Joseph Jukes

Joseph Beete Jukes (10 October 1811 – 29 July 1869) was a British geologist working in Newfoundland, Australia and Ireland. He was author of several geological manuals and served as a naturalist on the expeditions of HMS Fly (under the command of Francis Price Blackwood). Correspondents and friends addressed him as Beete Jukes.

Early life

Jukes was born to John and Sophia Jukes at Summer Hill near Birmingham, England, on 10 October 1811. He was educated at Wolverhampton, King Edward's School, Birmingham and St John's College, Cambridge. At Cambridge Jukes studied geology under Professor Adam Sedgwick. Between 1839 and 1840, Jukes geologically surveyed Newfoundland. A book he wrote, Excursions In and About Newfoundland During the Years 1839 and 1840, bore the fruit of what he had discovered and learned while he surveyed. He returned to England at the end of 1840, and in 1842 sailed as a naturalist on board the corvette HMS Fly to participate in the surveying and charting expeditions to survey Torres Strait, New Guinea, and the east coast of Australia, under the leadership of Francis Price Blackwood, a naval officer.

Fly visited and charted many locations, circumnavigated Australia twice and visited the island of Java in 1845, as well as conducting an extensive maritime survey based from the south-eastern coast of New Guinea and the Torres Strait Islands to the southern edges of the Great Barrier Reef.