The great benefactors of our species may be divided into two grand
classes—the men of thought, and the men of action; the men whose genius
was chiefly in the realm of mind, and those whose power lies in tangible
things. Let no one set up the idle and invidious comparison as to which
of the two is the nobler, since both are equally needful to the world’s
progress; all great thoughts and theories, dreams and visions (let us
never fear the truth, but honor it even in using terms of vulgar and
shortsighted opprobrium) of men of genius and knowledge, being the germ
and origin of great actions,—and all great actions being the practical
working out of the former, without which no good to mankind at large can
be accomplished. To set thought and action, therefore, in opposition to
each other, is like setting the arms and legs of Hercules to quarrel
with his head while performing his labours. Nor can the distinction,
thus broadly stated, be drawn at all times with any definite precision,
since the man who conceives and developes a new principle, is sometimes
able to carry it out himself. This combination of powers in the same
individual is very rare, and is obviously one reason why, in most cases,
the originator of a new thing is neglected as a visionary, and a madman.
But the energy of thought to conceive and design displayed by Lieutenant
Waghorn, was more than equalled by the energy of character and action
required to carry out his stupendous plans. Sometimes with the best
assistance—sometimes with none—sometimes in defiance of contest,
opprobrium, and opposition—the vigour of mind and body of this man
caused him to undertake and to succeed in projects which are among the
most prominent of those which especially characterise the genius of the
present age.
We have intimated that Mr. Waghorn was both a man of thought and action,
but this must be understood with certain marked limitations. Mr.
Waghorn’s mind was of that peculiar construction, which appears never to
think earnestly except with a view to action. Even that quality, which
in other men is of the most ideal kind, and commonly exerts itself in
matters of little or no substantiality of fact and purpose, with him
partook of the physicality of his strong nature as much as the admixture
was possible,—so that he may be said to have had a practical
imagination. His objects and designs were welded into all the materials
of his understanding and knowledge; his ambitions and hopes were fused
with the generation of the mighty steam-forces that were to drive his
ships across the ocean and inland seas; the elasticity of his spirit was
identified with the flying speed of Arab horses, and dromedaries
carrying the “mail” across the desert; and when he projected a wonderful
shortening of time and space, he at the same moment beheld the broad
massive arm of England stretched across to govern and make use of her
enormous Indian territories, comprising a hundred million of souls. He
never thought of himself; he was too much engaged with the vastness of
his designs for his country. We shall see how that country rewarded his
efforts.
Thomas Waghorn was born at Chatham, in 1800. At twelve years of age he
became a midshipman in Her Majesty’s Navy; and before he had reached
seventeen, passed in “navigation” for Lieutenant, being the youngest
midshipman that had ever done so—the examination requiring a great
amount of both theoretical and practical knowledge, and being always
conducted with severity. This made him eligible to the rank of
lieutenant, but did not include it. At the close of the year 1817, he
was paid off, and went as third mate of a Free-trader to Calcutta. He
returned home, and, in 1819, obtained an appointment in the Bengal
Marine (Pilot-Service) of India, where he served till 1824. At the
request of the Bengal Government, he now volunteered for the Arracan
War, and received the command of the Honourable East India Company’s
cutter, Matchless, together with a division of gun-boats, and repaired
to the scene of action in Arracan, with the south-eastern division of
that army and flotilla. He was five times in action, saw much rough work
by land and by sea, and escaped with only one wound in the right thigh.
He remained two years and a half in this service, and after having
received the thanks of all the authorities in that province, he returned
to Calcutta in 1827, with a constitution already undermined from the
baneful fever of Arracan, where so many thousands had died.
Weakened as he had been, Mr. Waghorn nevertheless rallied to the great
project he had secretly at heart, namely, “A steam communication between
our Eastern possessions and their mother-country, England.” Even before
his departure from Calcutta on furlough, in 1827, ill in health, and
only imperfectly recovered from the Arracan fever, still, between its
attacks, his energies returned. He communicated his plan to the
officials, namely, the Marine Board at Calcutta, who forthwith advanced
it to the notice of the then Chief Secretary to the Bengal Government,
the present Mr. Charles Lushington, M.P. for Westminster; through whom
he obtained letters of credence from Lord Combermere, then acting as
Vice-President in Council (Earl Amherst, Governor-General, being on a
tour in Upper India), to the Honourable Court of Directors of the East
India Company in London, recommending him, in consequence of his
meritorious conduct in the Arracan War, “as a fit and proper person to
open Steam Navigation with India, _viâ_ the Cape of Good Hope.”
