Note 301 — Chapter IX

Mr. Waghorn, born at Chatham in the year 1800, was brought up in the Royal Navy, where he served four years. He was afterwards, for twelve years a pilot in Bengal in the service of the East India Company, somewhat later rejoining the Royal Navy, wherein he remained till he passed as Lieutenant. Mr. Waghorn had piloted the Enterprize soon after her arrival in India, and from that time devoted his especial attention to steam-vessels. In his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1834 (page 209), he says with regard to himself, “I was selected in 1827 by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee) for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India.... My first object was the Cape of Good Hope.... I went to London, Liverpool, and to Manchester; I stated my plans in various parts of the kingdom, and all the success I received after three years’ toil, was the loan of two fifty horse-power engines from the East India Company.” In 1842 he recommended the European route now in use by way of the Adriatic, dying, at length at Pentonville, January 7th, 1850, utterly broken down, and leaving his widow without any means beyond a small pension allowed to her by Government and the East India Company.