Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science

by J. Hamilton Fyfe

"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 £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 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.