On his homeward voyage, Mr. Waghorn advocated this great object publicly
by every means in his power (the numerous attestations of which lie open
before us) at Madras, the Mauritius, the Cape, and St. Helena. Directly
he arrived in England, he set about the same thing, and advocated the
project at all points, particularly in London, Liverpool, Manchester,
Glasgow, Birmingham. But the Post Office, at that time, was opposed to
ocean steam-navigation; and so, unfortunately, were the East India
Directors,—with the single exception of Mr. Loch. Two whole years were
thus passed in fruitless efforts to make great men open their eyes. At
length, in October, 1829, Mr. Waghorn was summoned by Lord Ellenborough,
the then Chairman of the Court of Directors, to go to India, through
Egypt, with despatches for Sir John Malcolm, Governor of Bombay, &c.,
and more especially, to report upon the practicability of the Red Sea
Navigation for the Overland Route.
On the 28th of October, having had only four days’ previous notice from
the India House, Waghorn started on the top of the Eagle stage-coach
from the Spread Eagle, Gracechurch Street. All his luggage weighed about
twenty pounds. The East India Company’s steam-vessel Enterprise was
expected to be at Suez, in the Red Sea, from India, on or about the 8th
of December. It was much desired that despatches from England should
reach her at this place, which Mr. Waghorn undertook they should do. He
could not speak French nor Italian, both of which would have been very
advantageous; but he had some knowledge of Hindostanee, and a little
Arabic.
On this “trip,” as Waghorn calls it, so extraordinarily rapid was the
first part of his journey, _viz._ to Trieste (accomplished in nine days
and a half, through five kingdoms) that an enquiry was instituted by the
Foreign Office respecting it; for at this time our Post Office Letters
occupied fourteen days in reaching that place. Yet Waghorn had been
obliged to travel upwards of one hundred and thirty miles out of his
direct way, in consequence of broken bridges, falling avalanches, and
the disabling of a steamer.
Instantly enquiring for the quickest means of getting on to Alexandria,
he was informed that an Austrian brig had sailed only the evening
before, and having had calms and light airs all night, she was still in
sight from the tops of the hills. Away he dashed in a fresh posting
carriage, because if he could reach Pesano, through Capo D’Istria,
twenty miles down the eastern side of the Gulf of Venice, before the
Austrian vessel had passed, he might embark from this port as passenger
for Alexandria. On reaching Pesano, he could still distinguish the
vessel, and he accordingly strove to increase the rapidity of his chase
to the utmost. He got within three miles of the vessel. At this juncture
a strong northerly wind sprang up, and carrying her forward on her
course, she was presently lost to sight. Exhausted in body, and
“racked,” as he says, by disappointment after the previous excitement,
he returned to Trieste.
Ascertaining that the next opportunity of getting to Alexandria would be
by a Spanish ship, which was now taking in her cargo in the quarantine
ground, he instantly hastened there. The captain informed him that he
could not possibly sail in less than three days, and required one
hundred dollars for the passage. Waghorn directly offered him one
hundred and fifty dollars if he would sail in eight-and-forty hours.
Whereupon the captain found that it _was_ just possible to do so; and he
kept his word.
“After a tedious passage of sixteen days,” says Waghorn, to whom every
hour that did not fly was no doubt tedious, “I arrived at Alexandria,
but hearing that Mr. Barker, who held the combined offices of Consul
General in Egypt, and agent to the Honourable East India Company, was
at his country-house at Rosetta, I hired donkeys, and was on my way
for it after five hours’ stay at Alexandria.”
