Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science Part 15

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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.sed 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. Circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sed 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 compa.s.s, 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, anch.o.r.ed 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 pa.s.sing allusion to toils, perils, and privations, which, however, he calmly says, were 'inseparable from such a voyage under such circ.u.mstances,'--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 anch.o.r.ed 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 const.i.tuted 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 circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sociates, 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 pa.s.sengers across the desert, placed small steamers on the Nile and Alexandrian Ca.n.a.l, 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 pa.s.sing 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 1500, and an annuity of 200 a-year from Government, and another annuity of 200 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 const.i.tution. 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 Ca.n.a.l. 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-ca.n.a.l from Tyneh, near the ruins of the ancient Pelusium, to Suez.

M. de Lesseps determined that his ca.n.a.l 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 quant.i.ty of mud annually silted up by the Nile; that at the Red Sea end was to be three miles long.

In 1865 the great ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l being cut at a depth below the sea-level of 50 to 100 feet. On the sh.o.r.e of Timsah Lake has risen a new and busy town, the central point of the ca.n.a.l, and named Ismailia, in honour of the present Pasha of Egypt.

A s.p.a.ce of eight miles intervenes between the Timsah Lake and the Bitter Lakes, and in this s.p.a.ce 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 ca.n.a.l 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 ca.n.a.l 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 pa.s.sage. Whether the ca.n.a.l 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 Ca.n.a.l is one of the wonders of this wonderful nineteenth century.

FOOTNOTES:

[E] August 17, 1850.

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