Interesting Trivia:

•  he is the great-grandson of Governor Jonathan Belcher
• designed a significant improvement to the station pointer, (a navigational protractor which uses horizontal sextant angles for fixing a ship’s position in coastal waters on a chart
• places named by Belcher during his Arctic expedition were; Barrow Bay, Northumberland Sound, Exmouth Island, North Cornwall, Princess Royal Island, North Kent Island, Prince Edward’s Cape, Prince Albert’s Island, Buckingham Island, Victoria Archipelago, and Cape Disraeli.
• named after Belcher were; Belcher Channel (located below Cornwall Island), the Belcher Islands (a group of large islands in the southern part of Hudson Bay) and  Belcher Point, situated on Devon Island in the Canadian Arctic
• 1818,  promoted to the rank of Lieutenant
• 1829, promoted to rank of Commander
• 1841, promoted to rank of Captain
• received Companion of the most Honorable Order of the Bath (one of the oldest orders of English knighthood) in 1841
• 21^st Jan 1843 – was knighted
• on March 13, 1867 he was made K.C.B. — a Knight Commander of the Bath
• At the end of his career carried the rank of Admiral in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy (promoted in 1872)

His Story:

Belcher entered the Royal Navy in 1812, barely thirteen years old. He came from a long line of sea loving men.  England was at war and he was eager to fight for his country. In 1816, now a midshipman, he took part in the Battle of Algiers, in which British and Dutch ships fought together and besieged Algiers, in an effort to suppress Barbary piracy. In 1818, Belcher was promoted to lieutenant.  This was also a time when he was involved with designing a number of intricate nautical devices.  He invented two improved ship's anchors.

In 1825, he was given the chance to sail with Frederick William Beechey as a surveyor on an expedition to the Pacific and Bering Strait. His interests lay with hydrographic surveying and science for which he demonstrated a great aptitude. The journey lasted four years.

In the years that followed he went on various expeditions and saw many exotic places. He traveled to the East Indies, Japan, Africa’s west coast, Portugal, Mexico, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Central America, Tahiti and the Mediterranean. From 1836 till 1842, commissioned by the Admiralty, he traveled around the world, making stops (in 1837) at places such as Hawaii and Alaska (where he is warmly welcomed by the Russian Governor).  In July 1842 he returned to England and is appointed to the command of the “H.M.S. Samarang” for a five-year survey of Japan and Southeast Asia.

In 1852, he was commissioned an Arctic expedition.  He took command of five vessels that had the mission of finding the missing ships commanded by Sir John Franklin (1786-1847), who had sailed to the Canadian Arctic in 1845 in an attempt to find the Northwest Passage and had never returned. Belcher spent the next two years searching for the lost party and although his searches were very extensive, he failed to find any clues as to what had happened to Franklin and his men. He came to the conclusion that Franklin’s party was not where he had been searching.  He was right, another search party found out what happened to Franklin and his men years later in the southern parts of the Arctic. But the expedition was not a total loss as Belcher made significant discoveries with regard to Canadian Arctic geography, wildlife, and climatology. Numerous Arctic geographical locations were explored and named by the Belcher expedition. He recorded interesting observations on the wildlife and climate of the Arctic.  He performed scientific experiments and studied the formation, characteristics, and patterns of the Arctic ice floes. He analyzed temperatures, barometric pressures, winds, and weather patterns of the Arctic.

While having to spend long periods in the cold, unfriendly climate he designed significant improvements for his ship which rendered it much warmer, drier, and more comfortable for the crewmen.  He made extensive notes on everything he observed and did and later wrote about it in his narrative of his Arctic voyage.

He interacted well with his men and was highly respected.  He did all he could to make their life as comfortable as possible on the journey.  The respect was mutual.  He often praised his men and considered them to be the best in the Navy.  His social commitment did not stop there; when he found out that various families in Greenland were starving, he donated provisions to help them.  He found the Peoples living in the Arctic regions both highly intelligent and resourceful. He greatly admired the fact that they had adapted so well to the harsh conditions and was very impressed by the way they build their housing. 

By 1854, Belcher knew that it was time to head home.  Several of his men had become ill due to the sparse rations and various other reasons.  He had accomplished all he possibly could, he had searched for Franklin everywhere he had been ordered to search.  Besides that, the previous year they had rescued various crew members from the Collinson expedition (from the ship “Investigator”) and they were not doing to well either. He had to abandon several of his ships as they were still locked in packed ice. He traveled back to England on the “North Star” and arrived there safely on September 1854. During his two year stint in the Arctic, he completed the proof of the existence of the Northwest Passage. Some of the rescued “Investigator” crew had actually already passed through the western part of the Northwest Passage, but had become entrapped.

Books:

• Published “A Treatise on Nautical Surveying” in 1835
• Published his two-volume “Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, Performed in Her Majesty’s Ship Sulphur During the Years 1836-1842, Including Details of the Naval Operations in China, From Dec. 1840 to Nov. 1841” in 1843
• Published his two-volume “Narrative of the Voyage of the H.M.S. Samarang” in 1848
• Two-volume work, “The Last of the Arctic Voyages” (1855)
• Wrote the novel “Horatio Howard Brenton” in 1856
• Was the author of many scientific papers published in various journals, of which the following are some examples: "Tide observations at Otaheite (Tahiti)" Phil. Trans. (1843); "Notice of the Discovery of Ichthyosaurus and other fossils in the late Arctic Searching Expedition, 1852-54" Brit. Assoc. Rep. (1855); and "Remarks on the Glacial Movements noticed in the vicinity of Mount St. Elias, on the north-west coast of America" Brit. Assoc. Rep. (1861)
• His wife, Lady Diana Belcher publishes “Mutineers of the Bounty”, a book about the famous mutiny on the “H.M.S. Bounty”, 1870