Frederick Thomas Powell

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Frederick Thomas Powell (* 1806 or 1807; † March 20, 1859 in Bath ) was a naval officer and cartographer of the British-Indian Navy .

Around 1823 Powell joined the British Indian Navy (then still part of the East India Company ) and embarked on an officer career. Powell spent the next 14 years aboard surveying and mapping missions. From 1829 to 1834 he accompanied the captains Moresby ( brig Palinuro ) and Elwon (survey ship Benares ) as a lieutenant in surveying the Red Sea on behalf of the Indian colonial administration. He survived a smallpox disease . Subsequently, Captain Moresby was sent with the Benares to survey the Maldives , with Lieutenant Powell, who commanded the escort schooner Royal Tiger , as assistant ( Assistant Surveyor ). Until 1837, the two of them carried out extensive surveys in several trips from Bombay and mapped the previously largely unknown Maldivian atolls and the Chagos Archipelago to the south of it . The Alifushi Atoll was named Powell Islands in honor of Powell .

In June 1837, Powell left Moresby's command at Madras . Until April 1838 he explored the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait together with Lieutenant Ethersey , mapping sections of the Ceylon coast , parts of the Adams Bridge with the Pamban Passage and the coast of Madura . In 1869, several decades later, an experience report on these survey trips was published posthumously with "Memoir on the Survey of Paumben Pass and Adam's Bridge 1837" .

In the following years Powell moved, from 1841 in the rank of Commander , to the warships. During the First Opium War in 1842 he commanded the steamship HEICS Memnon from England to Hong Kong . The following year the ship was supposed to transport mail from Bombay to Suez , but ran aground near Cape Guardafui on the Horn of Africa and was lost. Powell was rescued with his crew and acquitted before a court-martial.

In the following years, Commander Powell took part in the Sikh Wars . In 1847 he rose to become the superintendent of the Indus flotilla. In the last few years of his life, Powell became assistant superintendent of the entire Indian Navy.

In 1858 Powell was finally on leave of absence due to illness and returned to Europe. He died here the following year at the age of 52; He had spent 36 of them with the Indian Navy.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Annotation of death in The Gentleman's Magazine and Historical Review January-June 1859 , p. 547
  2. ↑ Parliamentary Papers, House of Commons and Command, Volume 27 , pp. 77-84
  3. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy (1613-1863) , Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 70-80
  4. ^ Sir Clements Robert Markham: A Memoir on the Indian Surveys , WH Allen and Company, 1871, pp. 13-16
  5. ^ Charles Rathbone Low: The History of the Indian Navy (1613-1863) , Cambridge University Press, 2012, pp. 167-167
  6. ^ The Indian News and Chronicle of Eastern Affaires 1858 , p. 400
personal data
SURNAME Powell, Frederick Thomas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Powell, FT
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British naval officer and map maker for the British-Indian Navy
DATE OF BIRTH 1807 or 1808
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1859
Place of death Bath