One ludicrous characteristic of the Alexandrian donkeys is worth
recording. Never in future can we regard the epithet of “an ass,” as
being properly synonymous with stupidity. The creatures ambled and
trotted along very well during the first day; but on the subsequent
morning, when they clearly perceived that a long journey was before
them, they fell down intentionally four or five times, with all the
signs of fatigue and weakness. The drivers informed him that it was a
common practice of the donkeys.
Embarking on the Nile, our traveller made it his business to navigate
the boat himself, in order to take soundings, and to obtain as much
knowledge as would promote both the immediate and future objects of his
journey.
Mr. Waghorn rested at Rosetta, to recover from his fatigue, and then set
out for Cairo on a _cangé_, a sort of boat of fifteen tons’ burthen,
with two large latteen-sails. The _rais_, or captain, agreed to land him
at Cairo in three days and four nights, or receive nothing. This he
failed to do, in consequence of the boat grounding on the shoal of
Shallakan. Waghorn’s notions of a reason for fatigue, may be curiously
gathered from a remark he makes incidentally on this occasion. “The
crew,” says he, “were _almost_ fatigued: we have been continually
tacking for _five_ days and nights.” Being out of all patience, he left
the boat, and again mounting donkeys, proceeded with his servant to
Cairo. He left his luggage behind him, merely taking his despatches.
Having obtained camels, and a requisite passport from the Pasha,
Mohammed Ali, to guarantee his safe passage across the Desert of Suez;
Mr. Waghorn left Cairo on the 5th of December for Suez, and at sunset
had pitched his tent on the Desert at six miles distance.
At dawn of day, he was again on his journey, and managed to travel
thirty-four miles beneath the burning sun before he halted. The next day
he journeyed thirty miles, and in the evening pitched his tent only four
miles short of Suez. The next day, he reached the appointed place, and
there rested, the Enterprise not having yet arrived.
While waiting with the greatest impatience the arrival of this steamer,
Mr. Waghorn appears to have endeavoured to calm himself by jotting down
a few observations on the Desert he had just crossed. These
observations, slight and few as they are, must be “made much of,” as
they are, of all things, the rarest with him. He always saw the _end_
before him, and nearly all his observations were confined to the means
of attaining it.
“The Desert of Suez, commencing from Cairo, a gentle ascent, about
thirty-five miles on the way; then, the same gradual descent till you
arrive at the plains of Suez. The soil of the first five miles from
Cairo is fine sand; then, coarse sand, inclinable to gravel. Within
twelve miles of Suez” (notice—he is tired already of description, and
brings you within twelve miles of the place) “you meet many sand-hills
between, till you arrive at the plains before mentioned, which form a
perfect level for miles in extent, leading you to the gates of Suez.
“The antelopes I observed in parties of about a dozen each, and the
camel-drivers informed me that they creep under the shrubs about
eighteen inches high, to catch the drops of dew, which is the only
means they have of relieving their thirst. I saw partridges in covies
of from six to seven, but nowhere on the wing: they were running about
the Desert, and I was informed they were not eaten even by the Arabs.”
Considering the food they pick up in the Desert, perhaps this is no
wonder.
Having informed us that camels are to be had very cheaply at Suez—say a
dollar each camel for fifty miles’ distance—and that the water is very
brackish, he suddenly adds, with characteristic brevity, “To save
recapitulation in _describing_ Cossier, it is the same as Suez, _viz._,
camels are to be had in abundance at a trifling expense, and the water
is as bad.”
He remained at Suez two days, waiting with feverish anxiety the expected
arrival of the Enterprise. She still did not appear—a strong N.W. wind
blowing directly down the sea. Being quite unable to endure the suspense
any longer, he determined to embark on the Red Sea in an open boat,
intending to sail down its centre, in hopes of meeting her between Suez
and Cossier.
All the seamen of the locality vigorously remonstrated with Mr. Waghorn
against this attempt, and he well knew that the nautical authorities,
both of the East India House and the British Government, were of opinion
that the Red Sea was not navigable. But he had important Government
despatches to deliver—had pledged himself to deliver them on board the
Enterprise, and considering that his course of duty, as well as his
reputation as a traveller, were at stake, he persisted in his
determination. Accordingly, he embarked 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, the narrative of
which everybody would have read with such avidity, Mr. Waghorn gives no
detailed account. He disappoints you of all the circumstances. 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, _viz._, 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 four hundred
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 23rd 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.
