Sir John Henslow (9 October 1730 – 22 September 1815) was Surveyor to the Navy (

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the United Kingdom's naval warfare force. Although warships were used by English and Scottish kings from the early medieval period, the first major maritime engagements were fought in the Hundred Years' War against F ...

) a post he held jointly or solely from 1784 to 1806.

Career

He was 7th child of John Henslow a master carpenter in the dockyard at Woolwich''Darwin’s Mentor: John Stevens Henslow, 1796-1861''
S. M. Walters and E. A. Stow CUP * 1745 Apprenticed to

Sir Thomas Slade Sir Thomas Slade (1703/4–1771) was an English naval architect, most famous for designing HMS ''Victory'', Lord Nelson's flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Early life He was the son of Arthur Slade (1682–1746) and his wife Hannah ...

* 1762 Master Boat Builder at Woolwich * 1771 Assistant Surveyor to the Navy * 1784 Surveyor to the Navy * 1793 Knighted * 1806 retired to

Sittingbourne Sittingbourne is an industrial town in Kent, south-east England, from Canterbury and from London, beside the Roman Watling Street, an ancient British trackway used by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons and next to the Swale, a strip of sea separa ...

, Kent Cape Henslow on

Guadalcanal Guadalcanal (; indigenous name: ''Isatabu'') is the principal island in Guadalcanal Province of Solomon Islands, located in the south-western Pacific, northeast of Australia. It is the largest island in the Solomon Islands by area, and the seco ...

is named after him. From 1793 he worked jointly with William Rule. Among the vessels he designed were the s and four frigates to the same design, the first of which was . He also designed the ''Bloodhound''-class gun-brigs and ''Conquest''-class gun-brigs. The

sixth rate In the rating system of the Royal Navy used to categorise sailing warships, a sixth-rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works and ...

s were a series of six ships built to his 1805 design. Perhaps his smallest vessels were the two ''Placentia''-class sloops of 42 tons burthen, which he designed for coastal patrol duties off

Newfoundland Newfoundland and Labrador (; french: Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador; frequently abbreviated as NL) is the easternmost province of Canada, in the country's Atlantic region. The province comprises the island of Newfoundland and the continental region ...

Family

His son John Prentis Henslow, solicitor, was father of

John Stevens Henslow John Stevens Henslow (6 February 1796 – 16 May 1861) was a British priest, botanist and geologist. He is best remembered as friend and mentor to his pupil Charles Darwin. Early life Henslow was born at Rochester, Kent, the son of a solici ...

. He was also the grandfather of

Francis Hartwell Henslowe Francis Hartwell Henslowe (1811–1878) was a British-born civil servant, business manager and composer who worked in England, Australia and India. Born in England, Henslowe was the son of Edward Prentis Henslowe (1772–1857) and Cecilia Mari ...

, who was the son of Edward Prentis Henslow.

Notes and references

1730 births People from Woolwich 1815 deaths Surveyors of the Navy 18th-century British engineers 19th-century British engineers 18th-century Royal Navy personnel 19th-century Royal Navy personnel {{UK-navy-bio-stub