Joseph Baker (Royal Navy officer)

Joseph Baker (1767–1817) was an officer in the Royal Navy, best known for his role in the mapping of the Pacific Northwest Coast of America during the Vancouver Expedition of 1791-1795. Mt. Baker is named after him.

Baker is thought to have come from the Welsh border counties. From 1787 he served on HMS Europa where he met then-Lieutenant George Vancouver and then-Midshipman Peter Puget. Vancouver picked Baker as 3rd Lieutenant (and Puget as 2nd Lieutenant) of HMS Discovery for a round-the-world survey, focusing on the American Pacific Northwest Coast. Baker proved a highly capable surveyor and chartmaker in addition to his other duties.

The voyage started with complications. Discovery put in at Tenerife where Baker was seriously beaten trying to put down a sailor's brawl. The voyage proceeded more smoothly to Cape Town, the south coast of Australia and New Zealand. In Tahiti and Hawaii, then called the Sandwich Islands, he accompanied Archibald Menzies in botanical explorations.

Most of the small-boat work in exploring the Northwest Coast of America was done by the more senior officers, while Baker specialized in converting their observations into nautical charts. When Discovery explored Admiralty Inlet, Baker was the first Briton to see Mt. Baker, a prominent volcano which Vancouver named after him, although it had already been sketched by the Spanaird Haro in 1790 as first pilot on Quimper's exploration of the area.

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