An additional 80,000 rupees were raised in India for this object, of which amount the Rajah of Oude subscribed 12,000. On receipt of this gratifying news in London, another meeting of those interested was held, at which sufficient capital was underwritten to justify the promoters in ordering, as an experiment, the Enterprize, the first steamer destined to double the Cape of Good Hope.
Johnston, having accomplished his assigned task, embarked on board the Indiaman Eliza for England. On his arrival in London he found the Enterprize two-thirds completed, and on completion he was appointed captain.
P. & O. Liner. Date about 1850 A.D.
P. & O. Liner. Date 1900 A.D.
The Enterprize was a paddle-steamer, built of wood, by Messrs. Gordon & Co., Deptford, at a cost of £43,000. Her length of keel was 122 feet, beam 27 feet, and she registered 479 tons. She had a copper boiler in one piece, which weighed 32 tons, and cost £7,000. Her engines were 120 horse power, capable of propelling her in calm weather at the rate of 8 knots per hour. She sailed with 17 passengers from London for Calcutta on the 16th August, 1825, and arrived at the latter port on the 7th December following. She occupied 113 days on the passage, partly under steam and partly under sail, and inclusive of ten days stoppages for the purpose of obtaining fresh supplies of fuel. She did not return to England, but was purchased by the Indian Government for £40,000, the East India Company being at that time engaged in the first Burmese War. She was employed carrying despatches between Calcutta and Rangoon, and on the occasion of the Treaty of Malwa, she saved the Government six lacs of rupees by reaching Calcutta in time to prevent the march of troops from the upper provinces.
When the Enterprize arrived at Calcutta from England she was piloted by a young man, a mate in the Bengal Pilot Service, named Thomas Waghorn.
Mr. Waghorn was born at Chatham in 1800, and was, consequently, in his twenty-sixth year when he acted as pilot for the Enterprize. He had served four years in the Royal Navy, and was afterwards for twelve years in the service of the East India Company as pilot, subsequently rejoining the Royal Navy, in which he remained until he obtained his commission as Lieutenant. He was selected in 1827, by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee), for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India. He visited London, Liverpool, and Manchester, but could not obtain sufficient financial support for a regular service of steamers via the Cape of Good Hope. Hearing that it was the intention of the East India Company to despatch the Enterprize to Suez, he offered his services as Courier to the East to Mr. Lock (Chairman of the East India Company), and to Lord Ellenborough (President of the Board of Control). His offer of service was accepted, and he left London on the 28th October, 1829, taking the overland route, via Trieste, to Alexandria, where he arrived on the 27th November. His instructions were to proceed with his despatches for the Governor of Bombay (Sir John Malcolm), by the steampacket Enterprize from Suez, but owing to a breakdown of her machinery, the steampacket was not at Suez to meet him. There being no steamer to take him on to his destination, Mr. Waghorn embarked on an open native boat, and sailed down the Red Sea, being subsequently picked up by the East India Company’s sloop Thetis, which had been sent to meet him, and which brought him to Bombay. The day previous to the arrival of Mr. Waghorn at Bombay, the East India Company had despatched the steamer Hugh Lindsay to Suez to take up the sailing of the disabled Enterprize. The Hugh Lindsay continued to make one round voyage between Bombay and Suez annually until 1836, during the north-east monsoons, not being sufficiently powerful to make the passage during the south-west monsoons. In 1836 the Court of Directors of the East India Company decided to place on the station two new and more powerful steamers. These were the Atalanta, of 616 tons burthen and 210 horse power, built in 1835 at a cost of £36,652; and the Berenice, of 664 tons and 230 horse power, built the same year at a cost of £40,124.
While a regular steamship service was thus being established between the Isthmus of Suez and Bombay, the British Government had established a service of Admiralty packets between Falmouth and Cadiz, Gibraltar, Malta, and Corfu. From Malta the mails were conveyed to Alexandria by other of H.M. ships. Prior to 1830 the Admiralty packets were all sailing brigs, but on the 5th February of that year the Meteor, the first of the steampackets, sailed from Falmouth to the Mediterranean. She was followed by the steampackets African, Carron, Columbia, Confrance, Echo, Firebrand, Hermes and Messenger.