Pringle Stokes
| Pringle Stokes | |
|---|---|
| Born |
23 April 1793 Surrey, England |
| Died | 12 August 1828 (aged 35) Puerto del Hambre (Port Famine), Patagonia, Chile |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Naval officer |
| Known for | Command of HMS Beagle |
Pringle Stokes (23 April 1793 – 12 August 1828) was a British naval officer who served in HMS Owen Glendower on a voyage around Cape Horn to the Pacific coast of South America, and on the West African coast fighting the slave trade. He then commanded HMS Beagle on its first voyage of exploration in the south Atlantic. After two years in command of the Beagle, depressed by the harsh winter conditions of the Strait of Magellan, he committed suicide.
Pringle Stokes was born on 23 April 1793, son of Charles and Elizabeth Stokes. He was baptized at Chertsey on 2 May 1793. At the age of twelve, on 5 June 1805 he joined the Royal Navy as a Midshipman in HMS Ariadne.
Stokes served as a Lieutenant on board the frigate HMS Owen Glendower, which left England for South America in November 1819. Robert FitzRoy, who was to take command of the Beagle after Stokes died, also served on the Owen Glendower on this voyage. He had joined the ship as a college volunteer in 1819, aged fourteen. The young FitzRoy and Stokes, who was in his late twenties, would have become acquainted on the two-year voyage. The Owen Glendower visited Saint Helena in October 1820 to report on the conditions in which the former Emperor Napoleon was being held. Spencer commanded the ship on its journey round Cape Horn to Valparaíso in Chile, arriving in January 1821. The ship remained in Pacific waters off Chile and Peru until October 1821, when it sailed from Valparaiso, rounded the Horn again in rough weather, and returned to England via Rio de Janeiro, arriving in January 1822.
In November 1822 Captain Sir Robert Mends took command of the Owen Glendower as senior officer on the west coast of Africa, charged with suppressing the West African slave trade. In one incident Stokes was wounded in a clash between the boat crews of the Owen Glendower and the local people of Fernando Po. On 3 July 1823 he led a party of boats up the New Calabar River, where they found an abandoned schooner that had been loaded with slaves but now only held seven in irons. The schooner was wrecked when the pilot ran it aground two days later. The Chief of New Calabar River sent the schooner's cargo of 184 slaves out to the Owen Glendower, which took them as far as Cape Coast before landing them.
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