Worthy to stand on a par with, or at lowest, in the very next rank to,
the men who originate great inventions, are those whose foresight and
energy discover the means of extending their utility; and in shortening
the journey between Europe and India, by the establishment of the
overland route, Lieutenant Waghorn practically achieved as great a
triumph over time and space, as if he had invented a machine for the
purpose that would have traversed the old route in the same time.
It was in 1827 that Thomas Waghorn first promulgated the idea of steam
communication between our Eastern possessions and the mother country. He
was then twenty-seven years of age, and had just returned to Calcutta
from rough and arduous service in the Arracan war. When a midshipman of
barely seventeen, he had passed the "navigation" examination for
lieutenant,--the youngest, it appears, who ever did so; but although,
consequently, eligible for that rank, he had never reached it up to this
time, in spite of the distinction he had acquired in various actions.
His health had been so much shattered by a fever caught in Arracan, that
he had to return to England; but he did not leave Calcutta without
communicating his design to the government there, and obtaining a letter
of credence from Lord Combermere (then vice-president in council) to the
East India Company, recommending him, in consequence of his meritorious
conduct in the recent war, "as a fit and proper person to open steam
navigation with India, _via_ the Cape of Good Hope."
The idea, however, was just then in advance of the time, and all
Waghorn's agitation in its favour proved of no avail. In the meantime,
the idea of saving the time spent in "doubling the Cape," by means of a
route through the Mediterranean, across the Isthmus of Suez, and down
the Red Sea, had occurred to him; and in 1829 he procured a commission
from the East India Directory to report on the probability of Red Sea
navigation, and at the same time to convey certain despatches to Sir
John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay.
He got notice of this mission on the 24th October, and was desired to be
at Suez by the 8th December, in order to catch the steamer _Enterprise_,
and proceed in her to India. He took only four days to make ready for
the journey, and on the 28th left London on the top of the _Eagle_
stage-coach from Gracechurch Street. Circumstances were anything but
propitious all through this expedition of his; and yet he defied and
disregarded them all. Bridges broke down at central points, falling
avalanches had to be kept clear of, an accident disabled the steamer,
and he had to go some hundred and thirty miles out of his way in
consequence. In spite of all that, he dashed through five kingdoms, and
reached Trieste in nine days, or little more than half the time occupied
by the post-office mails on the same journey. Impatient of delay, he
learned that an Austrian brig had left for Alexandria the night before,
but the breeze had fallen, and she was still to be caught a glimpse of
from the hill-tops. A fresh posting carriage was got out, and off he
went in chase of the vessel, hoping to make up to her at Pesano, twenty
miles down the Gulf of Venice. The calm still prevailed; and as he went
dashing along he could catch sight, now and then, as the carriage passed
some open part of the road and disclosed the sea, of the brig creeping
lazily along. Every hour he gained on her; instead of a dull, black
speck upon the horizon, he began to make out her hull, her sails, and
rigging. He urged the post-boys with redoubled vehemence--kept them
going at a furious pace. He was within three miles of the vessel--it was
crawling, he was flying--another half hour would see him safe on board,
and then heigh for India. But stay, surely that was the wind among the
trees; could the breeze have risen? It had indeed. A strong northerly
wind sprang up; gradually the sails of the brig swelled out before
it, and poor Waghorn, with his panting, jaded horses, was left far
behind. The chase was hopeless now--so he went back mournfully to
Trieste--"exhausted in body with fatigue, and racked by disappointment
after the previous excitement."
