29 Facts About Francis Beaufort

Francis Beaufort was descended from French Protestant Huguenots, who fled the French Wars of Religion in the sixteenth century.

Francis Beaufort had an older brother, William Louis Beaufort and three sisters, Frances, Harriet, and Louisa.

Francis Beaufort's father created and published a new map of Ireland in 1792.

Francis Beaufort left school and went to sea, but never stopped his education.

Francis Beaufort had a lifelong keen awareness of the value of accurate charts for those risking the seas, as he was shipwrecked at the age of fifteen due to a faulty chart.

Francis Beaufort first went to sea in 1789 on the British East India Company East Indiaman Vansittart.

Francis Beaufort was wrecked, but all but one man of her crew survived and Beaufort returned home.

Francis Beaufort was promoted to the rank of Commander on 13 November 1800.

Francis Beaufort spent two years at this activity, for which he would accept no remuneration.

Whereas other wartime officers sought leisurely pursuits, Francis Beaufort spent his leisure time taking depth soundings and bearings, making astronomical observations to determine longitude and latitude, and measuring shorelines.

Francis Beaufort sailed her to the East Indies and escorted a convoy of East Indiamen back to Britain.

Francis Beaufort returned to England and drew up his charts.

In 1829, Francis Beaufort was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and in the same year, at the age of 55, Francis Beaufort was appointed as the British Admiralty Hydrographer of the Navy.

Francis Beaufort served in that post for 26 years, longer than any other Hydrographer.

In 1831, a Scientific Branch of the Admiralty was formed, which as well as the Hydrographic Department included the great astronomical observatories at Greenwich, England, and the Cape of Good Hope, Africa, and the Nautical Almanac and Chronometer Offices, and Francis Beaufort was responsible for the administration.

Francis Beaufort directed some of the major maritime explorations and experiments of that period.

Francis Beaufort played a leading role in the search for the explorer, Sir John Franklin, who was lost during his last polar voyage to search for the legendary Northwest Passage.

Francis Beaufort was interested in scientific affairs beyond the confines of navigation.

Francis Beaufort represented the geographers, astronomers, oceanographers, geodesists, and meteorologists to that government agency, the Hydrographic Office, which could support their research.

Francis Beaufort trained Robert FitzRoy, who was put in temporary command of the survey ship HMS Beagle after her previous captain committed suicide.

Francis Beaufort's enquiries led to an invitation to Charles Darwin, who later drew on his discoveries in formulating the theory of evolution he presented in his book The Origin of Species.

Later, when Francis Beaufort persuaded the Board of Trade to set up a Meterorological Department, Fitzroy became its first director.

Francis Beaufort promoted the development of reliable tide tables around British shores, publishing the first edition of the Admiralty Tide Tables in 1833.

Francis Beaufort gave enthusiastic support to his friend, Sir George Airy, the Astronomer Royal and noted mathematician, in achieving a historic period of measurements by the Greenwich and Good Hope observatories.

Francis Beaufort retired from the Royal Navy with the rank of rear admiral on 1 October 1846, at the age of 72.

Francis Beaufort became "Sir Francis Beaufort" on being appointed KCB on 29 April 1848, a relatively belated honorific considering the eminence of his position from 1829 onward.

Francis Beaufort altered the Vigenere cipher, by reversing the cipher alphabet, and the resulting variant is called the Francis Beaufort cipher.

Francis Beaufort died on 17 December 1857, at age 83 in Hove, Sussex, England.

Francis Beaufort married again in 1838, to Honora Edgeworth, the daughter of his brother-in-law Richard Lovell Edgeworth and his second wife.