William Wales (astronomer)

As a youth, according to the historian John Cawte Beaglehole, Wales travelled south in the company of a Mr Holroyd, who became a plumber in the service of George III.

[2] As part of the plans of the Royal Society to make observations of the June 1769 transit of Venus, which would lead to an accurate determination of the astronomical unit (the distance between the Earth and the Sun), Wales and an assistant, Joseph Dymond, were sent to Prince of Wales Fort on Hudson Bay to observe the transit,[3] with the pair being offered a reward of £200 for a successful conclusion to their expedition.

However, the two astronomers' results for the time of first contact, when Venus first appeared to cross the disc of the Sun, differed by 11 seconds; the discrepancy was to prove a cause of upset for Wales.

[4] They were to stay in Canada for another three months before making the return voyage to England, thus becoming the first scientists to spend the winter at Hudson Bay.

Wales' brother-in-law Charles Green, had been the astronomer appointed by the Royal Society to observe the 1769 transit of Venus but had died during the return leg of Cook's first voyage.

[11] The writer Leigh Hunt, another of Wales' pupils, remembered him as "a good man, of plain simple manners, with a heavy large person and a benign countenance".

[15] In his journal, Vancouver recorded his gratitude and indebtedness to Wales's tutelage "for that information which has enabled me to traverse and delineate these lonely regions.