Richard Charles Mayne Registered Nurse Central Bank FGS Member of Parliament was a Royal Navy Captain, later Admiral and explorer.
Background
Richard Mayne was the son of Sir Richard Mayne Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (the first joint commissioner of the Metropolitan Police) and the grandson of Judge Edward Mayne. Both his father and grandfather were graduates of Trinity College, Dublin.
Education
Richard Mayne was educated at Eton.
Career
He was a scion of a family that settled at Mount Sedborough in County Fermanagh during the Plantation of Ulster and subsequently at Freame Mount, County Cavan in Ireland. Exploration of British Columbia In 1856 Lieutenant Mayne was attached to the Nautical Survey of Vancouver Island and British Columbia. Mayne sailed with Captain George Henry Richards on his expedition in HMS Plumper and also on HMS Hecate to survey the coast of British Columbia (1857–1859), and there came to serve in the Royal Engineers under Colonel Richard Moody and was assigned the exploration and mapping of hitherto unknown parts of the colony.
Mayne Island in the Gulf Islands is named after him, and Hecate Strait for his vessel.
Foreign this work, in 1860, he was promoted to Commander and returned to England. In 1862 he was appointed to the command of HMS Eclipse, for service in New Zealand, and took part in the native wars until severely wounded in 1863 and invalided home.
Foreign these services he was mentioned in despatches and promoted to the rank of Captain. And in 1867 received the Companionship of the Bath.
Straits of Magellan expedition Mayne commanded HMS Nassau on the survey expedition to the Straits of Magellan, 1866-1869.
The naturalist on the voyage was Robert Oliver Cunningham. Charles Darwin requested the Lords of the Admiralty to ask Captain Mayne to collect several boatloads of fossil bones of extinct species of quadrupeds.
Admiral Sulivan had previously discovered an astonishingly rich accumulation of fossil bones not far from the Straits.
These remains apparently belonged to a more ancient period, than the collection by Mr Darwin on HMS Beagle and by other naturalists and therefore of great interest to science. Many of these were collected with the aid of Hydrographer Captain
Richards Registered Nurse and deposited in the British Museum. Admiral Mayne was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and served on its Council.
He was the author of Four years in British Columbia and Vancouver Island.
After retiring from the Navy, he unsuccessfully contested the Welsh constituency of Pembroke and Haverfordwest as a Conservative at the 1885 general election.
Membership
24th United Kingdom Parliament]
He was elected as Member of Parliament (Member of Parliament) there the following year, serving until his death shortly before the 1892 general election.