“Thus baffled,” writes Mr. Waghorn, “I was six weeks before I could
proceed onward to Bombay by sailing vessel.” On arriving at Bombay with
his despatches, the thanks of the Government in Council, &c., were voted
to him, “for having, when disappointed of a steamer, proceeded with
these despatches in an open boat, down the Red Sea, &c.” There was
evidently much more said of a complimentary kind, but Waghorn cuts all
short with the _et cætera_.
He reached Bombay on the 21st of March, having thus accomplished his
journey from London in four months and twenty-one days—an extraordinary
rapidity at this date, 1830. Of course, the time he was detained in
Cairo, Suez, Cossier, and Juddah (where he lay ill with the fever six
weeks), ought to be deducted, because he would have saved all this time,
fever inclusive, if he had not expected the Enterprise from India.
He now turned his attention to a series of fresh exhortations to large
public meetings which he convened at different places—Calcutta, Madras,
the Isle of France, the Cape of Good Hope, St. Helena, &c., on the
subject of shortening the route from England to India, and greatly
lessening the time. He described the various points of the new route he
proposed, and also the new kind of steam-vessel which it was advisable
to have built and fitted up, for the sole purpose of a rapid
transmission of the mail. In an “Address to His Majesty’s Ministers and
the Honourable East India Company,” which we find among his papers,
there occurs the following passage—simple in expression, noble in its
quiet modesty, but pregnant with enormous results to his country, all of
which have already, in a great degree, been accomplished.
“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 a service to my mind,” (of the greatest
general importance) “and it shall not be my fault if I do not, and for
ever, establish it.”
By his indefatigable efforts in India, having extensively made known his
plans and methods for accomplishing these great objects, and bringing
home with him the testimonial of thanks he had received from the
Governor in Council of Bombay, he returned to England. Let his own
words—homely, earnest, straightforward, full of sailor-like simplicity,
impulsive, and fraught with important results—relate his reception.
“Armed with the record of the Governor’s thanks, I commenced an active
agitation in India for the establishment of steam to Europe. In
prosecution of this design, I returned to England, expecting, of
course, to be received with open arms—at the India House especially.
Judge of my surprise on being told by the successor of Mr. Loch
(Chairman of the court), that the India Company required no steam to
the East at all!
“I told him that the feeling in India was most ardent for it; that I
had convened large public meetings at Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta,
and, in fact, all over the Peninsula, which I had traversed by _dawk_;
that the Governor-General, Lord William Bentinck, was enthusiastic in
the same cause, and had done me the honour to predict (with what
prescience need not now, in 1849, be stated), that if ever the object
was accomplished, it would be by the man who had navigated the Red Sea
in an open boat, under the circumstances already named.
“To all this the Chairman made answer that the Governor-General and
people of India had nothing to do with the India House; and if I did
not go back and join _their_ pilot service, to which I belonged, I
should receive such a communication from that House as would be by no
means agreeable to me!
“On the instant I penned my resignation, and placing it in his hands,
then gave utterance to the sentiment which actuated me from that
moment till the moment I realised my aspiration—that I would establish
the Overland Route, in spite of the India House.”
How little must the public of the present day be prepared to find such a
condition of affairs, or anything in the shape of antagonism in such a
quarter, now that the Overland Route has become not only a practical
thing for the “mail” but for ordinary travellers and tourists, and a
matter of panorama and pantomime, of dioramic effects and burlesque
songs—the sublime, and the ridiculous! But how did it fare with our
enterprising sailor, after penning his resignation, and handing it in
with such a declaration and defiance?
“This avowal,” says Lieutenant Waghorn, “most impolitic on my part as
regarded my individual interests, is perhaps the key to much of the
otherwise inexplicable opposition I subsequently met with from those
upon whose most energetic co-operation I had every apparent reason to
rely. I proceeded to Egypt, not only without official recommendation,
but with a sort of official stigma on my sanity!