The next ship, a Spanish one, was not to sail for three days. That was
more than Waghorn could endure; he went to the captain, urged him,
bribed him with fifty dollars to make it two days, instead of three, and
succeeded. In eight and forty hours he was somewhat consoled for his
former discouragement, to find himself at length at sea. In sixteen days
he was at Alexandria, and after a rest of only five hours there, hired
donkeys and was off to Rosetta. The donkeys were in the conspiracy
against him, as well as the wind and the avalanches. The first day they
trotted and walked along as brisk as may be, and our indefatigable
traveller worked them well. It is well known that the donkey of the east
is a paragon of wisdom, compared with his dunce of a brother in Europe;
and upon a night's reflection, Mr. Waghorn's donkeys seem to have
clearly perceived that he had no notion of easy stages, and was bent on
keeping them going as fast as he could, and as long as daylight
suffered. So the second day they managed to stumble, and limp, and fall
down intentionally four or five times, and to put on a pitiful
affectation of fatigue and weariness,--a common dodge, the drivers said,
of those knowing animals.
Fortunately he was soon able to dispense with the deceitful donkeys; and
embarking on the Nile, undertook to navigate the boat himself, in order
to take soundings and make observations in regard to the route. After
brief repose at Rosetta, he set out for Cairo on a _cange_, a sort of
boat of fifteen tons burthen, with two large latteen sails. The captain
undertook to land him at Cairo in three days and four nights; but the
boat went aground on a shoal, and after tacking for five days and
nights, Waghorn lost all patience, and proceeded to his destination upon
donkeys. He crossed the desert from Cairo to Suez in four days, on two
of which he travelled seventy-four miles. He was thus able to keep his
appointment and be at Suez by the 8th December, but there was no sign of
the steamer. The wind was blowing right in her teeth; so after waiting
two days, with feverish impatience, Mr. Waghorn determined to sail down
the centre of the Red Sea, in an open boat, in the hope of meeting the
steamer somewhere above Cossier. All the seamen of the locality held up
their hands at the proposal of the mad Englishman, and tried to dissuade
him. It was the opinion, he knew, of nautical authorities at the time,
that the Red Sea was not navigable. But he could not rest quiet at Suez;
he had important despatches to deliver; he was commissioned to inquire
into the navigability of these waters; and out he would go in an open
boat, let folk say what they would, and so he did.
"He embarked," says the narrator of his "Life and Labours," in
_Household Words_,[E] "in an open boat, and without having any personal
knowledge of the navigation of this sea, without chart, without compass,
or even the encouragement of a single precedent for such an
enterprise--his only guide the sun by day, and the north star by
night--he sailed down the centre of the Red Sea. Of this most
interesting and unprecedented voyage Mr. Waghorn gives no detailed
account. All intermediate things are abruptly cut off with these very
characteristic words: '_Suffice it_ to say, _I arrived_ at Juddah, 620
miles in six and a half days, in that boat!' You get nothing more than
the sum total. He kept a sailor's log-journal; but it is only meant for
sailors to read, though now and then you obtain a glimpse of the sort of
work he went through. Thus: '_Sunday, 13th_--Strong, N.W. wind, half a
gale, but scudding under storm-sail. Sunset, anchored for the night.
Jaffateen Islands out of sight to the N. Lost two anchors during the
night,' &c. The rest is equally nautical and technical. In one of the
many scattered papers collected since the death of Mr. Waghorn, we find
a very slight passing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which,
however, he calmly says, were 'inseparable from such a voyage under such
circumstances,'--but not one touch of description from first to last. A
more extraordinary instance of great practical experience and
knowledge, resolutely and fully carrying out a project which must of
necessity have appeared little short of madness to almost everybody
else, was never recorded. He was perfectly successful, so far as the
navigation was concerned, and in the course he adopted, notwithstanding
that his crew of six Arabs mutinied. It appears (for he tells us only
the bare fact) they were only subdued on the principle known to
philosophers in theory, and to high-couraged men, accustomed to command,
by experience,--namely, that the one man who is braver, stronger, and
firmer than any individual of ten or twenty men, is more than a match
for the ten or twenty put together. He touched at Cossier on the 14th,
not having fallen in with the _Enterprise_. There he was told by the
governor that the steamer was expected every hour. Mr. Waghorn was in no
state of mind to wait very long; so, finding she did not arrive, he
again put to sea in his open boat, resolved, if he did not fall in with
her, to proceed the entire distance to Juddah--a distance of 400 miles
further. Of this further voyage he does not leave any record, even in
his log, beyond the simple declaration that he 'embarked for Juddah--ran
the distance in three days and twenty-one hours and a quarter--and on
the 23d anchored his boat close to one of the East India Company's
cruisers, the _Benares_.' But now comes the most trying part of his
whole undertaking--the part which a man of his vigorously constituted
impulses was least able to bear as the climax of his prolonged and
arduous efforts, privations, anxieties, and fatigue. Repairing on board
the _Benares_ to learn the news, the captain informed him that, in
consequence of being found in a defective state on her arrival at
Bombay, 'the _Enterprise_ was not coming at all.' This intelligence
seems to have felled him like a blow, and he was immediately seized with
a delirious fever. The captain and officers of the _Benares_ felt great
sympathy and interest in this sad result of so many extraordinary
efforts, and detaining him on board, bestowed every attention on his
malady."
