Henry Mitchell (September 16, 1830 – December 1, 1902) was an American oceanographer and hydrographer.

Born in Nantucket on September 16, 1830, into a scientifically inclined family, his mother was a cousin of Benjamin Franklin, and John Greenleaf Whittier was a friend of his father, William, who taught astronomy at Harvard.

[1] At age 19 he joined the United States Coast Survey, where his first assignment was a map of the waters around his home of Nantucket.

During the American Civil War he helped map the coasts of North Carolina, and in 1896 he went to a tour through the Old World to study their watery engineering.

In 1888 he helped co-found the National Geographic Society, but shortly thereafter had a health crisis that prevented him from doing any work for the rest of his life.