“The Government nautical authorities reported that the Red Sea was not
navigable; and the East India Company’s naval officers declared, that,
if it _were_ navigable, the North-Westers peculiar to those waters,
and the South-West monsoons of the Indian Ocean, would swallow all
steamers up! And, as if there were not enough to crush me in the eyes
of foreigners and my own countrymen, documents were actually laid
before Parliament, showing that coals had cost the East India Company
twenty pounds per ton, at Suez, and had taken _fifteen months_ to get
there.”
Notwithstanding all these apparently overwhelming allegations, Mr.
Waghorn succeeded in convincing the Pasha of the entire practicability
of his plans; and having fully gained the confidence of that potentate,
he obtained permission to proceed according to his own judgment. By
means of his intimate knowledge of the whole route and all its
contingencies, Mr. Waghorn saw that coals might be brought readily
enough to Alexandria—then up the Nile—then across the Desert on
camels—for not more than five pounds per ton. He immediately hastened
back to England, and was “fortunate enough” to impress his conviction on
this point on a very able public servant, Mr. Melville, Secretary to the
East India House; and through his instrumentality one thousand tons of
coals were conveyed by the route, and by the means above-mentioned, from
the pit’s mouth to the hold of the steamer at Suez, for four pounds
three shillings and sixpence.
“From that hour to this (June, 1849), the same plan, at the same, and
even a smaller cost, has been pursued in respect of all the coals of
the East India Company,—the saving in ten years being _three quarters
of a million_ sterling, as between the estimated, and the actual cost
of coal.”
Having now most deservedly obtained the friendship of the Pasha, Mr.
Waghorn was enabled to establish mails to India, and to keep that
service in his own hands during five years. On one occasion he actually
succeeded in getting letters from Bombay to England in _forty-seven
days_; and immediately afterwards both the English Government and the
Honourable East India Company, at the pressing solicitations of the
London, East India, and China Associations (Mr., since Sir George
Larpent, Chairman) started mails of their own—taking from Mr. Waghorn
the conveyance of letters, without the least compensation for the loss,
from that time to this (1849); these authorities having, till then,
repeatedly declared that they had no intention of having mails by this
route at all.
It should not be omitted, that, during these efforts, Mr. Waghorn
feeling that his position in India would be much advantaged, and
therefore his means of utility, if he could receive the rank of
Lieutenant in the British Navy, made repeated applications to this
effect, from 1832 to 1842. But in vain. He thought that his great
services might have obtained this reward for him, especially as it would
add to his means of usefulness. But no. Government, like the serpent, is
a wonderful “wise beast,” and the ways of Ministers are inscrutable. All
spoke of his merits, but none rewarded them. At length, in 1842, Lord
Haddington, being Head of the Admiralty, did grant this scarce and
astonishing honour! Egypt actually beheld the man, who had brought
England within forty-seven days of her sands, before any steam system
was in operation between the two countries, permitted to write the
letters R.N. after his natural name!
In conjunction with others, partners in the undertaking, Lieutenant
Waghorn now arranged for the carriage of passengers, the building of
hotels at Alexandria, Cairo, and other places, and he soon familiarised
the Desert with the novel spectacle of harnessed horses, vans, and all
the usual adjuncts of English travelling, instead of the precarious Arab
and his primeval camel. These, with packet-boats on the Nile, and the
canal (and afterwards with steamers), duly provided with English
superintendants, rendered Eastern travel as easy as a journey of the
same length in the hot summer of any of the most civilised countries.
Lieutenant Waghorn had now every prospect of making this hitherto
undreamed-of novelty as profitable to himself in remuneration of his
many arduous labours, as it was serviceable and commodious to the vast
numbers of all countries, especially his own, who availed themselves of
it. But unfortunately, just when his enterprise, industry, capital, and
his possession of Mehemet Ali’s friendship were beginning to produce
their natural results, the honourable English Government and the
honourable East India Company “gave the monopoly of a chartered contract
to an opulent and powerful Company!” Lieutenant Waghorn had coupled with
his passenger system the carriage of overland parcels, which was a
source of great profit, and through it there was a constant accession to
the comforts of the passengers in transit. But it would seem as if the
Government and the India House regarded this man only as an instrument
to work out advantages for them, in especial, and the world at large,
but the moment he had a prospect of obtaining some reward for himself,
it was proper to stop him. Had he not been allowed to write Lieutenant
before his name, and R.N. after it? What more would he have?
