Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte (1813) was an English officer of the Royal Navy and polar explorer who from 1845 served under Sir John Franklin as Second Lieutenant (the fourth most senior rank) on the during the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage, which ended with the loss of all 129 crewmen in mysterious circumstances.
Early life
Born in Netherton in Devon, England in 1813, he was the only son of four children born to Sarah née Wills and Henry Le Vesconte, a Commander in the Royal Navy who had fought as a Lieutenant on the Jamaica at the Battle of Copenhagen in 1801 and later received a commendation from Nelson for the capture of six gun vessels on shore at St Valery. With the same rank he fought at the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 on the Naiad under Captain Thomas Dundas.
Of French descent, Henry Thomas Dundas Le Vesconte was named after his father and his father's commanding officer at Trafalgar.
Naval career
He followed his father into the Royal Navy on 19 May 1829, joining the Herald as a first-class volunteer, joined the Britannia on 22 November 1831, and was made Midshipman on 15 March 1832. He transferred to the frigate Endymion in December 1834, serving on her until 1836 under Captain Sir Samuel Roberts. He won his Lieutenancy by ‘repeated acts of conspicuous gallantry’, as Mate of the Calliope in the China War (1841), assisted at the destruction of a 20-gun battery at the back of the island of Anunghoy on 23 February 1841 and on 13 March 1841 served in the boats at the capture of several rafts and of the last fort protecting the approaches to Canton. He was similarly employed at the capture of that city on 18 March 1841 and, during the second series of hostilities against it, was afresh engaged in the boats at the destruction on 26 May of the whole line of defences, extending about two miles from the British factory.
In consequence of these performances he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant by commission on 8 June 1841. His later appointments were: 16 October 1841 to the Hyacinth under Captain George Goldsmith, in the East Indies; 15 June 1842, to the Clio as First Lieutenant under Captain Edward Norwich Troubridge and from 30 December 1842 under Captain James Fitzjames, with whom he was for upwards of two years employed on the same station and off the coast of Africa in cruises to suppress the slave trade; from 17 December 1844, as Senior, to the Superb under Captain Armar Lowry Corry, attached to the Channel Squadron.
Franklin Expedition
Fitzjames recommended Le Vesconte's appointment to the discovery-ship Erebus under Captain Sir John Franklin, which he joined on 4 March 1845 as she was fitting out for the polar expedition at Woolwich Dockyard and in which he was involved in a renewed attempt to explore the Northwest Passage through Lancaster Sound and Bering Strait. He was among twelve officers of the Franklin Expedition who posed for daguerreotypes by photographer Richard Beard at the docks before sailing.
The expedition set sail from Greenhithe, Kent, on the morning of 19 May 1845, with a crew of 24 officers and 110 men. The ships stopped briefly in Stromness, Orkney Islands, in northern Scotland. From there they sailed to Greenland with and a transport ship, Baretto Junior; the passage to Greenland took 30 days.
At the Whalefish Islands in Disko Bay, on the west coast of Greenland, Le Vesconte surveyed ashore with his friend James Fitzjames, who recorded that Franklin was "much pleased with him". Here 10 oxen carried on Baretto Junior were slaughtered for fresh meat which was transferred to Erebus and Terror. Crew members then wrote their last letters home, which recorded that Franklin had banned swearing and drunkenness. Le Vesconte sent a number of letters and sketches home as Erebus sailed north into Baffin Bay late in 1845. But after that, as with the expedition as a whole, few details of his later activities are known. Five men were discharged due to sickness and sent home on Rattler and Barretto Junior, reducing the final crew to 129 men. In late July 1845 the whalers Prince of Wales (Captain Dannett) and Enterprise (Captain Robert Martin) encountered Terror and Erebus in Baffin Bay, where they were waiting for good conditions to cross to Lancaster Sound. The expedition was never seen again by Europeans.