Last updated 10th July 2024: Online ordering is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We apologise for any delays responding to customers while we resolve this. For further updates please visit our website https://www.cambridge.org/news-and-insights/technical-incident
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2009
The letter book on which this article is based was brought to my attention by postal history dealers Argyll Etkin; I am most grateful to them for giving me generous access to such interesting material. The letter book is for the year 1840, a critical year in the wider political sense and more specifically for one of the chief instigators of the mail route between Britain and India overland through Egypt, Thomas Waghorn. The letters are from Waghom's office in Alexandria, mostly by him to his London office at 39 Cornhill but some to Waghorn during a brief visit he made in mid-year, first to Malta, the halfway station to Alexandria, and subsequently to London. They reveal many aspects of the organisation: details of financing; handling of mail and passengers; means of transport and the preferred route; difficulties with timetables; competition within and without Egypt; as well as the character of Waghorn himself. And all this against a background of the evolving “Eastern Question” – the transfer of European rivalries to the Ottoman Empire that was to obsess the governments of the main European powers for much of the nineteenth century.
1 In 1800, the Marquis Wellesley complained that “in the present year I was nearly seven months without receiving one line of intelligence from England … so that I suffered almost insupportable distress of mind … Speedy, authentic and regular intelligence from Europe is essential to the conduct of the trade and government of this empire” ( Wellesley, , Despatches, 1836 Google Scholar; letter of October 6th, 1800). Wellesley established a fortnightly courier service using the Mesopotamian route.
2 Baldwin had been trading in the Levant since 1760; in 1775 he established himself in Egypt as consul for both the Levant Company and agent for the East India Company, in the latter case authorised to speed mail through Egypt. In 1778 he forwarded to India the news of the outbreak of the American War of Independence in time for the British to attack French positions–68 days London to Madras ( Baldwin, , Political Recollections Relevant to Egypt, 1801 Google Scholar).
3 An invasion of Egypt was proposed initially by one Baron de Tott and interest in Egypt sustained by such travellers as Volney ( Voyage en Syrie et en Egypte 1783–84, Paris, 1878 Google Scholar) and Savary ( Lettres sur l’Egypte …, Paris, 1785 Google Scholar); Baldwin drew attention to the potential French menace in a pamphlet published in 1784. In 1790 a memorial was submitted to the French National Assembly by the mercantile community of Marseille, well entrenched in the Levant and encouraged by the French consul-general in Egypt Charles Magellon [ Charles-Roux, , Les Origines de l’Éxpédition d’Egypte, p. 225 Google Scholar].
4 A number of travellers had passed through Egypt and the Red Sea on their way to India, their accounts helping to publicise the route; among them were Bruce, James (Travels to Discover the Source of the Nile, 1768–1773, London, 1790 Google Scholar) Irwin, Eyles (… Adventures up the Red Sea, on the Coasts of Arabia and Egypt … in 1777, London, 1780 Google Scholar) and Capper, James (Observations on the Passage to India …, London, 1783 Google Scholar).
5 Muhammad Ali (late 1760s–1849), an Albanian soldier who arrived in Egypt in 1801 with an Albanian contingent joining forces with the British to oust the French; he deposed the Ottoman governor in 1805 and in 1811 dramatically destroyed Mamluk power by massacring leading Mamluks in the Cairo citadel. He was thereafter free to embark on a programme of modernisation in which he employed a number of European technicians. An interesting contemporary commentary was written by the (Francophobic) DrMadden, R. R., Egypt and Muhammad Ali, 1841 Google Scholar; see also EI2 and Yapp, 1987.
6 British politicians were sometimes slow to catch on to the commercial potential of the steam engine, to power not only communications but also the rapidly expanding Lancashire cotton industry (see below for Waghom's courting of Lancashire merchants).
7 Reactions to the Enterprize's achievement are well expressed in the Bombay Courier, on 03 3rd and 05 27th, 1825 Google Scholar and in the Oriental Herald IV, 1825, p. 395 Google Scholar. See also Searight, 1990, pp. 22–9.
8 “He only left Bombay yesterday morning, was seen in the Red Sea on Tuesday, is engaged to dinner this afternoon in the Regent's Park, and (as it is about 2 minutes since I saw him in the courtyard), I make no doubt he is by this time at Alexandria or Malta” ( Thackeray, , 1845, p. 177 Google Scholar).
