following, but remained on the North American station till after the peace. On 14 Jan. 1818 he was appointed to the Trent, hired brig, commanded by Lieutenant (afterwards Sir John) Franklin, and had an interesting share in the Arctic expedition of that year, of which he afterwards published an account under the title 'Voyage of Discovery towards the North Pole, performed in his Majesty's ships Dorothea and Trent, under the command of Captain Dayid Buchan' (8vo, 1843). In the next year, 1819, he served again in the Arctic, on board the Hecla, under Lieutenant William Edward Parry during that remarkable voyage, the account of which was afterwards written by Mr. Parry himself (4to, 1821). In January 1821 Beechey was appointed to the Adventure sloop, under Captain William Henry Smyth, and during the next two years was employed on the survey of the north coast of Africa, some account of which he afterwards published (in conjunction with his brother, Henry William Beechey), under the title 'Proceedings of the Expedition to explore the Northern Coast of Africa from Tripoli Eastward, in 1821-2' (4to, 1828). On 25 Jan. 1822 he had been promoted to the rank of commander, and in January 1825 he was appointed to command the Blossom, which was engaged for the next four years in the Pacific, and in endeavouring to co-operate, by Behring's Straits, with the polar expeditions from the eastward. His narrative of this voyage was published by authority of the admiralty in 1831 (2 vols, 8vo). On his return from this expedition he married (December 1828) Charlotte, daughter of Lieutenant-colonel Stapleton, of Thorpe Lee, and having been, whilst still in the Pacific, advanced to the rank of captain (8 May 1827), he now remained for some years on shore. In September 1835 he was appointed to the Sulphur, for the survey of part of the coast of South America; but his health failing, he was compelled to come home in the autumn of 1836. In the following year he was appointed to the survey of the coast of Ireland, and, in different steam-vessels, continued on that duty for the next ten years (1837-47). From this time he lived chiefly in London, engaged in scientific work, and occasionally contributing papers to the Royal and other societies, of which he was a fellow. In 1855 he was elected president of the Royal Geographical Society, an office which he still held at his death, on 29 Nov. 1856.
Besides the works already named, he was the author of two Reports of Observations on the Tides in the Irish Sea and English Channel (Phil. Trans. 1848, pp. 105-16, 1851, pp. 703-18), of the Presidential Address to the Royal Geographical Society 1856, and of some minor papers.
[O'Byrne's Nav. Biog. Dict; Gent. Mag. 1857. i. 108.]
BEECHEY, GEORGE D. (fl. 1817–1855), portrait painter, was a son of Sir William Beechey, R.A. [q.v.], whose profession and style he followed. He exhibited first at the Royal Academy in 1817, and continued to do so through several subsequent years, having many sitters so long as his father's influence lasted; but about 1830 the rapid decline in the number of his commissions induced him to leave England and proceed to Calcutta, whence he sent to the Royal Academy in 1832 a portrait of 'Hinda,' an Indian lady whom he married. He afterwards went to Lucknow, where he attained great celebrity and became court painter and controller of the household to the king of Oudh. He is believed to have been living in India in 1855, and to have died before the mutiny of 1857.
[Redgrave's Dictionary of Artists, 1878; Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, ed. Graves, 1884.]
BEECHEY, HENRY WILLIAM (d. 1870?), painter and explorer, was a son of Sir William Beechey, R. A. [q.v.], and followed his father's profession. He sent a marine subject to the Royal Academy in 1829, and another in 1838 to the British Institution (Graves's Dict. of Artists, 1760-1880, p. 18). Some time before 1816 he had become secretary to Mr. Salt, the British consul-general in Egypt, and at the latter's request accompanied Belzoni in that and the following year beyond the second cataract, for the purpose of studying and making designs of the fine monuments existing at Thebes. In the laborious excavation of the temple of Ipsambul, Beechey took his share; he also copied the paintings, in the king's tombs in the valley of Biban-el-Muluk, which had lately been opened by Belzoni. In common with his employer, Mr. Salt, Beechey had much to endure from Belzoni's suspicious and jealous nature (Life and Correspondence of Henry Salt, ed. Halls, vol. ii.) About 1820 he returned to England, and the next year was appointed by Earl Bathurst, on the part of the colonial office, to examine and report on the antiquities of the Cyrenaica, his brother, Captain Beechey, having been detached to survey the coast-line from Tripoli to Derna. The results of this expedition, which occupied the greater part of the years 1821 and 1822, were chronicled in a journal kept by the brothers, to which
