Owen Stanley
Cheshire-born naval officer and surveyor Captain Owen Stanley FRS (1811 – 1850) entered the Royal Naval College at the age of fifteen and spent time in South American waters — he was with Phillip Parker King aboard HMS Adventure surveying the Straits of Magellan in 1830 before service in the Mediterranean after the Greek War of Independence and an Arctic excursion aas scientific officer on HMS Terror under George Back in 1836 and five years as commander of HMS Britomart on a voyage to Australia and New Zealand (1838 — 1843) that saw him promoted to Commander and elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in March 1842 in recognition of his surveying and observation work,
After three years on shore duties and promotion to Captain, Stanley sailed from Portsmouth in charge of HMS Rattlesnake, with the naturalists Thomas Huxley, John MacGillivray, and artist Oswald Walters Brierly on board, accompanied by Charles Bampfield Yule in HMS Bramble.
In November 1847, he arrived at Port Curtis and, after surveying the harbour, continued north to survey New Guinea and assist Edmund Kennedy's 1848 Cape York expedition. From there, he moved on to survey the Louisiade Archipelago but fell ill and died in March 1850 after the Rattlesnake returned to Sydney. John MacGillivray's two-volume account of the Rattlesnake voyage was published in 1852
