions in 1764–66 and 1766–69.

Biography

Carteret was the son of Charles de Carteret, Seigneur of Trinity, and his wife Frances-Mary S. Paul.[1] Carteret entered the navy in 1747, serving aboard the Salisbury, and then under Captain John Byron from 1751 to 1755. Between 1757 and 1758 he was in the Guernsey on the Mediterranean Station. As a lieutenant in the Dolphin he accompanied Byron during his voyage of circumnavigation, from June 1764 to May 1766.[2]

In 1766 he was made a

Álvaro de Mendaña in 1568,[4] and the Juan Fernández Islands first discovered by Juan Fernández in 1574.[5] Weakened by severe illness, he arrived back in England, at Spithead, on 20 March 1769, having been ably assisted by Lieutenant Erasmus Gower who was, for much of the voyage, the only fit person on board Swallow who could navigate.[6]

The following year he returned to Jersey as seigneur of Trinity and took part in Jersey politics. He was promoted to post-captain in 1771 and was in London on 5 May 1772, when he married Mary Rachel Silvester (1741–1815), a doctor's daughter. Four of their five children survived to adulthood, including:

Carteret's health was ruined by his voyage of exploration, and he received little reward from the Admiralty. He did not have the patrons which were necessary for naval promotion at this time, and this and his complaints before the voyage on the Swallow's ill-suitedness to the voyage ensured that his requests for a new ship in 1769 fell on deaf ears. Put on

An Account of the Voyages undertaken by Byron, Wallis, Carteret and Cook, but that volume's editor John Hawkesworth made many changes to his account and so Carteret drafted a correct version of his own (which, however, only got published in 1965, by the Hakluyt Society
). [7]

His new ship,

rear admiral. He died there two years later and was buried in the catacombs of All Saints' Church, Southampton. In 1940 the church was destroyed by German bombing. In 1944 the bodies beneath it were reburied in Hollybrook Cemetery
in Southampton.

See also

References

  1. ^ Payne, James Bertrand (1859–1865). Armorial of Jersey : being an account, heraldic and antiquarian, of its chief native families, with pedigrees, biographical notices, and illustrative data; to which are added a brief history of heraldry, and remarks on the mediaeval antiquities of the island. A. H. Jack. p. 98.
  2. ^ "Carteret, Philip, Rear-Admiral". National Maritime Museum. Archived from the original on 6 September 2009. Retrieved 16 December 2010.
  3. .
  4. .
  5. ^ "Captain Mosses Account of the Islands of Juan Fernandez and Masa Fuero, in the Pacific Ocean – Royal Navy History". The Naval Chronicle. Vol. 18. 1807. Archived from the original on 22 July 2011. Retrieved 1 March 2010.
  6. .
  7. ^ Wallis, Helen (1965). Carteret's voyage round the world, 1766–1769. Hakluyt Society.

External links