Frederick Bullock (Royal Navy officer)

Admiral Frederick Bullock (1788 – 6 February 1874) was a Royal Navy officer noted for his work as a surveyor, particularly in the Thames Estuary.

This article is about the Royal Navy officer and surveyor. For other uses, see Frederick Bullock (disambiguation).

Admiral Frederick Bullock
Born1788 (1788)
Died6 February 1874 (1874-02-07)
Allegiance United Kingdom
Branch Royal Navy
Service years1804-1853
RankAdmiral
AwardsFellow of the Royal Geographical Society

Bullock entered the Navy on 28 November 1804, serving in HMS Indefatigable under Captains Moore and Rodd in the English Channel. From 1808 he was with HMS Fame in the Mediterranean. He was promoted to Lieutenant on 22 January 1812.[1]

Chart of part of the NE coast of Newfoundland, surveyed in 1823-4

Bullock's first command was HMS Snap, from 1823, surveying the coast of Newfoundland, determining the precise positions of the many headlands that had been well charted by James Cook, but without the aid of chronometers.[2]: 104  He then commanded HMS Echo from 1827 to 1828, surveying in the River Thames.[2]: 195–197  He was promoted to commander in 1829, and served on the yacht William and Mary, on HMS Boxer, and HMS Fearless.[1] He became a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830.[1] As commander of Fearless, Bullock was part of the squadron that accompanied Queen Victoria to and from Woolwich on her 1842 visit to Scotland.[3]

Bullock is best-remembered for his surveying of the River Thames and its estuary. A letter from Bullock to Parry, Hydrographer of the Navy in 1828 proposing a detailed survey was rebuffed, but when Francis Beaufort became Hydrographer in 1829 he was much more supportive. Bullock would be engaged on this work until 1847. He started in London, and worked his way down river, using triangulation which connected with the earlier work of the Ordnance Survey. As he moved into the outer estuary, which had been surveyed by Graeme Spence and George Thomas, it became clear that there had been many changes in the shoals and channels, and a new survey of this area was authorised. To obtain accurate positions of shoals and banks out of sight of land, he set up a network of semi-permanent beacons as well as anchored vessels for triangulation, a development of the method earlier used by Thomas.[4]

The changes in the banks and channels of the outer estuary noted by Bullock have continued. In 1839 Bullock surveyed a channel which was named the Bullock Channel. Tizard (1890) reviewed a number of surveys of this channel, including Bullock's and his own. By 1882 it had become wider and deeper, and was buoyed and renamed the Duke of Edinburgh Channel after Alfred, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and of Edinburgh, Master of Trinity House.[5] Since that time a shoal has developed that has divided the channel into two, now known as the Edinburgh Channels.[6][7]

Bullock's safety beacon on the Goodwin sands

Bullock made a number of technical innovations. On the basis of the temporary beacons he had used in surveying, he designed a more permanent safety beacon which was set up on the dangerous Goodwin Sands, off the Kent coast.[4] In December 1842, during a royal visit to Walmer Castle, Bullmer took Prince Albert in Fearless to visit the beacon.[8] The beacon survived four stormy winters before being demolished by a "careless dutchman" whose ship ran over it at high tide.[9][4] Bullock was the inventor of an improved form of protractor,[1] and patented a ship's log, for recording a vessel's speed[10]

Bullock retired in 1853, along with several other surveyors, as a result of budget cuts.[2]: 197  He was promoted to admiral on the retired list, and died on 6 February 1874.[1]

References
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Frederick Bullock.
  1. Dawson, Llewellyn Styles (1885). Memoirs of hydrography, including brief biographies of the principal officers who have served in H.M. Naval Surveying Service between the years 1750 and 1885. Part 1. - 1750 to 1830. Eastbourne: Henry W. Keay. p. 96.
  2. Ritchie, George Stephen (1967). The Admiralty Chart: British Naval Hydrography in the Nineteenth Century. Hollis & Carter. OCLC 1082888087.
  3. Buist, James (1842). National record of the visit of queen Victoria to Scotland, 1842. Perth Printing Company. OCLC 221745954.
  4. Robinson, Adrian Henry Wardle (1962). Marine Cartography in Britain: A History of the Sea Chart to 1855. With a Foreword by Sir John Edgell. Leicester University Press. pp. 134–139. OCLC 62431872.
  5. Tizard, T.H. (1890). "The Thames Estuary". Nature. 41 (1067): 539–544. Bibcode:1890Natur..41..539T. doi:10.1038/041539a0. S2CID 4038891.
  6. Burningham, Helene; French, Jon (2011). "Seabed dynamics in a lage coastal embayment: 180-áyears of morphological change in the outer Thames estuary". Hydrobiologia. 672: 105–119. doi:10.1007/s10750-011-0760-y. S2CID 19576892.
  7. Sailing Directions (Enroute), Pub. 192: North Sea (PDF). Sailing Directions. United States National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. 2017. p. 120-121.
  8. Elvin, Charles Robert Stebbing (1894). The History of Walmer and Walmer Castle. Cross & Jackman, privately printed. pp. 157–158. OCLC 1051494382.
  9. "Goodwin Safety Beacon". Nautical Magazine: 643. 1844.
  10. English Patents of Inventions, Specifications: 1863, 2530 - 2600, patent No 2599. H.M. Stationery Office. 1864.
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