Owen Stanley - Life

Life

Stanley was born in Alderley, Cheshire, the son of Edward Stanley, rector of Alderley and later Bishop of Norwich. A brother was Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and his sister Mary Stanley.

He entered the Royal Naval College at the age of fifteen, and for nine years served under Phillip Parker King on HMS Adventure and John Franklin in the Mediterranean. In 1836 he sailed to the Arctic as scientific officer on HMS Terror under George Back. In 1838 he was given command of HMS Britomart and sailed to Australia and New Zealand, returning in 1843. In March 1842 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

In December 1846 Stanley sailed from Portsmouth in charge of HMS Rattlesnake, with the purpose of surveying the seas around the Great Barrier Reef and Torres Strait. The ship called at Madeira, Rio de Janeiro, Simon's Town and Mauritius, arriving in Sydney in July 1847. Stanley died in Sydney on the return trip having accomplished the main objects of the voyage and was given a state funeral.

In memory of his brother, Dean Stanley of Westminster Abbey donated the font in ChristChurch Cathedral, Christchurch.

Read more about this topic:  Owen Stanley

Famous quotes containing the word life:

    Our whole life is startingly moral. There is never an instant’s truce between virtue and vice.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.
    Muriel Spark (b. 1918)

    It is the responsibility of every adult—especially parents, educators and religious leaders—to make sure that children hear what we have learned from the lessons of life and to hear over and over that we love them and they are not alone.
    Marian Wright Edelman (20th century)