STOKES, JOHN LORT (1812-85) entered the Navy in 1826 as a midshipman in the Beagle, then proceeding to South America on a surveying cruise which lasted (with a short visit to England) for four years. Part of the time he commanded the hired schooner La Paz. Captain Robert FitzRoy, who took command after the death of the first commander, had Stokes with him again in the same vessel in 1831-36, when she visited New Zealand. Promoted lieutenant in 1837, Stokes continued to serve in the Beagle under Commander Clements Wickham for the survey of the Australian coasts. On Wickham being invalided (1841) he succeeded to the command, and for two years was engaged in surveying Timor and New Zealand. In 1843 he returned to England after about 18 years spent in this vessel. In 1846 he published his Discoveries in Australia, with an Account of the Coasts and Rivers Explored and Surveyed during the Voyage of the Beagle, 1837-43. Advanced to post rank in that year, he was appointed to command the steamer Acheron, which was employed on the coast of New Zealand for four years, paying off at Sydney in 1851. After a few years on half-pay he was employed surveying the coasts of the English channel (1860-63). (Rear-admiral, 1864; vice-admiral 1871; admiral 1877.) Stokes in 1851 contributed a report on the survey of southern New Zealand to the proceedings of the British Association and a narrative of the cruise of the Acheron to the Naval Chronicle. He was elected in 1872 an honorary member of the New Zealand Institute. He died on 11 Jun 1885.

D.N.B.; Darwin; Joan Barlow; Stokes, op. cit; A. Mackay; King; Proc. Royal Geog. Soc., new ser., vii; Stokes journals in Star (Christchurch), May 1926; Pasco, A Roving Commission, 1897 (p); The Times, 13 Jun 1885.

Reference: Volume 2, page 171

🌳 Further sources