“This Company,” says Waghorn, “already extensive carriers by water,
gleaned from my firm the secret of conducting my business with an
alleged view to supply it on a much more comprehensive scale, and _to
employ us in so doing_; but when nothing more remained to be learned
from us, we were forthwith superseded, though with a useless and
utterly unproductive expenditure, on the part of our successors, of
six times the money we should have required to accomplish the same
end. Overwhelmed by the competition of this giant association, I was
entirely deprived of all advantages of this creation of my own energy,
and left with it a ruin on my hands, though to have secured me at
least the Egyptian transit would not only have been but the merest
justice to an individual, but would have been a material gain to the
British, public, politically and otherwise. In my hand the English
traffic was English, and I venture to say that English it would have
continued to this day, had I not been interfered with. But my
successors gave it up to the Pasha.”
The absence of all circumstantial descriptions and all graphic details
in the papers, both printed and in manuscript, we have previously
noticed. We had at first made sure of being able to present our readers
with a picturesque and exciting narrative of the Life and Adventures of
Lieutenant Waghorn—for adventures, in abundance, both on the sea and the
Desert, he must assuredly have had; but he does not give us a single peg
to hang an action or event upon, not a single suggestion for a romantic
scene. Once we thought we had at last discovered among his papers a
treasure of this kind. It was a manuscript bound in a strong cover, and
having a patent lock. Inside was printed, in large letters, “Private:
Daily Remembrancer: Mr. Waghorn.” It contains absolutely nothing of the
kind that was evidently at first intended. It is crammed full of
newspaper cuttings; and the only memoranda and remembrances are two or
three melancholy affairs of bills and mortgages made to pay debts
incurred in the public service. So much for his daily journal of events
while travelling. He was manifestly so completely a man of action, that
he could not afford a minute to note it down. Had it not been for the
vexatious oppositions by which he was thwarted, and the painful
memorials and petitions he was subsequently compelled, as we shall find,
to present in various quarters, we verily believe he would have given us
no written records at all of a single thing he did, and all that would
have been left, in the course of a few years after his death, would have
been the “Overland Route,” and the name of “Waghorn.”
We must now take a cursory view of his labours. To do this in any
regular order is hardly possible, partly from the space they would
occupy, but yet more from the desultory and unmanageable condition of
the papers and documents before us.
During many years he sailed and travelled hundreds of thousands of miles
between England and India, more particularly from the year 1827 to 1835,
inclusive; passing up and down the Red Sea with mails, before the East
India Company had any steam system on that sea. On one very special
occasion, on this side the Isthmus, in October 1839, when the news
arrived at Alexandria from Bombay, of Sir John (late Lord) Keane’s
success at Ghuznee, he managed to obtain the use of the Pasha of Egypt’s
own steamer, the Generoso, the very next day after Her Majesty’s steamer
left Alexandria; and he personally commanded this vessel, and conveyed
the mail to Malta, which was immediately sent on by the Admiral there,
to England. Of such acts of special usefulness on occasions of great
emergency, numerous instances might be related of him. His services in
Egypt are well known to all who dwell there, or have travelled in that
country. For the information of such as may not have any personal
knowledge of these things, we may mention a few of the most prominent.
Lieutenant Waghorn and his partners, without any aid whatever, with the
single exception of the Bombay Steam Committee, built the eight halting
places on the Desert, between Cairo and Suez; also the three hotels
established above them, 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 recross the Desert with as much security as if they
were in Europe.
