Robert Moresby

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Robert Moresby (* 1795 , † June 16, 1854 in Southampton ) was a captain in the British-Indian Navy , who was instrumental in the surveying and mapping of the Indian Ocean .

Life

Origin and early career

He was a son of the Fairfax Moresby , esq. , from Lichfield in Staffordshire . The future Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby was his older brother (or half-brother); the New Guinea explorer John Moresby his nephew.

In 1814 he joined the Bombay Navy (from 1830: Indian Navy ) of the East India Company . Little is known about his first years of service. In the autumn of 1822 Moresby was under the command of Lieutenant William Sowden Collinson and his deputy John Croft Hawkins on the Prince of Wales in the survey of the Dryon Passage (between the Riau Islands south of Singapore ) involved. From here one sailed to the Nicobar Islands in the spring of 1823 in order to search there (in vain) for the crew of a missing ship.

Surveying the Red Sea

Ancient ruins in the land of Edom above a valley and Arabian date gardens (watercolor by Robert Moresby, created while surveying the Gulf of Aqaba )
Port of Yembo on the Red Sea

Under the new Superintendent (Commander-in-Chief) Sir Charles Malcolm , the British-Indian Navy devoted itself from 1828 to the extensive hydrographic surveying and mapping of the Indian Ocean and its tributaries .

As part of this task, Moresby was given responsibility for the Laccadives and thus his first major command of his own. He carried out the survey successfully in the course of the year and thus recommended himself for further missions.

At the beginning of 1829 plans were started to investigate the Red Sea (which was previously rather insignificant for European seafaring) in order to make the emerging steamship between Suez and Bombay safe. The waters were considered difficult after British warships ran aground there in 1799.

In February 1829 Moresby was dispatched to the Red Sea with the 10-gun brig Thetis in order to carry out an initial exploration of the sea region and to find sheltered landing stages. In the autumn of the same year he and Thomas Elwon received the official order to carry out an exact survey of the sea. Elwon, the higher-ranking and thus in command of the two men, but less experienced in surveying, commanded the Benares , an old 14-gun ship that had been converted into a survey ship. Moresby commanded the brig Palinuro , with lieutenants TE Rogers (later JR Wellsted) and TG Carless as officers. The survey area was divided: starting from the natural harbor Khor Shinab on the Sudanese coast, Moresby was to map the northern Red Sea from Jeddah to Suez and Akaba , while Elwon was responsible for the part south of it. The two spent the next three years with their ships and crews for the most part in the Red Sea, only returning to India during the monsoon season . The work was made more difficult by the Egyptian-Ottoman war , which shook the adjoining coastal regions. There was also an outbreak of smallpox on board ; several crew members died.

In January 1833, Elwon was surprisingly promoted to a post in the Persian Gulf. The two men then swapped ships and Moresby - Commander since May 1833 - single-handedly took over the surveying of the remaining southern sections. In December 1833 he was involved in the rescue of the pro-Ottoman warlord Turki Bilmas from the mocha besieged by the Yemeni Bedouins .

In April 1834 he and his crew had successfully completed the survey of the Red Sea after four years and seven months and returned to Bombay. Moresby was celebrated for his great pioneering work; A few decades later, Sir Richard Burton referred to him as "the genius of the Red Sea". Today surveying is considered to be the beginning of modern scientific exploration of the Red Sea.

In addition to his nautical and surveying work, Moresby had also worked as a talented amateur painter during his time in the Red Sea; About thirty watercolors by him are known, depicting the landscapes and harbors along the coast.

Maldives and Chagos Archipelago

1844 map of the Maldives based on Moresby's surveys.

In the fall of 1834, Commander Moresby was commissioned to survey the Maldives , of which only a poorly precise map by James Horsburgh from 1814 existed. On this mission he again commanded the Benares , which had meanwhile been heavily battered , accompanied by the schooner Royal Tiger , who was under the command of his assistant Lieutenant FT Powell (who had already been there in the Red Sea).

On November 15, 1834, they reached Malé , where they were received hostile, as the dignitaries at the court of the Maldivian Sultan initially feared that the British had come to bring the exiled pretender Hamed Didee to power. After the misunderstanding was cleared up and the controversial old sultan died, the situation eased. Two crew members, JA Young and W. Christopher, voluntarily stayed on the island for some time and later wrote a report on Maldivian culture.

Moresby and Powell carried out extensive surveys in several voyages from Bombay until 1837 and mapped the Maldivian atolls, which were largely unknown until then . The narrow strait between the atolls of North Maalhosmadulu and Fasdhuthere was named Moresby Channel . However, their ship's crews repeatedly suffered from serious tropical diseases ; a man died.

