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RIC in London. He had while in London been offered an appointment in the medical service of the army, and also in that of the East India Company; but he gave a preference to the navy, under the belief that thus he should have an opportunity of seeing a greater number of foreign countries than in either of the other services. As it proved, however, nothing could have been more erroneous; for at that period the British navy had access to very few ports in Europe, and brief visits to colonial seaports brought the naval officer in contact with the same degraded class that he met in the ports at home. His first appointment was that of assistant-surgeon on board the Nymphe frigate, then fitting out at Deptford. This ship was attached to Sir Richard Keats' squadron, and went under Lord Gambler to the bombardment of Copenhagen. In the following summer the Nymphe was employed, under Sir Charles Cotton, in blockading the Tagus. Her captain, Conway Shipley, tired of the monotony of lying for months at the mouth of the river, resolved to ascend the Tagus at night as high as the anchorage of the Russian fleet, with the view of cutting out a Portuguese vessel manned by French troops. The first attempt failed, owing to some of the boats getting astray in the dark; and the second, which was made on a vessel anchored under Belem castle, was repulsed with the loss of several killed and wounded. On both of these occasions Mr. Richardson was in the boats as a volunteer. Being immediately afterwards removed to the flagship, Mr. Richardson was appointed acting surgeon of a 74, just one year after his entry into the service. In this vessel he remained blockading the Tagus until after the battle of Vimiera, and the convention of Cintra, when he convoyed the Russian fleet to Spithead. On his arrival in England Mr. Richardson was appointed to the Blossom sloop of war, in which he served on the coast of Africa and in taking convoys to Quebec and the coast of Spain. In 1810 the Blossom was ordered to the Mediterranean, when, by the order of Lord Exmouth, he was removed into the Bombay, 74. His health, however, shortly afterwards compelled him to leave the station. Appointed, on his recovery, to the Cruiser, he served on the Baltic and North Sea stations. He was next appointed surgeon to the first battalion of royal marines, then in Canada, and afterwards in Georgia. While in Georgia he had charge of the hospital ship, in which the sick and wounded of the entire brigade were placed. On the reduction of the battalion, in consequence of peace being concluded with America, Mr. Richardson took the opportunity of returning to Edinburgh to complete his medical education. In 1817 he obtained the degree of M.D., on which occasion he published a thesis, "De Febre Flava." In 1819 commenced that part of Dr. Richardson's career which has placed him in the front rank of arctic explorers, and will hand his name down as one of the most able, persevering, and scientific travellers of which this country can boast. He was at this time appointed surgeon and naturalist to the overland expedition under Lieutenant (afterwards Sir John) Franklin, the object of which was "to determine the latitudes and longitudes of the northern coast of North America, and the trending of that coast, from the mouth of the Coppermine river to the eastern extremity of that continent." The results, including the disasters and sufferings of this expedition, and the noble part which Dr. Richardson bore in them, are now matters of history. He returned to England in 1822, and in the spring of 1824 was appointed surgeon of the royal marines at Chatham, with an intimation from Lord Melville, then first lord of the admiralty, that he would be allowed to accompany Sir John Franklin in a second expedition, then in contemplation. His majesty's government being, towards the close of 1823, resolved upon another attempt to effect a northern passage by sea between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Captain Parry, the highly distinguished commander of the two preceding expeditions, was again appointed in command of the ships to carry out this important duty. Franklin, however, considered that the object of the government might be achieved by more ways than one. He therefore submitted a plan for an overland expedition to the mouth of the Mackenzie river, and thence by sea to the north-western extremity of America, with the combined object also of surveying the coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers. Captain Franklin was appointed in command of an expedition in accordance with his propositions to the government. In this expedition, which was carried on during the years 1825-26-27, Dr. Richardson