He neglected no means of making us acquainted with our position and line
of policy in these countries. He wrote and published pamphlets in
England to show the justice and sound policy of our having friendly
relations with Egypt, in opposition to the undue position of Turkey
(1837, 1838); also, to make his countrymen conversant with the character
of Mehemet Ali, and with the countries of Egypt, Arabia, and Syria
(1840); another on the acceleration of mails between England and the
East (1843); and a letter to Earl Grey on emigration to Australia
(1848). At this time, in conjunction with Mr. Wheatley, he had
established an agency for the Overland Route to India, China, &c., and
had offices in Cornhill, which are still in active operation. The
enormous subsequent increase of letters to India by the mail, may be
inferred from this fact—that in his first arrangement, Lieutenant
Waghorn had all letters for India sent to Messrs. Smith and Elder of
Cornhill, to be stamped, and then forwarded to him in Alexandria: the
earliest despatches amounted to one hundred and eighty-four letters;
this number is now more than doubled by the correspondence of Smith and
Elder alone, on their own business. They were the first booksellers who
rightly appreciated Mr. Waghorn’s efforts; and they cordially
co-operated with him.
“When he left Egypt, in 1841, he had established English carriages,
vans, and horses, for the passengers’ conveyance across the Desert
(instead of camels); indeed, he placed small steamers (from England)
on the Nile and the canal of Alexandria. Every fraction of his money
was spent by him in getting more and more facilities; and, had the
saving of money been one of the characteristics of his nature, the
Overland Route would not be as useful as it now is—and this is
acknowledged by all. Mr. Waghorn claimed for himself, and most justly,
the merit of this work: he claimed it without fear of denial; and
stated upon his honour, that no money or means were ever received by
him from either Her Majesty’s Government or the East India Company to
aid it. It grew into life altogether from his having, by his own
energy and private resources, worked the ‘Overland Mails’ to and from
India for two years, (from 1831 to 1834) in his own individual person.
‘Will it be believed,’ says he, ‘that up to that time Mr. Waghorn was
thought and called by many, a Visionary, and by some a Madman?’”
It may very easily be believed that this was thought and said, as it is
a common practice with the world when anything extraordinary is
performed for the first time; and though it may be hard enough for the
individual to bear, we may simply set it down as the first step to the
admission of his success. But it is very clear the Pasha was wise enough
to recognise the value of the man who had done so much, and not only
accorded him his friendship and assistance on all occasions, but sent
him on one occasion as his confidential messenger to Khosru Pasha, Grand
Vizier to the Sultan at Constantinople, in 1839, as well as to Lord
Ponsonby, who was there as Ambassador from England at this time.
Nor did his merit pass unrecognised in his own country; first by the
public generally, though, perhaps, first of all by the “Times”
newspaper, the proprietors of which were subsequently munificent in
their pecuniary assistance of his efforts in the Trieste experiments, as
indeed were the morning papers generally. In six successive months he
accomplished the gain of thirteen days _viâ_ Trieste over the Marseilles
route. Lords Palmerston and Aberdeen, as foreign ministers of England;
Lords Ellenborough, Glenelg, and Ripon, and Sir John Hobhouse, as
presidents of the India Board, were also fully aware of his labours in
bringing about the “Overland Route” through Egypt, and thus giving
stability to English interests in our Eastern empire.
And now comes the melancholy end of all these so arduous and important
labours. Embarrassed in his own private circumstances from the
expenditure of all his own funds, and large debts contracted besides,
solely in effecting these public objects, he was compelled, after vainly
endeavouring to extricate himself by establishing in London an office of
agency for the Overland Route, to apply to the India House and the
Government for assistance. His constitution was by this time broken up
by the sort of toil he had gone through in the last twenty years, and he
merely asked to have his public debts paid, and enough allowed him as a
pension to enable him to close his few remaining days in rest. He was
still in the prime of life; but prematurely old from his hard work.
In consequence of various memorials and petitions the India House
awarded Lieutenant Waghorn a pension of 200_l._ per annum; and the
Government did the same. But they would not pay the debts he had
contracted in their service. If he had made a bad bargain, he must abide
by it, and suffer for it. Both pensions, therefore, were compromised to
his creditors, and he remained without any adequate means of support.
The following extract, with which we must conclude, is from his last
memorial:—
“The immediate origin and cause of my embarrassments was a forfeited
promise on the part of the Treasury and the India House, whereby only
four instead of six thousand pounds, relied on by me, were paid
towards the Trieste Route experiments in the winter of 1846–7, when,
single-handed, and despite unparalleled and wholly unforeseen
difficulties, I eclipsed, on five trials out of six, the long
organised arrangements of the French authorities, specially stimulated
to all possible exertion, and supplied with unlimited means by M.