From February to June 1837, the Chagos Archipelago , located south of it, joined the survey of the Maldives . Today an island in the Peros Banhos Atoll bears Moresby's name, while the offshore reef was named Benares Shoals after his ship . Moresby then explored - now without Powell's company - the submarine banks of Saya de Malha and Nazareth (in the middle of the western Indian Ocean between Chagos, the Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius). In February 1838 he returned to Bombay, took a three-year leave of absence for health reasons and traveled home to Europe.

Later activities

In England, Moresby lived in Portsmouth ( Gloucester Place in the borough of Southsea ), where he started a family.

Charles Darwin , who had returned from his world tour two years earlier, was interested in Moresby's maps of the Maldives and Chagos atolls; The two men then corresponded about possible forms of formation of the coral islands and tectonic processes in the Indian Ocean.

In June 1840 Moresby finally returned to the Red Sea with the new steam frigate Sesostris (876 tons, 220 hp) , now in the rank of captain . In the following August he concluded trade and friendship treaties with the local rulers in the Afar tribal region south of the Bab al-Mandab , for example with the Sultan of Tadjoura and the Governor of Zeila . In addition to the acquisition of safe anchorages and the prevention of piracy, the primary aim was to get ahead of a French mission.

In March 1841, Moresby finally left the Indian Navy after almost 24 years of active service, as he did not see his achievements sufficiently appreciated. He moved to a well-paid captaincy at the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company , which had been awarded the government contract for mail delivery to India. Until 1846 he commanded the Hindostan (2017 tons, 550 hp) on 14 voyages between India and Suez, followed by the Ripon between England and Alexandria.

In June 1854, Robert Moresby collapsed during the reopening ceremony of Crystal Palace and died five days later, on June 16, 1854, at the age of 58 in Southampton. In his honor, the naturalist named Alfred William Alcock in 1898 a home in Indian coastal waters Rays -Art Benthobatis moresbyi .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date of birth according to the Victoria and Albert Museum
  2. ^ F. Clark: The East-India Register and Army List for 1849 (India Office and Burma Office List) , Second Edition, London, p. 94 (List of Retired Officers: Bombay Establishment)
  3. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy 1613–1863 , Volume I, first published in 1877, reproduced in 1990 and 2012, Chapter XII., Pp. 402f
  4. ↑ Jeremy Black: The Power of Knowledge: How Information and Technology Made the Modern World. Yale University Press, 2014, p. 239.
  5. ^ The Asiatic Journal and Monthly Register , Volume XII, September – December 1833, Parbury, Allen, and Company, p. 199 (Bombay: Marine Department Appointments)
  6. ↑ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy 1613-1863 , Volume II, 1877, Chapter II., Section Surveys of the Red Sea by Captain Elwon and Commander Moresby , pp. 69-72
  7. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy 1613–1863 , Volume II, 1877, pp. 29–31
  8. ^ Richard F. Burton: First Footsteps in East Africa; Or, an Exploration of Harar , 1856, Preface
  9. ↑ Alexis Wick: The Red Sea: In Search of Lost Space , University of California Press, 2016, pp. 136-139
  10. ↑ Hisham Khatib: Palestine and Egypt Under the Ottomans: Paintings, Books, Photographs, Maps and Manuscripts , IBTauris, 2003, p. 114, entry 32 (Moresby, Captain Robert)
  11. ↑ HCP Bell : The Maldive Islands: An account of the Physical Features, Climate, History, Inhabitants, Productions, and Trade. Asian Educational Services, 1883, p. 36.
  12. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy 1613–1863 , Volume II, 1877, pp. 76–79.
  13. ↑ Parbury's Oriental Herald and Colonial Intelligencer , Volume IV, July – December 1839, p. 225
  14. ↑ Seymour O. Schlanger, Seth A. Stein: Charles Darwin and Captain Moresby on the Drowning of Great Chagos Bank: 19th century discovery of “aseismic” ridge seismicity in the Indian Ocean. In: Eos Trans. AGU , Volume 68, Issue 10, March 1987, pp. 137-141
  15. ↑ Parbury's Oriental Herald and Colonial Intelligencer , Volume IV, July – December 1839, p. 309
  16. ^ N. Elias (Ed.): Precis of Papers Regarding Aden, 1838–1872 , Simla Government Ventral Branch Press, 1876, pp. 21ff
  17. ↑ CU Aitchison, AC Talbot (ed.): A Collection of Treaties, Engagements, and Sunnuds relating to India and neighboring countries , Volume VII, Foreign Office Press, 1876, pp. 177-180
  18. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy 1613–1863 , Volume II, 1877, pp. 136–140
  19. ↑ Sylvanus Urban: The Gentleman's Magazine , Volume XLII, July – December 1854, JB Nichols, London 1854, p. 202 (Obituary)
  20. ↑ Michael Watkins, Bo Beolens: Sharks: An Eponym Dictionary , Pelagic Publishing, 2015, p. 110
personal data
SURNAME Moresby, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British-Indian captain and cartographer
DATE OF BIRTH 1795
DATE OF DEATH June 16, 1854
Place of death Southampton