Desbarres

Desbarres, JOSEPH FREDERICK WALLET, military engineer, was born 1722 in England, of Huguenot parentage, and in 1756 sailed as lieutenant in the 60th foot for America, where he raised, and for a time commanded, a corps of field artillery. In 1757 he gained over the Indians who had captured Fort Schenectady; and at the siege of Quebec he was aide-de-camp to Wolfe, who was mortally wounded while Desbarres was making a report. He conducted the subsequent engineering operations during the conquest of Canada, and was quartermaster-general in the expedition that retook Newfoundland (1762). He made a survey of the coast of Nova Scotia in 1763-73, and afterwards prepared charts of the North American coast for Lord Howe. He was lieutenant-governor of Cape Breton (1784-1804), and of Prince Edward Island (1805-13), having attained the rank of colonel only in 1798. He died at Halifax, Nova Scotia, 24th October 1824, at the age of one hundred and two. His principal publication was the Atlantic Neptune (4 vols. 1777), a splendid collection of charts.