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Steaming East by Sarah Searight Struggle to Forge Rail and Steamship Links HC
Steaming East by Sarah Searight
100 Year Saga of the Struggle to Forge Rail and Steamship Links Between Europe and India
Hard Cover w/Dust jacket
294 pages
Copyright 1991
CONTENTS
Foreword and Acknowledgmentsix
1 The Power of Steam1
2 High Seas to India16
3 The Overland Route30
4 High Road to India51
5 Tender Loving Care72
6 War 89
7 `A Dismal but Profitable Ditch'105
8 Posh122
9 The Capricious Stream141
10Through Caspian and Caucasus 160
11 Not for Trafficking Alone183
12 Road Improvement Schemes205
13 The Ultimate Link226
14 Aftermath251
Notes270
Select Bibliography280
Index283
ILLUSTRATIONS
1 Henry Maudslay (1771-1831), by C. Motte (Institution of Civil Engineers)7
2 The Great Eastern off Holyhead, lithograph by McGuire, published 18599
3 George and Robert Stephenson, by John Lucas (Institution of Civil Engineers)11
4 An American Railway Scene, from Currier & Ives, 187414
5 On the Way to India: Sunday at Sea, from The Graphic, April 10th, 1875 (P.&O. Collection)19
6 The Enterprize, from Mail and passenger ships of the nineteenth century by H. Parker & F. C. Bowen, 192825
7 The King of the Seas, from Punch, May 7th, 189827
8 Salliss's Dioramic Game - Overland Route to India, lithograph published by William Sallis, c. 1853 (Searight Collection)41
9 A British Deputation to Muhammad Ali, from a drawing by David Roberts (Searight Collection)44
10 Scene in Ezbekiyah Square, c. 186o, from a drawing by Macherau (Searight Collection)46
11 Birkenhead Iron Works by A. McClure (Williamson Art Gallery and Museum, Birkenhead)62
12 The Tigris sinking on May 21st, 1836, from Narrative of the Euphrates expedition by Francis Chesney67
13 Bushire in the Persian Gulf, from Travels in Assyria etc by T. S. Buckingham, 182969
14 Lady Mary Wood, lithograph by William Delamotte from View of the Overland Journey to India, 1847 (Searight Collection)76
15 The Author's Entry into Alexandria, from Samuel Bevan's Sand and Canvas, 184979
16 The Hindustan, from Mail and Passenger Ships of the Nineteenth Century by H. Parker and F. C. Bowen82
17 Calcutta After the Great Cyclone of 1864 (photograph in the P.&O. Collection)85
18 Constantinople - Entrance to the Golden Horn, watercolour by C.F. Buckley (Searight Collection)90
19 Railway Works at Balaklava, from The Illustrated London News, March 10th, 185599
20 Bombardment and Capture of Island `Number Ten' on the Mississippi River, April 7th, 1862, lithograph by Currier & Ives103
21 Ferdinand de Lesseps, Astride his Canal, from Compagnie Financide Suez 107
22 Locomotive-salon designed in 1862 for Muhammad Said Pasha, from L'Egypte et ses chemins defer by L. Wiener, 1932110
23 Excavating the Suez Canal, from The Illustrated London News, April 3rd, 1869 115
24 The First Convoy Steams Through the Canal, from The Illustrated London News, December 18th, 1869118
25 The Empress Eugat the Opening of the Suez Canal, November 1869, from The Illustrated London News, December 11th, 1869119
26 Alfred Holt (1829-1911) (photograph from Ocean Group Collection)125
27 Homeward bound at Yuletide, from The New York Herald, Paris, December 17th, 1911 (Christmas supplement)132
28 The stoke hole, from P.&O. pencillings, by W. W. Lloyd, London, 1890137
29 `New Crowns for Old, cartoon by Sir John Tenniel, Punch, April 15th, 1876138
30 Proposals for Transporting Cleopatra's Needle, from The Illustrated London News, March loth, 1877144
31 Ironclads Bombarding Alexandria in 1882, watercolour by William Wyllie (Searight Collection)151
32 Arrival at Railhead, engraving from a painting by W. C. Verner (Searight Collection)156
33 Off to Fashoda, watercolour by C. J. Staniland (Searight Collection)158
34 A locomotive on the St Petersburg-Tsarskoe Selo Line, 1836, photograph from La Vie du Rail169
35 Ludwig Nobel from Nobel by H. Schuck, 1929176
36 Russian Steam Barges Ordinarily Stationed at Fort No. 7, Opposite Kungrad on the Syr-Darya, from G. N. Curzon, Russia in Central Asia, by G. N. Curzon, 1889189
37 Constructing the Transcaspian Railway at Mikhailovsk, from The Russian at Mery and Herat by Charles Marvin195
38 Section of Working Train on the Transcaspian Railway, from Russia in Central Asia by G. N. Curzon, 1889196
39 Clearing Sand from the Transcaspian Railway, from Russia in Central Asia by G. N. Curzon, 1889201
40 General Sir James Browne, from The Life and Times of General Sir James Brown by J. M. Innes, 1905211
41 Crossing the Khojak Pass, from a drawing by R. Caton Woodville, in The Life and Times of General Sir James Browne by J. M. Innes, 1905212
