Frederick William Beechey

Frederick William Beechey (London, 1796-London, 1856) was a British naval officer and draughtsman. The son of the portrait painter Sir William Beechey, he grew up in a family of artists and inherited a talent for drawing that he put to use at sea, where he recorded his observations in sketches and watercolours. His significance as a draughtsman lies mainly in these visual records, which accompanied the great Arctic and Pacific explorations of the first half of the nineteenth century.

He joined the Royal Navy in 1806, at the age of ten, and in 1818 he served as second and chief draughtsman aboard the brig HMS Trent, part of David Buchan's expedition searching for a passage across the Pole. The following year he joined William Edward Parry's expedition in HMS Hecla. His sketches illustrated Parry's narrative published in 1821, which included 26 of them. In 1821 he also took part in the survey of the North African Mediterranean coast led by William Henry Smyth, alongside his brother Henry William Beechey, and in 1828 he published an illustrated summary of that work.

Between 1825 and 1828 he commanded HMS Blossom on an expedition to the Bering Strait, with explorations in Polynesia. He named three islands in the strait, and his account, published in 1831, described visits to San Francisco and Mazatlán, where he produced one of the earliest known maps of the city. He was promoted to captain in 1827, to vice-admiral in 1854, and in 1855 he presided over the Royal Geographical Society of England.

His name survives in Arctic place names: Beechey Island, in the Canadian archipelago, and a cape on Ellesmere Island. His daughter, Frances Anne Hopkins, was a Canadian painter.