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HORSBURGH, JAMES,
F.R.S.—This eminent hydrographer, whose charts have conferred such
inestimable benefits upon our merchant princes and the welfare of our
Eastern empire, was a native of Fife, that county so prolific of
illustrious Scotchmen from the earliest periods of our national history.
James Horsburgh was born at Elie, on the 28d September, 1762. As his
parents were of humble rank, his education in early life at the village
school was alternated with field-labour. Being intended, like many of
those living on the coast of Fife, for a sea-faring life, his education
was directed towards this destination; and at the age of sixteen, having
acquired a competent knowledge of the elements of mathematics,
navigation, and book-keeping, he entered his profession in the humble
capacity of cabin-boy, to which he was bound apprentice for three years.
During this time the different vessels in which he served were chiefly
employed in the coal trade, and made short trips to Ostend, Holland, and
Hamburg. These were at length interrupted, in May, 1780, in consequence
of the vessel in which he sailed being captured by a French ship off
Walcheren, and himself, with his shipmates, sent to prison at Dunkirk.
When his captivity, which was a brief one, had ended, he made a voyage
to the West Indies, and another to Calcutta; and at this last place he
found an influential friend in Mr. D. Briggs, the ship-builder, by whose
recommendation he was made third mate of the Nancy. For two years he
continued to be employed in the trade upon the coasts of India and the
neighbouring islands, and might thus have continued to the end, with
nothing more than the character of a skilful, hardy, enterprising
sailor, when an event occurred by which his ambition was awakened, and
his latent talents brought into full exercise. In May, 1786, he was
sailing from Batavia to Ceylon, as first mate of the Atlas, and was
regulating the ship’s course by the charts used in the navigation of
that sea, when the vessel was unexpectedly run down and wrecked upon the
island of Diego Garcia. According to the map he was in an open sea, and
the island was elsewhere, until the sudden crash of the timbers showed
too certainly that he had followed a lying guide. The loss of this
vessel was repaid a thousand-fold by the effects it produced. James
Horsburgh saw the necessity for more correct charts of the Indian
Ocean than had yet been constructed, and he resolved to devote himself
to the task, by making and recording nautical observations. The
resolution, from that day, was put in practice, and he began to
accumulate a store of nautical knowledge that served as the materials of
his future productions in hydrography.
In the meantime Horsburgh,
a shipwrecked sailor, made his way to Bombay, and, like other sailors
thus circumstanced, looked out for another vessel. This he soon found in
the Gunjava, a large ship employed in the trade to China; and for
several years after he sailed in the capacity of first mate, in
this and other vessels, between Bombay, Calcutta, and China. And during
this time he never lost sight of the resolution he had formed in
consequence of his mishap at Diego Garcia. His notes and observations
had increased to a mass of practical knowledge, that only required
arrangement; he had perfected himself, by careful study, in the whole
theory of navigation; and during the short intervals of his stay
in different ports, had taught himself the mechanical part of his future
occupation, by drawing and etching. It was time that these
qualifications should be brought into act and use by due encouragement,
and this also was not wanting. During two voyages which he made to China
by the eastern route, he had constructed three charts, one of the Strait
of Macassar, another of the west side of the Philippine Islands, and a
third of the tract from Dampier Strait through Pitt’s Passage, towards
Batavia, each of these accompanied with practical sailing directions. He
presented them to his friend and former shipmate, Mr. Thomas Bruce, at
that time at Canton; and the latter, who was well fitted to appreciate
the merits of these charts, showed them to several captains of India
ships, and to Mr. Drummond, afterwards Lord Strathallan, then at the
head of the English factory at Canton. They were afterwards sent home to
Mr. Dalrymple, hydrographer to the East India Company, and published by
the Court of Directors, for the benefit of their eastern navigation, who
also transmitted a letter of thanks to the author, accompanied with the
present of a sum of money for the purchase of nautical instruments. In
1796 he returned to England in the Carron, of which he was first mate;
and the excellent trim in which he kept that vessel excited the
admiration of the naval connoisseurs of our country, while his
scientific acquirements introduced him to Sir Joseph Banks, Dr.
Maskelyne, the royal astronomer, and other men distinguished in science.
