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Charles Irving (surgeon)
Charles Irving () was a Scottish naval surgeon and inventor. In 1770, he introduced a method for distillation of seawater to the Royal Navy, and was awarded the sum of £5,000 () for his method in 1772. His apparatus for distilling seawater was used on the second voyage of James Cook and on the 1773 expedition by Constantine John Phipps towards the North Pole, in which Irving participated both as surgeon and as scientific collaborator of Phipps. He was later involved in British colonial enterprises in Central America that included an attempt to establish a crown colony on the Mosquito Shore, but his plans were thwarted by Spanish intervention. Early life Irving was the son of William Irving of Gribton (c. 1738–1800), at Gribton estate, Holywood, Dumfriesshire, Scotland, and Katherine Menzies of Enoch. One of his brothers was civil servant Thomas Irving. It is not known how Charles Irving became a surgeon, and he was not licensed by the Royal College of Physicians. In 1768 ...
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Naval Surgeon
A naval surgeon, or less commonly ship's doctor, is the person responsible for the health of the ship's company aboard a warship. The term appears often in reference to Royal Navy's medical personnel during the Age of Sail. Ancient uses Specialised crew members capable of providing medical care have been a feature of military vessels for at least two thousand years. The second-century Roman Navy under Emperor Hadrian included a surgeon aboard each of its triremes, with the position earning twice a regular officer's pay. Royal Navy During the Age of Sail, the Royal Navy carried trained medical officers aboard its warships, who usually learned their trade before coming on board ship. They were generally called surgeons. The Navy Board qualified surgeons through an examination at the Barber-Surgeons' Company and they were responsible to the Sick and Wounded Board under the Navy Board. Surgeons were required to keep two logbooks detailing treatments and procedures carried out under ...
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Admiralty (United Kingdom)
The Admiralty was a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for the command of the Royal Navy until 1964, historically under its titular head, the Lord High Admiral – one of the Great Officers of State. For much of its history, from the early 18th century until its abolition, the role of the Lord High Admiral was almost invariably put "in commission" and exercised by the Lords Commissioner of the Admiralty, who sat on the governing Board of Admiralty, rather than by a single person. The Admiralty was replaced by the Admiralty Board in 1964, as part of the reforms that created the Ministry of Defence and its Navy Department (later Navy Command). Before the Acts of Union 1707, the Office of the Admiralty and Marine Affairs administered the Royal Navy of the Kingdom of England, which merged with the Royal Scots Navy and the absorbed the responsibilities of the Lord High Admiral of the Kingdom of Scotland with the unification of the Kingdom of Great B ...
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Johann Reinhold Forster
Johann Reinhold Forster (22 October 1729 – 9 December 1798) was a German Continental Reformed church, Reformed (Calvinist) pastor and natural history, naturalist of partially Scottish descent who made contributions to the early ornithology of Europe and North America. He is best known as the naturalist on James Cook's Second voyage of James Cook, second Pacific voyage, where he was accompanied by his son Georg Forster. These expeditions promoted the career of Johann Reinhold Forster and the findings became the bedrock of colonial professionalism and helped set the stage for the future development of anthropology and ethnology. They also laid the framework for general concern about the impact that alteration of the physical environment for European economic expansion would have on exotic societies. Biography Forster's family originated in the Lord Forrester, Lords Forrester in Scotland from where his great-grandfather had emigrated after losing most of his property during the ...
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Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, (19 June 1820) was an English naturalist, botanist, and patron of the natural sciences. Banks made his name on the 1766 natural-history expedition to Newfoundland and Labrador. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage (1768–1771), visiting Brazil, Tahiti, and after 6 months in New Zealand, Australia, returning to immediate fame. He held the position of president of the Royal Society for over 41 years. He advised King George III on the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and by sending botanists around the world to collect plants, he made Kew the world's leading botanical garden. He is credited for bringing 30,000 plant specimens home with him; amongst them, he was the first European to document 1,400. Banks advocated British settlement in New South Wales and the colonisation of Australia, as well as the establishment of Botany Bay as a place for the reception of convicts, and advised the British government on all Australian matte ...
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HMS Adventure (1771)
HMS ''Adventure'' was a barque that the Royal Navy purchased in 1771. She had been the merchant vessel ''Marquis of Rockingham'', launched in 1770 at Whitby. In naval service she sailed with ''Resolution'' on James Cook's second expedition to the Pacific in 1772–1775. She was the first ship to circumnavigate the globe from west to east. After her return she served as a store ship until 1779. The navy sold her in 1783 and she resumed a civilian career, but retaining the name ''Adventure''. She was lost in May 1811. Career She began her career as the North Sea collier ''Marquis of Rockingham'', launched at Whitby in 1770. Soon after his return from his first voyage in 1771, Commander Cook was commissioned by the Royal Society of London to make a second voyage in search of a supposed southern continent, Terra Australis Incognita. He arranged for the Navy to purchase two ships, the second and smaller of which was ''Marquis of Rockingham''. The Navy purchased her in 1771 and ...
