Richard Collinson

Sir Richard Collinson KCB (7 November 1811 – 13 September 1883) was an English naval officer and explorer of the Arctic.

He was born in Gateshead, Tyne and Wear, England, then part of County Durham. He joined the Royal Navy in 1823 at age twelve and rose in the ranks, becoming a lieutenant in 1835, commander in 1841, and captain in 1842.

Collinson commanded HMS Enterprise in the search for Sir John Franklin, entering the Northwest Passage through the Bering Strait. He sailed from Plymouth in January 1850, accompanied by the HMS Investigator, which was under the command of Robert McClure, his subordinate; however, the two ships became separated. As a result, the Enterprise arrived at Point Barrow, Alaska a fortnight after the Investigator and was forced to turn back due to ice and winter at Hong Kong, while McClure and the Investigator made it through and achieved recognition as the first ship to transit the Northwest Passage.

He was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society, knighted in 1875, and made an admiral on the retired list in the same year.

In 1862 he became an "elder brother" of Trinity House and in 1875 became Deputy Master.

References

• Barrow's Boys - Fergus Fleming ISBN 1-86207-502-6

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
•  Cooper, Thompson (1884). "Collinson, Richard". Men of the Time (eleventh ed.). London: George Routledge & Sons. pp. 274–275. 
•  Laughton, John Knox (1887). "Collinson, Richard". In Leslie Stephen. Dictionary of National Biography. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 383–384.