After a trip to the West Indies, in which the Carron was employed to
convey troops to Porto Rico and Trinidad, he obtained, in 1796, the
command of the Anna, a vessel in which he had formerly served as mate,
and made in her several voyages to China, Bengal, and England. All this
time he continued his nautical observations, not only with daily, but
hourly solicitude. His care in this respect was rewarded by an important
discovery. From the beginning of April, 1802, to the middle of February,
1804, he had kept a register every four hours of the rise and fall of
the mercury in two marine barometers, and found that while it regularly
ebbed and flowed twice during the twenty-four hours in the open sea,
from latitude 26 degrees N. to 26 degrees S., it was diminished, and
sometimes wholly obstructed, in rivers, harbours, and straits, owing to
the neighbourhood of the land. This fact, with the register by which it
was illustrated, he transmitted to the Royal Society, by whom it was
published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1805. Having also
purchased, at Bombay, the astronomical clock used by the French ships
that had been sent in quest of the unfortunate La Perouse, he used it in
ascertaining the rates of his own chronometers, and in making
observations upon the immersions and emersions of Jupiter’s satellites,
which he forwarded to the Greenwich Observatory. About the same period,
he constructed a chart of the Straits of Alias, and sent it, with other
smaller surveys, to Mr. Dalrymple, by whom they were engraved.
It was now full time that
Captain Horsburgh should abandon his precarious profession, which he had
learned so thoroughly, and turn his useful acquirements to their proper
account. It was too much that the life of one upon whose future labours
the safety of whole navies was to depend, should be exposed to the whiff
of every sudden gale, or the chance starting of a timber. Already, also,
he had completed for publication a large collection of charts,
accompanied with explanatory memoirs of the voyages from which they had
been constructed, and these, with his wonted disinterestedness, he was
about to transmit to his predecessor, Mr. Dalrymple. Fortunately, Sir
Charles Forbes interposed, and advised him to carry them home, and
publish them on his own account; and as Horsburgh was startled at the
idea of the expense of such a venture in authorship, his whole savings
amounting by this time to no more than £5000 or £6000, the great Indian
financier soon laid his anxieties to rest, by procuring such a number of
subscribers for the work in India as would more than cover the cost of
publishing. Thus cheered in his prospects, Captain Horsburgh returned to
England in 1805, and forthwith commenced his important publication, from
which his memory was to derive such distinction, and the world such
substantial benefit. So correct were these charts, that even this very
correctness, the best and most essential quality of such productions,
threatened to prevent their publication; for with such accuracy and
minuteness were the bearings and soundings of the harbour of Bombay laid
down, that it was alleged they would teach an enemy to find the way in
without the aid of a pilot. It was no wonder, indeed, that these were so
exact; for he had taken them with his own hands, during whole weeks, in
which he worked from morning till night under the fire of a tropical
sun. In the same year that he returned to England, he married, and had
by this union a son and two daughters, who survived him. In 1806 he was
elected a fellow of the Royal Society; and in 1810 he was appointed
hydrographer to the East India Company, by the Court of Directors, on
the death of Mr. Dalrymple. Just before this appointment, however, he
published his most important work, entitled "Directions for Sailing to
and from the East Indies, China, New Holland, the Cape of Good Hope, and
the interjacent ports." These "Directions," undertaken at the request of
several navigators of the eastern seas, and compiled from his journals
and observations during twenty-one years, have ever since continued to
be the standard and text-book of eastern ocean navigation.
On being appointed
hydrographer to the East India Company, Mr. Horsburgh devoted himself,
with all his wonted application, to the duties of his office. He
constructed many new charts, the last of which was one of the east coast
of China, with the names of the places in Chinese and English; and
published an "Atmospherical Register" for indicating storms at sea,
besides editing Mackenzie’s "Treatise on Marine Surveying," and the
"East India Pilot." From 1810, the year of his appointment, till 1836,
the year of his death, he was indefatigable in that great work of
humanity to which he may be said to have ultimately fallen a martyr—for
his long-continued labours among the scientific documents contained in
the cold vaults and crypts of the India House, and his close attention
to the countless minutiae of which the science of hydrography is
composed, broke down a constitution that, under other circumstances,
might have endured several years longer. But even while he felt his
strength decaying, he continued at his post until it was exhanged for a
death-bed. His last labour, upon which he tasked his departing powers to
the uttermost, was the preparation of a new edition of his "Directions
for Sailing," &c., his favourite work, published in 1809, to which he
had made large additions and improvements. He had completed the whole
for the press except the index, and in his last illness he said to Sir
Charles Forbes, "I would have died contented, had it pleased God to
allow me to see the book in print!" His final charge was about the
disposal of his works, so that they might be made available for more
extensive usefulness; and to this the Directors of the East India
Company honourably acceded, while they took care that his children
should be benefited by the arrangement. He died of hydrothorax on the 14th
of May, 1836. His works still obtain for him the justly-merited title of
"The Nautical Oracle of the World." It is pleasing also to add, that the
lessons which he learned from his pious, affectionate father, before he
left the paternal roof, abode with him in all his subsequent career: he
was distinguished by the virtues of gentleness, kindness, and charity;
and even amidst his favourite and absorbing studies, the important
subject of religion employed much of his thoughts. This he showed by
treatises which he wrote in defence of church establishments, where his
polemic theology was elevated and refined by true Christian piety. Of
these occasional works, his pamphlet of "A National Church Vindicated,"
was written only a few months before his death. |
