This non-achromatic telescope has a painted wooden barrel and a single brass draw tube without a mechanical stop. The other brass fittings include a sliding eyepiece cover and an objective lens cap. The maker's name is inscribed on the draw tube as 'CARY, LONDON'.

This telescope was intended for use at night - it has a large objective lens to allow as much light as possible to enter the telescope. The telescope doesn’t have extra lenses to correct the inversion of the image, since the more lenses a telescope has, the greater the loss of light. The production of inverted images is typical of night telescopes.

This telescope was originally owned by John Lort Stokes (1812-85), who served as Assistant Surveyor on the ‘Beagle’, the ship that took Charles Darwin on his voyages around the world between 1831 and 1836. Stokes subsequently took command of the ‘Beagle’ and conducted surveys of the Australian coast.

Many items formerly belonging to Stokes are now in the National Maritime Museum, including two telescopes contained in the same box as this telescope (NAV1670, NAV1669), another telescope (NAV1668) and his sword (WPN1024).