9 Waghorn's early career is best followed in Sidebottom, Sankey, and Hoskins. Initially convinced of the merits of the Cape route for mail to India, in 1829 he changed his mind and rushed to India via Egypt and the Red Sea, arriving in Bombay the day after Bombay's own steamer, the Hugh Lindsay, left for the Red Sea, the first steamer to enter those waters. Waghorn had hoped to rendezvous with the Hugh Lindsay at Suez.
10 G.P.O. archives, Post 29/27.
11 Thomas Love Peacock, addressing the Select Committee as secretary of the East India Company, warned against “the aggressive power of Russia in the East” persuading the Committee to vote funds for Chesney to explore the Euphrates route further (Parl. papers, 1834, no. 478).
12 Bevan, , pp. 27–9Google Scholar.
13 Sidebottom, , pp. 144–5Google Scholar.
14 Campbell's report is in FO 78/408B. Campbell was withdrawn from his post at the end of 1839 for being too favourable towards Muhammad Ali; in the margin of this report Palmerston commented, that the postal service was as much to the Pasha's advantage as to Britain's, which indeed it was.
15 Smith, , Cornhill, p. 569 Google Scholar.
17 Smith & Elder later became the publisher and founder of The Cornhill Magazine, the November 1900 issue of which contains George Smith's reminiscences of Waghorn. The company's business then was chiefly in exports to India, as well as a publishing business which included the Brontes among its authors. Smith, , p. 578 Google Scholar.
18 The problems of sailing from Southampton were nicely described by Alexander Macrabie in his journal of 1774 in the India Office Library (MSS Eur.E.25), voyages to India often delayed, as Macrabie's was, for several weeks waiting for a favourable wind to take vessels out into the Channel.
19 Emma Roberts (1794–1840) wrote articles on the Overland Route for the Asiatic Journal. She died in India in 1840. For a description of the route through France, see her Notes, pp. 2'50.
20 Details of the negotiations for the Convention for the Conveyance of Mails through France, signed in May 1839, are contained in the GPO archives, 330P/1839.
21 The Times, 01 6th, 1833 Google Scholar.
22 Smith, , Cornhill, p. 579 Google Scholar.
23 A. & W. Galignani were the publishers in Paris of Galignani's Messenger, for which Thackeray worked in 1835. Thackeray reports in Cornhill to Cairo “how we enjoyed a file of the admirable Messenger in the consulate in Alexandria” (p. 167). Waghorn used Galignani as his forwarding agent in Paris.
24 Bombay Calendar and Almanac, 1839.
25 A British expeditionary force had captured Kabul in June 1839, to replace the Afghan ruler Dost Muhammad with Shah Shuja – the prologue to the Afghan war of 1842.
26 FO, 78/472.
27 See Giraud, Hubert, Les origines et l’ evolution de la navigation à vapeur à Marseille, Marseille 1929 Google Scholar, also Charles Roux, Origines.
28 However, Dr R. R. Madden, travelling aboard the French steamer Tancrède in 1840, noted with satisfaction its English engines and engineers. Madden, , Egypt, p. 259 Google Scholar.
29 Bevan, Samuel, Sand and Canvas, 1849, pp. 16–17 Google Scholar.
30 See letter from Henry Byam Martin to his parents October 1834, Martin papers in British Library, Add MSS 41463.
31 The coal had to be good South Wales coal, despatched either via the Mediterranean or via the Cape, to Aden, Mokha, Suez and Muscat. Coal at Suez cost £3 a ton in Waghorn's day. For coal consumption see Searight, p. 8 Google Scholar, also Select Committee papers for 1834 and 1837.
32 PO, 330P/1839.
33 The all-sea route was slighdy cheaper than the quicker route through France, estimated at another £15. Hoskins 1928 (p. 229, note 68) estimated the one-way fare London–Calcutta via Marseille in 1832 at about £170. Madden 1841 (p. 259) noted the Mediterranean fare by French packet as 280 francs Marseille to Malta, and a further 56 dollars (a confusing change of currency) from Malta to Alexandria via the Aegean coaling port of Syra, with six francs a day for food.
34 It was the Madras Steam Committee that sent out the heart-rending appeal for improved steam communications: “Every mile of distance saved …” Asiaticjoumal, XXV, NS Pt. II, p. 191 Google Scholar.
35 Some of the best advice for passengers proposing to follow the Overland Route is contained in Major Charles Franklin Head's Observations on the Overland Route. Head was commissioned by Sir John Malcolm, governor of Bombay, to report on the route and published his Observations in 1832.
