Protestant Exiles from France/Volume 2 - Book Third - Chapter 24 - Beaufort

by David Carnegie Andrew Agnew

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Beaufort. — Rear-Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, K.C.B., F.R.S., was the second son^[1] of Rev. Daniel Augustus Beaufort, LL.D., Vicar of Collon, County Louth, and formerly Minister of Navan, County Meath, author of “The Civil and Ecclesiastical Map of Ireland.” Francis was born at Navan in 1774, and entered the Indian Navy as a midshipman in 1787 under Captain Lestock Wilson. He was already a proficient in the sciences, and was appointed the custodier of the valuable instruments of his ship, the Vansittart — a charge to which he was so devoted that, when the ship was wrecked, he saved the instruments and abandoned his own property.

In 1789 he began his career in the Royal Navy. On 1st June 1794 he was a midshipman in H.M.S. Aquilon, and took part in the action off Brest, under Lord Howe, on 1st June. He became a lieutenant in May 1796. In October 1800, serving in H.M.S. Phaeton, he commanded a boat which boarded and captured the brig San Josef, a Spanish privateer; he received nineteen wounds, was promoted to the rank of commander, and came home to recruit his health, when he spent two years in establishing a line of telegraphs between Dublin and Galway. He again served at sea, and became a post-captain in 1810. He was sent to survey the coast of Karamania, and at the close of his labours he was savagely attacked and severely wounded by a Turk, and was obliged to return to England. He then brought out his interesting and beautifully illustrated volume entitled, “Karamania, or a brief description of the South Coast of Asia Minor, and of the Remains of Antiquity, with plans, views, &c, collected during a survey of that coast, under the orders of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, in the years 1811 and 1812, by Francis Beaufort, F.R.S., Captain of his Majesty’s Ship Frederiksteen. London, 1817.” His success as a surveyor and draftsman procured him the appointment of Hydrographer to the Admiralty, an office which he held with world-wide applause from 1829 to 1855. In 1846 he consented to become a retired Rear-Admiral, in order to continue his favourite labours. He received the decoration of K.C.B. in 1848. Sir Francis Beaufort died on the 17th December 1857, aged eighty-three. Harriet Martineau in her “Biographical Sketches” says of him, “He was short in stature; but his countenance could nowhere pass without notice,” being characterised by “astute intelligence, shining honesty, and genial kindliness.” He married, first, in 1812, Alicia Magdalene Wilson^[2] (born 1782, died 1834), daughter of Captain Lestock Wilson, by Bonne Boileau (born 1760, died 1818), and granddaughter of Simeon Boileau and Magdalene Desbrisay, and by her he had two sons and three daughters, of whom the youngest is Emily Anne, Viscountess Strangford. He married, secondly, Miss Edgeworth, a sister of Maria, and daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth. (Mr. Edgeworth married in 1798, as his fourth wife, Frances Beaufort; he was the promoter of the telegraphs, of which that wife’s brother, Commander Beaufort, super-intended the erection in 1804; the second Miss Beaufort was the author of “Bertha’s Journal and other Tales;” and the third, Louisa, was a literary contributor to the “Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy.”)

1. Frances Beaufort, who was married in 1 798 to Mr. Edgeworth, was a daughter in this family, and I conjecture that that Rev. William Beaufort was the eldest son. (See my Historical Introduction.)
2. The first wife’s youngest sister, Henrietta Frances Wilson (born 1789, died 1855), was married to her kinsman John Theophilus Desbrisay, and had two sons, George (died 1840), and Henry De la Cour Desbrisay, married in 1854 to Jane Amelia Marett.