Guizot. On the first of these six occasions, there arose the breaking
down, on the Indian Ocean, of the steamer provided for me, thereby
trebling the computed expenses through the delay; and when, startled
by this excessive outlay, I hesitated to entail more, the Treasury and
the India House told me to proceed, to do the service well, and make
out my bill afterwards. I did proceed. I did the service not only
well, not only to the satisfaction of my employers, but in a manner
that elicited the admiration of Europe, as all the Continental and
British journals of that period, besides heaps of private
testimonials, demonstrated. My rivals, to whom the impediments in my
path were best known, were loudest in their acknowledgments; and the
only drawback to my just pride was the incredulity manifested in some
quarters, that I could have actually accomplished what (it is
notorious) I did at any time, much less among the all but impassable
roads of the Alps, in the depth of a winter of far more than ordinary
Alpine severity. I presented my bill. _It was dishonoured._ I had made
myself an invalid, had sown the seeds of a broken constitution, in the
performance of that duty. The disappointment occasioned by the
non-payment of the two thousand pounds, has preyed incessantly upon me
since; and now, a wreck alike almost in mind and body, I am sustained
alone by the hope, that the annals of the Insolvent Court will not
have inscribed upon them the Pioneer of the Overland Route, because of
obligations he incurred for the public, by direction of the public
authorities.”
The date of this memorial is June 8th, 1849. High testimonials are
appended to it from Lords Palmerston, Aberdeen, Ellenborough, Harrowby,
Combermere, Ripon, Sir John Hobhouse, Sir Robert Gordon, and Mr. Joseph
Hume. But it did not produce any effect; the debts and the harassing
remained; and the pioneer of the Overland Route died very shortly
afterwards;—we cannot say of a broken heart, because his constitution
had been previously shattered by his labours. Yet it looks sadly like
this. He might have lived some years longer. He was only forty-seven.
The pension awarded him by the India House he had only possessed
eighteen months; and the pension from Government had been yet more
tardily bestowed, so that he only lived to receive the first quarter.
At his death both pensions died with him, his widow being left to
starve. The India House, however, have lately granted her a pension of
fifty pounds; and the Government, naïvely stating, as if in excuse for
the extravagance, that it was in consequence of the “eminent services”
performed by her late husband, awarded her the sum of twenty-five pounds
per annum. This twenty-five pounds having been the subject of many
comments from the press, both of loud indignation and cutting ridicule,
the Government made a second grant, with the statement that “in
consequence of the _extreme_ destitution of Mrs. Waghorn,” a further sum
was awarded of fifteen pounds more! This is the fact, and such are the
terms of the grant. Why, it reads like an act of clemency towards some
criminal or other offender;—“You have been very wicked, you know; but as
you are in _extreme destitution_, here are a few pounds more.”
While these above-mentioned petitions, memorials, and struggles for life
and honour were going on, great numbers of our wealthy countrymen were
rushing with bags of money to pour out at the feet of Mr. Hudson, M.P.,
in reward for his having made the largest fortune in the shortest time
ever known;—and soon after the Government munificence had been bestowed
on the destitute widow of Lieutenant Waghorn, the Marquis of Lansdowne
and the Marquis of Londonderry, in their places in the House of Lords,
eulogised the splendid “military ability” of F. M. the late Duke of
Cambridge, speaking in high terms of the great deeds he would have
achieved, “if he had only had an opportunity,” and voting a pension of
twelve thousand pounds a year to his destitute son, and three thousand
pounds a year to his destitute daughter.
We have now beheld the labours, and the reward, of the pioneer of the
Overland Route; who, for the establishment of this route and for
manifold services subsequently rendered, received the “thanks” of three
quarters of the globe, that is to say, of Europe, Asia, and Africa,
“besides numberless letters of ‘thanks’ from mercantile communities at
every point where Eastern trade is concerned!” His public debts are not
paid to this day.