The Vancouver Maritime Museum has a collection of more than 170,000 objects including 35,000 artifacts, 20,000 books, 262 original paintings/artwork and 114,000 photographs This online collection gives you access to just a few of our hidden and not so hidden treasures.

 

Category Index > Category: Instruments and Equipment > Artifact: Protractor of Captain, (later Admiral) Sir Edward Belcher
Protractor of Captain, (later Admiral) Sir Edward Belcher
Category: Instruments and Equipment


Listed as "prominent in the important but routine survey work undertaken by the British Navy" as well as a "spectacular failure as an arctic explorer" by the authors of an Arctic biographical dictionary, Edward Belcher is more than both. More than an explorer, Belcher was Canadian born (in Halifax) and entered the Royal Navy in 1812. His career in the Mediterranean led to his advancement to Lieutenant in 1818, and then on to the important work of the postwar Navy in surveying the waters and coasts of the world. Belcher served as an officer with Frederick William Beechey in a voyage through Bering Strait and a survey of the coast of Alaska in 1826-1828 as assistant surveyor, and then to Africa and the Irish Sea. His surveys of the Pacific Coast, in voyages under his own command, added much to the charts of the region, including Mexican California, Hawaii, and Alaska - and British Columbia. Mt. Belcher on Saltspring Island bears his name as a result. Knighted in 1842, Belcher then embarked on anti-piracy cruises in the South China Sea. His career was marred by an incident in which he attacked a junk filled with armed men, killed them all, and then discovered that he and his crew had just killed off a crew of Dutch government anti-piracy mercenaries. In 1852, Belcher commanded the largest Arctic expedition ever mounted by Britain to find the missing expedition of Captain Sir John Franklin. With five ships, Belcher wintered in the Arctic through 1854. His expedition did not find any trace of Franklin, but did rescue the crew of HMS INVESTIGATOR, which had stranded in the ice in the western Arctic. But Belcher's reputation, not helped by a difficult and contentious nature, was tarnished when he abandoned fourt of ships to the ice and returned home. His court martial absolved him, but Belcher never returned to sea. Promoted to Admiral in his retirement in 1872, Sir Edward Belcher died in 1877. His publications, including a multi-volume treatise on the Arctic Squadron of 1852-1854, The Last of the Arctic Voyages, are part of his remarkable legacy. The protractor, made to Belcher's own specifications (he was an inveterate inventor and tinkerer) include a magnifying glass to aid his middle-aged eyes. Its gutta percha case is also hand-made. Belcher's protractor and telescope were acquired from the Belcher family in 1997 thanks to the late Maurice Hodgson, a good friend of the Museum, and with the assistance of the Government of Canada through the Cultural Property Export and Import Act administered by the Department of Canadian Heritage, and through generous donations from sponsors.

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