[BITList] In the public eye aye

[John Feltham]

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Waghorn,  Thomas  (1800-1850), naval officer and self-publicist, one of ten children of Thomas Waghorn, a butcher, and his wife, Ann Goodhugh, was born in Chatham, Kent, on 20 June 1800. He entered the navy in 1812 as a midshipman but was paid off in 1817 before completing the six years required to qualify as a lieutenant. He sailed to Calcutta in 1819 as third mate on a merchant vessel, was employed as second mate in the Bengal pilot service in 1820, and married in Calcutta, on 11 June 1822, Elizabeth (1805-1834), daughter of William Bartlett. He took part in the First Anglo-Burmese War (1824-6). Although noted for his extraordinary energy and keenness, he had to wait for promotion since rank in the Bengal pilot service was determined by length of service.

Developments in marine technology in the 1820s enabled vessels to make short sea voyages by steam: this aroused great interest in India, and rival 'steam committees' were set up to find the best route to England. Waghorn saw that there was money in the new technology, and, despite the failure of Calcutta's experiment round the Cape of Good Hope in 1826 and his own lack of experience in steam shipping, he went twice (1827-8 and 1828-9) to England to seek patronage for another attempt on the Cape route, but he failed to extract any money for what Sir Francis Freeling, chief secretary to the General Post Office, called his 'wild scheme' (3 Aug 1827; Sidebottom, 18). He returned to Calcutta via Egypt and the Red Sea, and landed in Bombay to find that the Hugh Lindsay, a steam warship built there and commanded by Captain J. H. Wilson, had just started on her first voyage (1830) between Bombay and Suez. The shorter overland route via the Red Sea was successfully demonstrated but Waghorn's mind remained fixed on the Cape route until 1831, when he travelled to London again. After driving to distraction every official in sight both in the government and in the East India Company, he resigned from that company after one of his many uncontrollable and sometimes violent displays of temper. He then completed his training as a midshipman, but was not promoted to lieutenant. Meanwhile, the Hugh Lindsay continued to make voyages with a few important passengers aboard. Wilson escorted them to and from Suez and Cairo or Alexandria, and dispatched mails that were speedily conveyed by camels driven by Bedouin to the relevant port. In Egypt in 1833 Waghorn heard what Wilson was doing and decided to become a private courier himself. Here he showed that he lived in a fantasy world in which he could do anything and everything. In a pamphlet he claimed that he had opened the Red Sea route and could run up and down it throughout the year-including the period of the south-west monsoon-in a single small vessel. In fact, however, the first time he set foot on a steamer in the Red Sea was two years later, when he went aboard the Hugh Lindsay to meet Wilson, but he never made a voyage in that vessel.

In December 1834 Waghorn married Harriet Martin, a Kent miller's daughter, at All Saints, Snodland, Kent; they had no children. He built The Lodge, a gentleman's residence in Snodland, and mortgaged it. In 1835 Smith Elder & Co., traders in the East and Waghorn's publishers, allowed him to base his courier business in their premises at 65 Cornhill, London.

Waghorn was adept at keeping his name in the public eye. Helped by people more educated than himself, he produced a number of pamphlets (1831-48) in which he heckled his dedicatees, always high-ranking aristocrats or prominent politicians, and offered useless advice. His evidence to the two select committees on steam communication to India (1834 and 1837) revealed his extraordinary ideas and gross ignorance. As a choice example, he maintained that he had surveyed the whole of the Cape and Red Sea routes by 'an eye sketch'. His appointment in 1837 as deputy agent in Egypt lasted only three months because of an explosive argument with his senior. Extending his private letter business into a passenger agency, he set up a partnership with George Wheatley at the Overland register office, 71 Cornhill. As more travellers chose to go overland to India, there were opportunities for entrepreneurs to facilitate the crossing. Waghorn tried to compete with the established Hill & Co. but instead was forced to merge with them by the arrival of the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company (P. & O.). Having engaged Waghorn as a sub-agent and seen his ways, P. & O. paid him up in 1842, the year he was given the rank of lieutenant by the Admiralty. Never able to stay in the same place for long, he left Egypt for England in 1843, ill, almost certainly bankrupt and 'perfectly shattered by the fatigues and excitement he had undergone'  (Wheatley, 353). He now announced, falsely, that he was responsible for 'promoting and achieving the Overland Route to India three years before the route was taken up'  (T. Waghorn, 'Acceleration of Mails (once a fortnight) between England and the East Indies', BL, MS 1393, fol. 4) by the British government and the East India Company.