42 Ancient Caravan Track and Modern Railway Through the Bolan Pass, from The Illustrated London News, August 29th, 1885217
43 Rope Incline Railway Over the Khojak Pass from The Illustrated London News, December 29th, 1888221
44 Ali Masjid, watercolour by General Sir Michael Biddulph (Searight Collection)224
45 The Forts ofJalali and Mirani at the Entrance to Muscat Harbour, watercolour by William Daniell, 1793 (Searight Collection)229
46 A Traditional Dhow and an Early Oil Tanker in the Shatt al Arab (photograph in BP collection)232
47 Loading a Boiler on to a Dhow on the Karun River, photographed in 1911 (BP Collection)233
48 Sacred railway to a Holy City - Inauguration of the Hijaz Railway, from The Illustrated London News, October 10th, 1908247
49 A Miscarriage from Seven Pillars of Wisdom by T. E. Lawrence, 1935248
50 Nasir ud-Din Shah Landing at Dover, from The Illustrated London News, June 28th, 1873253
51 The Trouble in Persia, August, 1908, watercolour by Frank Dadd (Searight Collection)257
52 The First Train from Bandar Shapur, August 2oth, 1938 (Photograph in BP Collection)267
53 The Dardanelles Lock, from Punch, January 14th, 1903269
Maps
1 From Europe to India by land or sea4-5
2 The Overland Route and the Euphrates Valley32
3 High road to India52
4 Europe to India, mid-nineteenth century74-5
5 The Suez Canal1o6
6 The Nile Valley140
7 The Transcaucasian and Transcaspian Railways162-3
8 India's North-West Frontier204
9 The Ultimate Links, 1914254-5
DUST JACKET INTRODUCTION
At the beginning of the nineteenth century to travel from Europe to India involved an uncomfortable and perilous journey of many months. European rivalries in the east - political as well as commercial - demanded improved communications. Fortunately the need coincided with the potential solution: the invention of the steam engine to power ships and locomotives. Designing these, planning the routes and laying the tracks were enormous tasks, destined to occupy civil, military and mechanical engineers, as well as financiers for over a hundred years. More often than not the routes followed those used by several millennia of traders or invaders. Steaming East tells how it was done - laboriously, stubbornly, and in one important respect imperfectly: no complete rail link between Europe and India exists to this day.
It is a story filled with colourful anecdotes and still more colourful characters, from the founder of the Orient Express (who rejoiced in the name of George Nagelmackers) to Lord Kitchener, whose expedition up the Nile to defeat the Mandi in 1898 was eased by the jam, whisky, and soda-water supplied by the new purpose-built Sudan railway. Here is Thomas Waghorn, a powerful publicist for his schemes, determined to develop the `Overland Route' between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea (`the gentleman at least has the merit of perseverance,' wearily commented Sir Francis Feeling, the Postmaster General); passengers on the Waghorn route complained of cockroaches `as big as the top of a wine glass,' but he succeeded in reducing the London-Bombay mail run to a startling sixty-five days. Then there is Captain Francis Chesney, who planned to steam up and down the Euphrates, an enterprise that found him hauling two flat-bottomed iron ships (including their seven-ton boilers) 110 miles across mountain and plain just to reach the starting point; one steamer sank in a storm and the other disintegrated on a sandbank. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 - celebrated with fireworks, the presence of several royal steam yachts, several groundings and a banquet prepared by 500 cooks and served by 1,000 waiters - meant that ship travel to India became almost routine. Meanwhile the railway age was accepting new challenges, often over bitterly inhospitable terrain. We see George Nathaniel Curzon, later the `very superior' Viceroy but then merely a young Member of Parliament, travelling inquisitively aboard the new Transcaspian Railway to Samarqand, a journey that would later fuel arguments to stir his countrymen to engineering feats in the Great Game between Britain and Russia in Asia. And we see some of the results - the rails thrust eastward over Central Asian deserts or northward through the passes of India's North-West Frontier.
Sarah Searight's lively and deeply researched account spans roughly a century, from the first tentative use of steam-powered ships to the decline of transcontinental railway expansion after World War I. It encompasses battles and diplomacy, technical daring, social and political history, and it is never less than fascinating.
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