36 Samuel Briggs (1767–1853), a British merchant and banker, acted as “pro-consul” in Egypt and agent of the Levant Company in Alexandria; he was heavily involved in the wheat and cotton trade from the establishment of Muhammad Ali as ruler of Egypt in 1805. See Rodkey, , pp. 324–52Google Scholar, Bierbrier, , p. 63 Google Scholar.
37 Madden, , 1841, p. 269 Google Scholar.
38 Thackeray, , p. 165 Google Scholar.
39 Roberts, , pp. 91–3Google Scholar.
40 Robinson, , Biblical Researches in Palestine, i, p. 359 Google Scholar.
41 Roberts, , pp. 160–1Google Scholar.
42 Consular documents relating to the dispute are in FO, 78/408 and 78/408A. Mr J. R. Hill and Mr Raven were both engineers, attracted to Egypt by Muhammad Ali's policy of modernisation. Raven (initials unknown) may have been a wheelwright working initially with Thomas Galloway.
43 According to an 1844 guidebook by J. B. Stocqueler, dinner at the central station could be had for four shillings, champagne for 8 shillings and a bucket of water for animals for 3 shillings. Samuel Bevan reported a complaint that the champagne was too warm but “I never found anyone returning make any unreasonable objections of this kind” (Bevan, p. 62 Google Scholar).
44 Rather typically of Palmerston, he complained in the margin that Hodges was using too light an ink for his correspondence; he surely could find black ink in Alexandria.
45 Muhammad Ali had suggested a railway link between Cairo and Suez as early as 1832. Thomas Galloway surveyed the route in 1834 but lack of funds and French opposition deferred the project; it was revived in the mid-1840s and a single track between Alexandria and Cairo opened in 1856, continuing to Suez in 1857–9.
46 Robinson, , i, p. 224 Google Scholar.
47 The Red Sea was charted in the early 1830s by Captain Robert Moresby and Lt Thomas Elwon, also of the Bombay Marine, in the schooner Palinurus.
48 For funding details see PO, 29 Pkt 330P/1839.
49 Roberts, , pp. 166–76.Google Scholar
50 See Waghorn, 's Particulars of an Overland Journey from London to Bombay, 1831 Google Scholar, for details of his first attempt to establish the overland route.
51 Chesney, , 1850 Google Scholar. See also Ainsworth, W. S., Personal Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition, 2 vols (London, 1888 Google Scholar).
52 For further details on the Euphrates Valley route and attempts to develop railways along it, including the Baghdad Railway, see Searight, , pp. 236–45Google Scholar.
53 One of the several reasons for Palmerston's distrust of Muhammad Ali was his adventuring in Arabia, including rumoured discussions with the Sultan of Muscat/Oman: see FO, 78/404.
54 Waghorn had worked hard to develop the Liverpool link during his campaigns for the Overland Route, attending a meeting of Liverpool merchants in May 1831 (and a week later in Manchester) at which a resolution was passed, “that it is of the utmost importance to British Commerce and the increasing trade with India that every facility should be afforded to the conveyance of letters, newspapers, parcels and passengers to and from the East Indies” ( Sidebottom, , p. 49 Google Scholar).
55 FO, 78/214,3.10.32.
56 In particular 78/403–408A & B, 78/472. Charles Napier's War in Syria is a good contemporary account by the naval officer commanding operations off the Syrian coast.
57 For details of the fleets see Madden, , 1841, pp. 62–3Google Scholar.
58 FO, 78/404, 31.3.40.
59 FO, 78/403, 14.4.40.
60 FO, 78/405, 5.7.40. 61
61 Napier, , i, p. 61 Google Scholar.
62 FO, 78/410.
63 Brodie Willcox (1786–1862) and Arthur Anderson (1792–1868) had combined in a shipbroking partnership soon after the Napoleonic wars had ended: Searight, , p.73 Google Scholar.
64 The papers of the Select Committee of the House of Commons, on steam communications with India, sitting in 1837, gives a remarkable insight into the state of marine steam technology of the day – condensers, boilers, stoking, paddles. Great public interest had been aroused by the construction of Brunel's Great Western, due to be launched the following year.
65 Waghorn, , 1843, p. 9 Google Scholar.
66 Parl. papers, 1858, no. 382, pp. 175–6Google Scholar.
67 Illustrated London News, 11 8th, 1845 Google Scholar.
68 Household Words, I 03–09, 1850, p. 494 Google Scholar.
69 Smith, , p. 578 Google Scholar.