was, by instructions from the admiralty, detached to survey the sea-coast between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers—a duty which he accomplished to the entire satisfaction of the government, as well as of the commander of the expedition. Franklin, in his narrative of the expedition, says, "I may be allowed to bear my testimony to the union of caution, talent, and enterprise in Dr. Richardson, which enabled him to conduct with singular success an arduous service, of a kind so foreign from his profession and ordinary pursuits." At the termination of this expedition he returned to his post at Chatham, where he remained until 1838, when he was promoted to the rank of physician of Haslar hospital, and inspector of naval hospitals and fleets. Here it might have been supposed that he would have rested upon the laurels he had already won; but a high and almost chivalrous sense of duty again called him to the scene of his former labours. Sir John Franklin had not long returned from the government of Van Diemen's Land, when he set sail (May 19, 1845) with the Erebus and Terror, for the purpose of accomplishing a north-west passage. When upwards of two years had passed without tidings of this expedition, the public anxiety for the fate of the explorers became great, and the government resolved that if no intelligence of the missing ships arrived by the close of 1847, they would send out three searching expeditions—viz., one to Lancaster Sound, another down the Mackenzie river, and a third to penetrate into the arctic sea through Behring's Straits. Sir John Richardson (he had been knighted in 1846) was no longer young. He had some time passed his sixtieth year; but he retained all the ardour and enterprise of youth, and had lost but little of its vigour. He therefore volunteered the task of searching the North American shore between the Mackenzie and Coppermine rivers, and of depositing provisions at Fort Good Hope, on the latter river, at its mouth, and at Capes Bathurst, Parry, Krusenstern, and Hearne, along the coast. Accompanied by Dr. Rae, he sailed from Liverpool on 25th March, 1848, arrived at New York on the 10th of April, and at Cumberland Head in the Hudson Bay settlement on the 14th June. Descending the Mackenzie to its mouth, Richardson turned to the east, passed Cape Bathurst on the 11th August, and soon after rounded Cape Parry. From this point the navigation became most intricate and difficult through crowded floes of ice. As they approached Cape Krusenstern, the sea was one dense close pack of ice. The boats had now to be dragged over the floes or carried over flats and points of land, and tongues of ice had to be cut through as the only means of progress. On one morning three hours of hard labour had only advanced the travellers about a hundred yards, which forced upon them the conclusion that the sea-voyage was at an end. They struggled, however, on to Cape Hearne. Here the abandonment of the boats became inevitable. Richardson and his party then started for Port Confidence at the northern extremity of Great Bear Lake, which was reached in twelve days. Here they were hospitably received and comfortably lodged by Mr. Bell, the chief trader of the Hudson's Bay Company. He returned to England in November, 1849, when he resumed his charge of Haslar hospital, which he held until 1855, when he retired, after nearly forty-eight years' public service. He subsequently resided at Lanerigg in Westmoreland, pursuing his favourite studies with all the energy of youth till his death on the 5th of June, 1865. Sir John Richardson, besides numerous contributions to the Journals and Transactions of various Societies, was the author of—Geometrical Observations; Notices of Fishes; Botanical Appendix; Appendix to Narrative of first Journey to the Polar Sea, by John Franklin, London, 1828; Topographical and Geological Notices; Observations on Meteorology and Solar Rusticitiæ; the Arrival and Departure of Birds; Appendix to the Narrative of a Second Journey to the Polar Sea, London; Zoological Appendix to a Second Voyage for the Discovery of a North-west Passage by Sir Edward Parry, London, 1824; Zoological Appendix to Sir John Ross's Second Expedition; Salmonis, &c., &c., London, 1835; Zoological Appendix to Sir George Back's Voyage down the Fish River in 1833-35; On the Ichthyology of New Zealand, Rep. Brit. Asso., 1842; On North American Zoology, Rep. Brit. Asso., 1836; Zoology of the Voyages of the Sulphur, Terror, Herald, and Samarang; Fauna Boreali Americana, The Fishes, London, 1836; in conjunction with Swainson—Fauna Boreali Americana, The Birds, London, 1831; and also with the same—The Zoology of the Northern parts of British America, containing descriptions