2-970-229 - /Heritage Images

The Astrolabe of Sir Francis Drake, in Greenwich Hospital, 1856. '...instrument for taking the altitude of the sun or stars, once belonging to the famous Drake…This instrument, constructed...prior to his first expedition to the West Indies in 1570, and subsequently preserved in a cabinet of antiquities belonging to the Stanhope family, was presented in 1783, by the Right Hon. Philip, fifth Earl of Chesterfield...to the Rev. Francis Bigsby...who had in the preceding year married the Hon. Frances Stanhope, widow, his Lordship's stepmother. In 1812 that gentleman, having ruptured a large blood-vessel, in anticipation of approaching death gave it as a token of affection to his younger brother, Robert Bigsby...the father of whom had the honour of presenting it to King William IV., by whom it was bestowed upon the Royal Hospital of Greenwich'. From "Illustrated London News", 1856.