OSBORN, Sherard, English naval officer, born in Madras, 25 April, 1822; died in London, 6 May, 1875. He was the son of a lieutenant-colonel in the army, and, entering the navy as a first-class volunteer in 1837, was attached for several years to the stations of the Indian ocean. Although only a lieutenant, he was appointed in 1849 to the command of the " Pioneer," one of the three ships that were sent out to search for Sir John Franklin, and he made a remarkable sledge-journey to the western extremity of Prince of Wales island. For his services in the Black sea during the Crimean war he was made a K. C. B. and a knight of the Legion of honor, and given the Turkish order of the Medjidieh. After serving as admiral in the Chinese navy in 1862-'3, he was, in 1867-'70, managing director of the Telegraph construction and maintenance company for the construction of a submarine system of telegraphs between Great Britain, Canada, and Australia. He was promoted rear-admiral in 1873, and continued to interest himself in the arctic regions, inducing Arthur H. Markman to visit Baffin bay in a whaler, and published, at his own expense, Markman's report on the possibilities of ice-navigation with the aid of steam. The result was that toward the close of 1874 the lords of the admiralty gave to him, in conjunction with Rear-Admiral Richards and Sir Leopold MacClintock, the power to fit out a new expedition, which sailed in 1875. He published "Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal" (London, 1852); "Journals of Robert MacClure, giving a Narrative of the Discovery of the Northwest Passage" (1856) ; "The Career, Last Voyage, and Fate of Sir John Franklin " (1860) : and "The Past and Future of British Relations in China" (1860), etc.