Richard Mayne (explorer)

Rear-Admiral Richard Charles Mayne CB FRGS (7 July 1835 – 29 May 1892[1]) was a Royal Navy officer and explorer, who in later life became a Conservative politician.

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.

His journal[8] of these activities is a classic source of British Columbia history, as are those of his Royal Engineer colleague Lieutenant Henry Spencer Palmer.

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.

[14][8] In 1870, Captain Mayne married Miss Sabine Dent, a daughter of Sir Thomas Dent (1796–1872) and his wife, Sabine Ellen Robarts, daughter of James Thomas Robarts (1784–1825), another influential opium merchant.

[15] After retiring from the Navy, he unsuccessfully contested the Welsh constituency of Pembroke and Haverfordwest as a Conservative at the 1885 general election, being defeated by a narrow margin by the Liberal candidate, H.G.