Philip Carteret

Philip Carteret, British naval officer who, in his round-the-world voyage, explored the South Pacific, discovered Pitcairn Island, and located the Solomon Islands after they had been lost to European mariners since the late 16th century.

Carteret was born on the island of Jersey, into a family that had traditionally been seafarers. He served as a midshipman in the Royal Navy during the Seven Years' War (1756-1763), seeing action in the Mediterranean. In 1764 he served as a lieutenant under John Byron in his exploration of the South Pacific and circumnavigation of the world.

Not long after he returned from the Byron voyage, Carteret set sail on another voyage of discovery to the South Pacific, under the command of Samuel Wallis. Like Byron's previous expedition, this one aimed to chart undiscovered regions in the Southern hemisphere. In command of the sloop Swallow, Carteret sailed from England in 1766, joined by Wallis in command of Byron's former ship, the Dolphin. While navigating through the Strait of Magellan, the two ships lost contact and entered the Pacific separately.

In the hope of discovering unknown lands between Chile and New Zealand, Carteret had planned to make a more southerly crossing of the Pacific than had any captain before him. However, problems with his ship forced him to sail northward along the western coast of South America in search of more favourable winds. When he did set out westward across the Pacific, the course he sailed took him through a relatively empty stretch of ocean in which he discovered only a barren and rocky point of land. Carteret named it Pitcairn Island, after Robert Pitcairn, the midshipman on board who first sighted it.

Carteret sought to find the Solomon Islands, an island group that had been incorrectly charted by the 16th-century Spanish mariner Álvaro de Mendaña de Neyra. When he eventually came upon Santa Cruz Island, he did not realize that this was the easternmost island of that elusive chain. One of the Solomons, Carteret Island, north-east of Guadalcanal, is now named in his honour.

Carteret next explored the straits and channels around the islands of New Britain and New Ireland. He was the first to note that these were two distinct islands, separated by St George's Channel. He also discovered that New Windsor and New Ireland, both of which he named, were separated by a strait, which he named Byron, in honour of the commander of his previous voyage.

By this point, many of Carteret's crew were sick with scurvy and other maladies, and he was forced to make for the Dutch East Indies port of Makassar (present-day Ujung Pandang) on the island of Celebes. After a stay of five months for recuperation, resupply, and repair of their ship they continued on to Batavia (present-day Jakarta, Indonesia). In the autumn of 1768, Carteret and his men set out on their homeward journey across the Indian Ocean and around the Cape of Good Hope to England, which they reached the following spring.

Carteret's voyage, which furnished many new discoveries and helped improve charts of the Pacific, was an important step towards the achievements of James Cook in his three great voyages to the Pacific. In later years, Carteret served in the West Indies from 1777 to 1781, and retired, with the rank of rear admiral, in 1794.