Joseph Pitty Couthouy (6 January 1808 – 4 April 1864) was an American

naval officer An officer is a person who holds a position of authority as a member of an armed force or uniformed service. Broadly speaking, "officer" means a commissioned officer, a non-commissioned officer, or a warrant officer. However, absent contex ...

, conchologist, and invertebrate

palaeontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, he entered the Boston Latin School in 1820. He married Mary Greenwood Wild on 9 March 1832. Couthouy applied to President

Andrew Jackson Andrew Jackson (March 15, 1767 – June 8, 1845) was an American lawyer, planter, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, he gained fame as ...

for a position on the Scientific Corps of the U.S. Navy's Exploring Expedition of 1838. He sailed with the expedition on 18 August 1838, but was sent to the

Sandwich Islands The Hawaiian Islands ( haw, Nā Mokupuni o Hawai‘i) are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, and numerous smaller islets in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Ku ...

for sick leave. Eventually, he dismissed according to

Charles Wilkes Charles Wilkes (April 3, 1798 – February 8, 1877) was an American naval officer, ship's captain, and explorer. He led the United States Exploring Expedition (1838–1842). During the American Civil War (1861–1865), he commanded ' during the ...

for attempting to "promote dissension, bring me into disrepute, and destroy the harmony and efficiency of the Squadron." Although he meticulously labeled all of his specimens from the expedition, Dall recounts how "The authorities in Washington had appointed a reverened gentleman who knew nothing of science, with a fat salary, to unpack and take care of the specimens sent home by the expedition." This gentleman then separated the specimens from the tags thus rendering many of them useless. Couthouy returned to Washington and tried to work up what he could of the collection and was then informed, "to crown all of his misfortunes", that his pay was to be reduced by forty-four percent. He then returned to his profession as a master in the merchant marine, visiting South America and the Pacific. In 1854, he took command of an expedition to the Bay of Cumaná, where he spent three unsuccessful years in search of the wreck of the Spanish treasure ship ''San Pedro'', lost there in the early part of the century. A good

linguist Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

, he spoke fluent Spanish, French, Italian, and Portuguese, and had mastered several dialects used in the Pacific Islands. In the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states ...

, Couthouy was ordered to command on 31 December 1862, which was wrecked, and Couthouy made prisoner. He later commanded . Finally, he commanded during the Red River Campaign. On 2 April 1864, he was shot by a sniper and died the following day.

References

* Abbott, R.T., and M.E. Young (eds.). 1973. ''American Malacologists: A national register of professional and amateur malacologists and private shell collectors and biographies of early American mollusk workers born between 1618 and 1900.'' American Malacologists, Falls Church, Virginia. Consolidated/Drake Press, Philadelphia. * Dall, W.H. 1888. ''Some American conchologists.'' Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington 4:95-134. * Johnson, R.I. 1946. ''Occasional Papers on Mollusks, Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University'' 1(5):33-40.

See also

References

Further reading