It was six weeks before he could proceed by sailing vessel to Bombay,
where he arrived on the 21st March, having, in spite of all the
drawbacks in his way, accomplished the journey in four months and
twenty-one days--quite an extraordinary rapidity at that time. Had he
escaped the fever at Juddah, and fallen in with the _Enterprise_ at the
right time, nearly two months might have been saved.
He had proved the practicability of the overland route, and he now
devoted himself to its establishment. In an address to the Home
Government and the East India Company, he thus expresses his views:--
"Of myself, I trust I may be excused when I say, that the highest object
of my ambition has ever been an extensive usefulness; and my line of
life--my turn of mind--my disposition, long ago impelled me to give all
my leisure, and all my opportunities of observation, to the introduction
of steam-vessels, and permanently establishing them as the means of
communication between India and England including all the colonies on
the route. The vast importance of three months' earlier information to
his Majesty's government, and to the Honourable Company,--whether
relative to a war or a peace--to abundant or to short crops--to the
sickness or convalescence of a colony or district, and oftentimes even
of an individual; the advantages to the merchant, by enabling him to
regulate his supplies and orders according to circumstances and demands;
the anxieties of the thousands of my countrymen in India for accounts,
and further accounts, of their parents, children, and friends at home;
the corresponding anxieties of those relatives and friends in this
country;--in a word, the speediest possible transit of letters to the
tens of thousands who at all times in solicitude await them, was, to my
mind, a service of the greatest general importance; and it shall not be
my fault if I do not, and for ever establish it."
The scheme which he thus resolutely and enthusiastically declared his
adoption of, he lived to carry out, but at the cost of years of weary
advocacy, agitation for help, desperate attempts on his own account, or
in conjunction with a few enterprising associates, in the teeth of
constant discouragement, official indifference, jealousy, and disguised
hostility. The East India Company told him there was no need of steam
navigation to the East at all, ordered him to mind his own business and
return to field service, circulated reports of his insanity through
their agents in Egypt when Waghorn went there to enlist the Pasha in his
cause. The overland route, however, was no theory, but an undoubted
fact. Waghorn never for a moment relaxed his grasp of it, or doubted its
value; and in the end, after unheard of difficulties, disappointments,
and opposition, into the long, painful story of which we need not enter,
succeeded in establishing the overland route. When he left Egypt in
1841, he had provided English carriages, vans, and horses, for the
conveyance of passengers across the desert, placed small steamers on the
Nile and Alexandrian Canal, and built the eight halting-places on the
desert between Cairo and Suez. He also set up the three hotels in the
same quarter "in which every comfort, and even some luxuries, were
provided and stored for the passing traveller,--among which should be
mentioned iron tanks with good water, ranged in cellars beneath;--and
all this in a region which was previously a waste of arid sands and
scorching gravel, beset with wandering robbers and their camels. These
wandering robbers he converted into faithful guides, as they are now
found to be by every traveller; and even ladies with their infants are
enabled to cross and re-cross the desert with as much security as if
they were in Europe."
