Entrance of Van Diemen’s Inlet.

Artist:

Graham Gore (?-1847)

Gore was a sketcher and naval officer, from a seafaring family, his grandfather having sailed with Cook and his father with Bligh.

He entered the Royal Navy in 1820 and was first lieutenant aboard HMS Volage at the capture of Aden (1839) and of the Bogue forts and Chusan during the early part of the Chinese War (1840). In 1841 he was ordered to sail from India to Sydney to join HMS Herald , but the vessel he was to board had already departed, so in April Gore joined the Beagle under Stokes’s command. Gore returned to England at the end of the voyage, in 1843. In 1845 he joined HMS Erebus under Sir John Franklin, former Governor of Van Diemen’s Land.

He was promoted commander in 1846 and continued to serve aboard HMS Erebus, dying in the Arctic with the rest of the crew in 1847 on Franklin’s ill-fated expedition in search of the north-west passage.