George Henry Richards

Sir George Henry Richards KCB FRS (13 January 1820 –14 November 1896) was hydrographer to the British Admiralty from 1864 to 1874.

Richards was born in Antony, Cornwall, the son of Captain G. S. Richards, and joined the Royal Navy in 1832.

Naval career

He served in South America, the Falkland Islands, New Zealand, Australia and in the First Opium War in China. Promoted to captain in 1854, from 1857 to 1864 he was in command of the two survey ships: HMS Plumper and HMS Hecate.

Survey work in Canada

He was the second British commissioner to the San Juan Islands Boundary Commission and a hydrographer on the coast of British Columbia in 1857–1862. He is responsible for the selection and designation of dozens of placenames along the British Columbia coast. In the Vancouver area, for example, he named False Creek. In 1859, after his engineer Francis Brockton found a vein of coal, he named Brockton Point and the area of Coal Harbour. In 1860, he named Mount Garibaldi after Giuseppe Garibaldi. Other landmarks in the area named by him are the Britannia Range, and Brunswick Mountain and many features in the Howe Sound, Sunshine Coast, and Jervis Inlet areas.

In 1864 he was appointed hydrographer and held that position until 1874 when he retired.

He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1866 He was knighted in 1877, became a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1881 and became an admiral in 1884. He died in Bath, Somerset aged 76.

A portrait of him by Stephen Pearce, dated 1865, hangs in the National Portrait Gallery in London. Mount Richards in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, Canada is named in his honor.