| Administrative History | Sir Francis Beaufort (1777-1857) enjoyed a successful naval career, serving gallantly during the Napoleonic wars; his scientific skills, particularly in the area of surveying, earned him much renown; in 1829 he was appointed Hydrographer of the Royal Navy, and during the 26 years he served in that post before his retirement, he oversaw the surveying of over a thousand maps; although his work in the field of surveying is regarded as being a great achievement, he is better known to the wider world for the wind scale named after him, which is still widely used. He was promoted to the position of Rear Admiral in1846. He was heavily involved in effectively directing the Admiralty's efforts to search for Sir John Franklin and his expedition and was a strong supporter of Lady Franklin's own attempts to find her husband: he was a friend of Franklin, with whom he had discussed magnetism and metereological phenomena after his first Arctic land expedition and whose admission as a Fellow of the Royal Society he had supported in 1823; Beaufort had been one of the coffin bearers at the funeral of Franklin's first wife in 1825. Two of Beaufort's daughters, Emily Anne and Rosalind Elizabeth, both corresponded with Franklin's daughter, Eleanor Isabella. |