Note 123 — Chapter XXIII · PARRY AND HIS SCHOOL

Henry Foster, son of the Rev. Henry Foster of Woodplumpton near Preston, was born in 1796. He was a midshipman in the Conway with Captain Basil Hall on the Pacific Station, an excellent school for young officers; then in the Griper with Clavering, Assistant Surveyor in Parry’s third voyage, and in the voyage of 1827, when he explored Hinlopen Strait. His magnetic work was published in the Philosophical Transactions of 1826, for which he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. In 1827 he became a Commander, and the Duke of Clarence gave him the command of a discovery ship owing to his exceptionally high scientific attainments. He commissioned the Chanticleer in 1827 with Horatio T. Austin as his first Lieutenant. Foster was chiefly engaged in pendulum observations, going as far south as the South Shetlands and surveying Staten Island. He was drowned in the Chagres river, when engaged in determining the meridian distance between Chagres and Panama on February 5th, 1833. The polar story would be incomplete without a notice of one of the most distinguished of Arctic scientific officers.