Person

Denham, Henry Mangles (1800 - 1887)

Kt FRS

Born
28 August 1800
Died
3 July 1887
Sherborne, Dorset, United Kingdom
Occupation
Hydrographer, Marine surveyor and Naval officer

Summary

Henry Denham was a naval officer and hydrographer of considerable note. His early career was spent surveying the harbours and waters around the British Isles and, from 1845 to 1846, the west coast of Africa. Between 1851 and 1860 he commanded H.M.S. Herald, during which time he made extensive surveys in the southwest Pacific Ocean, continuing the work undertaken by H.M.S. Rattlesnake. His instructions were to explore the islands and reefs between Australia and the Isle of Pines (New Caledonia). Visits were made to Lord Howe Island, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Norfolk Island: Herald was involved in the resettlement of Pitcairn Islanders on Norfolk Island. Australian surveys included Port Jackson, King George Sound, Shark Bay, and the Great Barrier Reef, and three visits to the reefs in the Coral Sea. This was the last major naval hydrographic survey undertaken in Australian waters, and resulted in 200 charts and plans. Naturalists on the expedition were John MacGillivray and William Grant Milne, who made significant collections of botanical and ornithological specimens, and Assistant Surgeon-zoologist Denis Macdonald. After the expedition Denham became Commander-in-Chief, of the Royal Navy's Pacific station. In 1866 he was knighted for his services to hydrography. He retired in 1871 with the rank of Vice-Admiral.

Details

Chronology

1812
Career event - Joined the Royal Navy
1822
Career event - Promoted to Lieutenant, Royal Navy
1835
Career event - Promoted to Commander, Royal Navy
1839 - 1887
Award - Fellow, The Royal Society, London (FRS)
1846
Career event - Promoted to Captain, Royal Navy
1851 -
Career position - Associate Member, Institution of Civil Engineers
1852 - 1861
Career position - Commander, H.M.S. Herald
1864
Career event - Promoted to Rear Admiral, Royal Navy
1864 - 1866
Career position - Commander-in-Chief, Pacific station, Royal Navy
1866
Award - Knight Bachelor (Kt)
1871
Career event - Retired from the Royal Navy with rank of Vice Admiral

Published resources

Books

  • David, Andrew, The Voyage of HMS Herald to Australia and the South-west Pacific 1852-1861 under the command of Captain Henry Mangles Denham (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press at Miegunyah Press, 1995), 549 pp. Details

Journal Articles

Resources

Theses

  • Jensen, Sophie Alice, 'On such a full sea: John MacGillivray (1821 - 1867)', PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2010, 339 pp. Details

See also

  • Bowen, James; Bowen, Margarita, The Great Barrier Reef: History, Science, Heritage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 454 pp. Details

Helen Cohn

EOAS ID: biogs/P006919b.htm

Except where otherwise noted, content on this site is
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
What do we mean by this?

Published by Swinburne University of Technology.
This Edition: 2024 November (Ballambar - Gariwerd calendar - early summer - season of butterflies)
Reference: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/calendars/gariwerd.shtml#ballambar
For earlier editions see the Internet Archive at: https://web.archive.org/web/*/www.eoas.info

The Encyclopedia of Australian Science and Innovation uses the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a relational data curation and web publication system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre and its predecessors at the University of Melbourne 1999-2020. The OHRM has been maintained by Gavan McCarthy since 2020.

Cite this page: https://www.eoas.info/biogs/P006919b.htm

"... the rengitj, as a visible mark or imprint on the land, is characterised as a place of origin, the repository of all names, as well as a kind of mapped visual expression of the connection between people and places which is to be carried out in the temporal sequence of the journey." Fanca Tamisari (1998) 'Body, Vision and Movement: In the footprints of the ancestors'. Oceania 68(4) p260