William John Gill

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William John Gill (born September 10, 1843 in Bengaluru , †  August 11, 1882 at Kalaat en Nacht, Egypt , murdered) was an English explorer .

Childhood, education and military career

Gill was the second child of Major Robert Gill and his wife Frances Flowerdew Rickerby. The father served in the Madras Native Infantry. Gill trained at Brighton College and, from 1862, the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich , and served as an engineer officer from 1864. Between September 1869 and March 1871 he was commanded to the East Indies , the land of his birth. He returned to Europe via the recently inaugurated Suez Canal , where an extremely lucrative inheritance awaited him.

Expeditions

In April 1873 he went with Valentine Baker on an eight-month trip to northern Persia and the Russian-Persian border area, during which they contributed to the more precise localization of the geographical objects in this area. After a brief but unsuccessful job as a candidate for parliament for the Tories in London's working-class district of Hackney , Gill planned new expeditions to East Asia .

For this, he sought the advice of the English researcher Thomas Thornville Cooper and traveled the end of June 1876 even after Berlin to Ferdinand von Richthofen to meet that at the time had the most experience in terms of discoveries in China. From Berlin, Gill went straight to Marseille , Naples , through the Suez Canal and the Straits of Malacca and Singapore , Saigon , Hong Kong to Shanghai , where he arrived on September 8th. In 1877/1878 he passed through South China and Upper Burma ( Bhamo ) from Shanghai .

When the Anglo-Egyptian War broke out, Gill went to the Sinai Peninsula with the orientalist Edward Henry Palmer to prevent the Bedouins from hostilities against the Suez Canal. Palmer and Gill were ambushed and murdered on August 11, 1882 near Kalaat en-Nacht.

Publications

  • The river of Golden Sand: the narrative of a journey through China and Eastern Tibet to Burmah . 2 vol. 1880.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gill, William John
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English explorer
DATE OF BIRTH September 10, 1843
PLACE OF BIRTH Bengaluru
DATE OF DEATH August 11, 1882
Place of death Kalaat en night, Egypt