Britton Bath Osler

Who was Britton Bath Osler?

Britton Bath Osler was a Canadian lawyer and prosecutor.

The older of three famous brothers, he was born in Bond Head, Canada West. His father, Featherstone Lake Osler, the son of a shipowner at Falmouth, Cornwall, was a former Lieutenant in the Royal Navy and served on H.M.S. Victory. In 1831 he was invited to serve on H.M.S. Beagle as the science officer on Charles Darwin's historic voyage to the Galápagos Islands, but he turned it down as his father was dying. As a teenager Featherstone Osler was aboard H.M.S. Sappho when it was nearly destroyed by Atlantic storms and left adrift for weeks. Serving in the Navy he was ship-wrecked off Barbados. In 1837 he retired from the Navy and emigrated to Canada, becoming a 'saddle-bag minister' in rural Upper Canada. On arriving in Canada he and his bride were nearly ship-wrecked again on Egg Island in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Britton's great grandfather, Edward Osler, was variously described as either a merchant seaman or a pirate, and one of Britton's uncles, a medical officer in the Navy, wrote the Life of Lord Exmouth and the poem The Voyage.