David Buchan was a Scottish

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

 naval officer and Arctic

Arctic

The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 explorer.

Exploration

In 1806, Buchan was appointed as a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and from about 1808 to 1817 he operated in and around Newfoundland. He was the leader of an 1810 expedition into the interior of Newfoundland to attempt to make contact with the dwindling native Beothuk

Beothuk

The Beothuk were one of the aboriginal peoples in Canada. They lived on the island of Newfoundland at the time of European contact in the 15th and 16th centuries...

 population. They were unsuccessful.

In 1818, Buchan was sent on an expedition to the North Pole

North Pole

The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

. Buchan and Lieutenant John Franklin

John Franklin

Rear-Admiral Sir John Franklin KCH FRGS RN was a British Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. Franklin also served as governor of Tasmania for several years. In his last expedition, he disappeared while attempting to chart and navigate a section of the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic...

 sailed the Dorothea and Trent to Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen

Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

, but they failed to advance much further north due to the ice.

Buchan returned to Newfoundland in 1819. Although he intended to return the Beothuk woman Demasduwit

Demasduwit

Demasduit was a Beothuk woman, one of the last of her people on the island of Newfoundland, Canada.She was born near the end of the 18th century. The Beothuk were openly hostile to Europeans, and violent conflict between the two groups were common. The conflicts usually took more Beothuks than...

to her people, she died of tuberculosis before he was able to make any additional contact with the Beothuk. Buchan later ordered additional efforts to return Demasduwit's niece, the Beothuk woman Shanawdithit

Shanawdithit

Shanawdithit , also noted as Shawnadithititis, Shawnawdithit, Nancy April and Nancy Shanawdithit, was the last known living member of the Beothuk people of Newfoundland, Canada. Also remembered for drawings she made towards the end of her life, Shawnawdithit was in her late twenties when she died...

, to her family but she refused to go with any European expedition. As far as she knew, all her people had died. Also, after having been with the English, she knew that any Beothuk people would sacrifice her in a religious redemption of those who had been killed before.

Later work

David Buchan was promoted to captain in the Royal Navy on 12 June 1823, but was removed from the active list the same year. He was appointed High Sheriff of Newfoundland from 1825 to 1835.

Death

In December 1838, he was declared lost at sea with the East Indiaman Upton Castle en route from Calcutta to England.