In the last years of his life Waghorn was involved with the Austrian Lloyd Steam Navigation Company. It engaged him to make trial journeys to promote Trieste as a better mail port than Marseilles and to compete with P. & O. His journeys were closely charted by The Times (1846), but publicity and enthusiasm did not convince the Admiralty that Ostend-Trieste was better than Calais-Marseilles for conveyance of mails. The Treasury refused to pay more than £4000 towards the cost of these expensive trials, which left Waghorn with a debt of £2000 added to those he had already incurred, and his public appeals failed to relieve him of all his troubles. Asked to convene a meeting in London to campaign for steam to Australia and to pave the way for the India and Australia Steam Packet Company, which would soon be formed by bankers, merchants, and Austrian Lloyd, Waghorn widened his fantasy world by telling his audience that his object was to have 'the honour of opening [the Australian] line in my own person as I first did the Indian one'  (Morning Advertiser, 3). His name appeared on the company's share lists in spite of his debts until the company's disappearance.

In 1847, still working for Austrian Lloyd, Waghorn tried to persuade the Austrian government to build a railway between Trieste and Ostend. Lord Palmerston, who took an interest in this project because it would give British industrialists access to a huge German market, found that for political reasons Prince Metternich, the Austrian chancellor, was willing but other ministers objected both to British engineers and to the line Waghorn was pressing upon them. By this time Waghorn was worn out. P. & O. gave him a free ticket to Calcutta to enable him to wind up his affairs. He died on 7 January 1850 at Golden Terrace, Pentonville, London and was buried in the churchyard of All Saints, Snodland.

Restless, hyperactive, crude, with ambitions far above his ability to achieve them, Waghorn was kept alive in the popular mind by chance. In the week of his death 'the moving Diorama of the Overland Route to India' was on show in Regent Street and attracted many visitors. The pictures confirmed Egypt as Britain's high road to India, and Waghorn's imaginary exploits served as symbols for Britain's expanding empire. Later, in 1884, the burghers of Rochester commemorated his 'achievements', but, apart from the terms 'pioneer' and 'originator', the real celebration was about Britain's recent triumph, the occupation of Egypt (1882). A statue of him, which was unveiled at Suez in November 1869 at the inauguration of the canal, was destroyed in 1956. Whether liar or simpleton, Waghorn had played no more than a minute off-stage part.

Freda Harcourt 

Sources  J. H. Wilson, Facts connected with the origin and progress of steam communication between India and England (1850) + M. Sankey, Care of Mr Waghorn: a biography, special ser. (1964) + G. Wheatley, 'Some account of the late Lt. Waghorn, RN, the originator of the overland route', Bentley's Miscellany, 27 (1850), 349-57 + G. Smith, 'The life and labour of Lt. Waghorn', Household Words (17 Aug 1850), 494-500 + G. M. Smith, 'In the early forties', Cornhill Magazine, [3rd] ser., 9 (1900), 577-85, esp. 577-9 + P. E. Clunn, Lt Waghorn, RN, pioneer of the overland route to India (1894), 2-14 + J. K. Sidebottom, The overland mail (1948) + 'Select committee on steam navigation to India', Parl. papers (1834), 14.389, no. 478 + 'Select committee on steam communication with India', Parl. papers (1837), 6.361, no. 539 + TNA: PRO, FO 7/329, 334, 336, 337-9 + TNA: PRO, FO 120/204 + TNA: PRO, Post 29/26, 27 + TNA: PRO, CO 201/410 + TNA: PRO, BT 1/463/464 + The Times (18 April 1846), 6 + The Times (Aug-Dec 1846) + Morning Advertiser (18 April 1846), 3 + Chatham and Rochester Observer, 1 (March 1884), 5 + 1840-47, NMM, P. & O. MSS + DNB + private information (2006) [A. Ashbee, Snodland Historical Society]
Archives NRA, letters and ships' logbooks
Likenesses  Day & Haghe, lithograph, pubd 1837 (after C. Baxter), NPG · H. H. Armstead, monument, 1888, Chatham, Kent · G. B. Black, lithograph (after Sabatier), NPG · G. Hayter, oils, NPG [see illus.]
Wealth at death  £200: Sankey, Biography





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