Naval Career
Sir Fairfax Moresby entered the Navy as an Able Seaman in 1799. He became a midshipman on the Amazon in 1803, and was promoted to lieutenant in 1806 and commander in 1811. In 1811 he was sent sent to the Aegean Sea to defend the population of Malta from pirates; the grateful people presented him with a sword.
In 1815, Moresby was appointed a Commander of the Bath (CB). He was senior officer at Mauritius in 1821, with orders to suppress the slave trade, and concluded the Moresby Treaty with Seyyid Said, the imam of Muscat in September 1822 restricting the scope of local slave trading and conferring on English warships the right of searching and seizing local vessels.
Promoted rear admiral in 1849, he was commander-in-chief of the Pacific Station 1850 to 1853, based at Valparaiso, Chile, with the flagship HMS Portland. He took an interest in Pitcairn Island at this time and planned the emigration of the islanders to Norfolk Island which took place in 1856.
He was promoted vice-admiral in that year and promoted admiral in 1862. He was appointed Knight Grand Cross of the Bath (GCB) in 1865 and admiral of the Fleet in 1870. Moresby died in 1877 in the district of St. Thomas, Devon, England.
In Papua New Guinea, Port Moresby and Fairfax Harbour on which it stands are named after him, as are Moresby Island and Moresby Island (Gulf Islands) in British Columbia, Canada.
Read more about this topic: Fairfax Moresby
Famous quotes containing the words naval and/or career:
“It is now time to stop and to ask ourselves the question which my last commanding officer, Admiral Hyman Rickover, asked me and every other young naval officer who serves or has served in an atomic submarine. For our Nation M for all of us M that question is, “Why not the best?””
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“The problem, thus, is not whether or not women are to combine marriage and motherhood with work or career but how they are to do so—concomitantly in a two-role continuous pattern or sequentially in a pattern involving job or career discontinuities.”
—Jessie Bernard (20th century)