Queen Charlotte’s Islands.

Mapmaker:

Philip Carteret (1733-1796)

British naval officer and
explorer who participated in two of the Royal Navy’s circumnavigation
expeditions in 1764-66 and 1766-69.

Carteret entered the Navy in 1747, serving aboard the Salisbury,
and then under Captain John Byron from 1751 to 1755. Between 1757 and
1758 he was in the Guernsey on the Mediterranean Station. As a
lieutenant in the Dolphin he accompanied Byron during his voyage of circumnavigation, from June 1764 to May 1766.

In 1766 he was made a commander and given the command of the Swallow to circumnavigate the world, as consort to the Dolphin
under the command of Samuel Wallis. The two ships were parted shortly
after sailing through the Strait of Magellan, Carteret discovering
Pitcairn Island and the Carteret Islands, which were subsequently named
after him. In 1767, he also discovered a new archipelago inside Saint
George’s Channel between New Ireland and New Britain Islands (Papua New
Guinea) and named it Duke of York Islands, as well as rediscovered the
Solomon Islands first sighted by the Mendana in 1568, and the Juan
Fernandez Islands first discovered by Juan Fernandez in 1574. He arrived
back in England, at Spithead, on 20 March 1769. 

He was promoted to post captain in 1771.