W. H. Smyth

Admiral William Henry Smyth (1788–1865) was a British naval officer, hydrographer, astronomer and antiquary. He entered the navy young, served in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars and spent the years from 1817 to 1824 surveying the coasts of Sicily, Sardinia, North Africa and the Adriatic, charts that remained in use for a century. Retiring to Bedford, he built an observatory and published A Cycle of Celestial Objects (1844), a guide for amateur astronomers that won the Royal Astronomical Society's gold medal. He was president of that society and of the Royal Geographical Society. The Sailor's Word-Book, his dictionary of nautical terms, appeared posthumously in 1867.