In acknowledgment of his services, Mr. Waghorn received the rank of
lieutenant in the Royal Navy, a grant of L1500, and an annuity of L200
a-year from Government, and another annuity of L200 from the East India
Company; but he did not live long to enjoy his well-earned rewards. The
care, and anxiety, and fatigue he had undergone had shattered his
constitution. Through some misunderstanding or mismanagement on the part
of the East India Company, rivals were allowed to step in and carry off
the chief profits of the overland system, and his last years were
embittered by various disputes with the authorities. He died in the end
of 1849, by years only in the prime of life; but old, and worn by his
labours before his time. Such was the career of the "pioneer of the
Overland Route."
But in connection with England's route to India, the name of Monsieur de
Lesseps must never be forgotten, nor the great enterprise which, at so
much cost, and in spite of so many obstacles, he successfully carried
out--the Suez Canal. When he first projected it he met with most of the
obstacles which are thrown in the way of great inventions. England,
jealous of a scheme which seemed likely to throw into the hands of a
foreign power the nearest route to her beloved India, stood sullenly
aloof, and refused to contribute moral or pecuniary support; while some
of the most eminent English and foreign engineers openly declared that
it could never be carried out. M. de Lesseps, however, was one of those
men who, when they have seized a great idea, can never be thrown off it.
It had taken full possession of his imagination, judgment, and
intellect! he felt that it _could_, and he determined that it _should_
be realized. He conquered every difficulty: he raised funds; he secured
the support of his own government; and in 1856 he obtained from the
Pasha of Egypt the exclusive privilege of constructing a ship-canal from
Tyneh, near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium, to Suez.
M. de Lesseps determined that his canal should be cut in a straight
line, with an average width of 330 feet, and at an uniform depth of 20
feet under low-water mark, while at each end was to be constructed a
sluice-lock, 330 feet long by 70 wide. Further, at each end he proposed
to execute a magnificent harbour; that at the Mediterranean end was to
be extended five miles into the sea, so as to obtain a permanent depth
of water for a ship drawing twenty-three feet, on account of the
enormous quantity of mud annually silted up by the Nile; that at the Red
Sea end was to be three miles long.
In 1865 the great canal was begun. The Mediterranean entrance is at Port
Said, about the middle of the narrow neck of land between Lake Menzaleh
and the sea, in the eastern part of the Delta. Thence it is carried for
about twenty miles across Menzaleh Lake, being 112 yards wide at the
surface, 26 yards at the bottom, and 26 feet deep. On each side an
artificial bank rises some 15 feet high. The distance thence to Abu
Ballah Lake is 11 miles, through ground which varies from 15 to 30 feet
above the level of the sea. This lake being traversed, there is land
again--a troublesome and shifty soil--to Timsah Lake, the canal being
cut at a depth below the sea-level of 50 to 100 feet. On the shore of
Timsah Lake has risen a new and busy town, the central point of the
canal, and named Ismailia, in honour of the present Pasha of Egypt.
A space of eight miles intervenes between the Timsah Lake and the Bitter
Lakes, and in this space the cuttings are very deep and difficult. The
soil being almost purely sand, the constant labour of powerful dredging
machines is constantly required, to prevent the channel from filling up.
The deepest cutting occurs at El Guisr, or Girsch, and is no less than
85 feet below the surface: at the water-level it is 112 yards wide, at
the summit-level 173 yards. In traversing the Bitter Lakes the course of
the canal is marked by embankments. From the southern end of these lakes
to Suez, a distance of about thirteen miles, the cuttings are heavy and
deep.
After many discouraging failures, M. de Lesseps' great work was
completed last year, and the formal opening of the canal took place in
the presence of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and a goodly number of
princes, potentates, and distinguished personages. It is now open to
navigation from end to end, and ships of considerable tonnage have
successfully accomplished the passage. Whether the canal is a
_commercial_ success may still be doubted. The cost of further deepening
and enlarging it, and of maintaining its banks and harbours, amounts to
a sum which, as yet, the traffic charges are not at all likely to
defray. But, in an engineering sense, the Suez Canal is one of the
wonders of this wonderful nineteenth century.