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HMS Resolution (1771)
HMS ''Resolution'' was a sloop of the Royal Navy, a converted merchant collier purchased by the Navy and adapted, in which Captain James Cook made his second and third voyages of exploration in the Pacific. She impressed him enough that he called her "the ship of my choice", and "the fittest for service of any I have seen". Purchase and refitting ''Resolution'' began her career as the North Sea collier ''Marquis of Granby'', launched at Whitby in 1770, and purchased by the Royal Navy in 1771 for £4,151 (equivalent to £ today). She was originally registered as HMS ''Drake'', but fearing this would upset the Spanish, she was soon renamed ''Resolution'', on 25 December 1771. She was fitted out at Deptford with the most advanced navigational aids of the day, including an azimuth compass made by Henry Gregory, ice anchors, and the latest apparatus for distilling fresh water from sea water. Her armament consisted of 12 6-pounder guns and 12 swivel guns. At his own expense Coo ...
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Second Voyage Of James Cook
The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, commissioned by the British government with advice from the Royal Society, was designed to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible to finally determine whether there was any great southern landmass, or Terra Australis. On his first voyage, Cook had demonstrated by circumnavigating New Zealand that it was not attached to a larger landmass to the south, and he charted almost the entire eastern coastline of Australia, yet Terra Australis was believed to lie further south. Alexander Dalrymple and others of the Royal Society still believed that this massive southern continent should exist. After a delay brought about by the botanist Joseph Banks' unreasonable demands, the ships ''Resolution'' and ''Adventure'' were fitted for the voyage and set sail for the Antarctic in July 1772. On 17 January 1773, ''Resolution'' was the first ship to venture south of the Antarctic Circle, which she did twice more on this voyage. The fin ...
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James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean and to New Zealand and Australia in particular. He made detailed maps of Newfoundland prior to making three voyages to the Pacific, during which he achieved the first recorded European contact with the eastern coastline of Australia and the Hawaiian Islands, and the first recorded circumnavigation of New Zealand. Cook joined the British merchant navy as a teenager and joined the Royal Navy in 1755. He saw action in the Seven Years' War and subsequently surveyed and mapped much of the entrance to the St. Lawrence River during the siege of Quebec, which brought him to the attention of the Admiralty and the Royal Society. This acclaim came at a crucial moment for the direction of British overseas exploration, and it led to his commission in ...
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Hugh Percy, 1st Duke Of Northumberland
Hugh Percy, 1st Duke of Northumberland, (c. 17146 June 1786), was an English peer, landowner, and art patron. Origins He was born Hugh Smithson, the son of Lansdale Smithson (b. 1682) of Langdale and Philadelphia Revely. He was a grandson of Sir Hugh Smithson, 3rd Baronet, from whom he inherited the Smithson Baronetcy in 1733. Marriage, projects and patronages He changed his surname to ''Percy'' in 1749, nine years after his marriage with Lady Elizabeth Seymour (1716–1776), daughter of The 7th Duke of Somerset, on 16 July 1740, through a private Act of Parliament. She was '' Baroness Percy'' in her own right, and indirect heiress of the Percy family, which was one of the leading landowning families of England and had previously held the Earldom of Northumberland for several centuries. The title ''Earl of Northumberland'' passed by special remainder to Hugh Percy, as Elizabeth's husband, when her father died on 7 February 1750; he had been created 1st Earl of Northum ...
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Joseph Priestley
Joseph Priestley (; 24 March 1733 – 6 February 1804) was an English chemist, natural philosopher, separatist theologian, grammarian, multi-subject educator, and liberal political theorist. He published over 150 works, and conducted experiments in electricity and other areas of science. He was a close friend of, and worked in close association with Benjamin Franklin involving electricity experiments. Priestley is credited with his independent discovery of oxygen by the thermal decomposition of mercuric oxide, having isolated it in 1774. During his lifetime, Priestley's considerable scientific reputation rested on his invention of carbonated water, his writings on electricity, and his discovery of several "airs" (gases), the most famous being what Priestley dubbed "dephlogisticated air" (oxygen). Priestley's determination to defend phlogiston theory and to reject what would become the chemical revolution eventually left him isolated within the scientific community. Prie ...
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Richard Watson (bishop Of Llandaff)
Richard Watson (1737–1816) was an Anglican bishop and academic, who served as the Bishop of Llandaff from 1782 to 1816. He wrote some notable political pamphlets. In theology, he belonged to an influential group of followers of Edmund Law that included also John Hey and William Paley. Life Watson was born Heversham, Westmorland (now Cumbria), and educated at Heversham Grammar School and Trinity College, Cambridge, on a scholarship endowed by Edward Wilson of Nether Levens (1557–1653). In 1759 he graduated as Second Wrangler after having challenged Massey for the position of Senior Wrangler. This challenge, in part, prompted the University Proctor, William Farish, to introduce the practice of assigning specific marks to individual questions in University tests and, in so doing, replaced the practice of 'judgement' at Cambridge with 'marking'. Marking subsequently emerged as the predominant method to determine rank order in meritocratic systems. In 1760 he became a fellow of ...
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First Lord Of The Admiralty
The First Lord of the Admiralty, or formally the Office of the First Lord of the Admiralty, was the political head of the English and later British Royal Navy. He was the government's senior adviser on all naval affairs, responsible for the direction and control of the Admiralty, and also of general administration of the Naval Service of the Kingdom of England, Great Britain in the 18th century, and then the United Kingdom, including the Royal Navy, the Royal Marines, and other services. It was one of the earliest known permanent government posts. Apart from being the political head of the Naval Service the post holder was simultaneously the pre-eminent member of the Board of Admiralty. The office of First Lord of the Admiralty existed from 1628 until it was abolished when the Admiralty, Air Ministry, Ministry of Defence, and War Office were all merged to form the new Ministry of Defence in 1964. Its modern-day equivalent is the Secretary of State for Defence. History In 1628 ...
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