Peter Cormac Sutherland

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these messages) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Peter Cormac Sutherland" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (January 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies. Please help to demonstrate the notability of the topic by citing reliable secondary sources that are independent of the topic and provide significant coverage of it beyond a mere trivial mention. If notability cannot be shown, the article is likely to be merged, redirected, or deleted. Find sources: "Peter Cormac Sutherland" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2022) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Peter Cormac Sutherland
Born	14 April 1822 Newlands of Forse, near Latheron, Caithness, Scotland
Died	30 November 1900 Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
Notable works	Journal of a voyage in Baffin's Bay and Barrow Straits
Children	2

Peter Cormac Sutherland (14 April 1822 – 30 November 1900) was born in Newlands of Forse, near Latheron, Caithness, Scotland. The son of Robert and Elizabeth Sutherland, he was one of three surviving children of a family of eight, due to smallpox and a drowning accident in Nova Scotia. He became a geologist, physician and an author.^[1]

In 1850 he embarked on a campaign to discover the fate of HMS Erebus and Terror after a disastrous polar expedition. It was on that expedition that he sailed under the command of Mr William Penny R.N. on board HMS Lady Franklin and Sophia and from which his book Journal of a voyage in Baffin's Bay and Barrow Straits originated. The campaign was largely a success as they discovered the fate of several crew members of the polar expedition buried at the winter base station.

Sutherland later moved with his wife and two children to Pietermaritzburg, where he later became surveyor-general of Natal, South Africa, succeeding William Stanger. It was while Sutherland held this position that his friend, the father of Cecil Rhodes requested that Cecil reside with him temporarily.

Sutherland was killed in a road accident on 30 November 1900 in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa.

Sutherland's great-grandson, John Cormac Seekings, wrote a biography of Sutherland, entitled Natal's Little Doctor (2013).