A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
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A Cyclopaedia of Canadian Biography: Being Chiefly Men of the Time: A Collection of Persons Distinguished in Professional and Political Life, Leaders in the Commerce and Industry of Canada, and Successful Pioneers
=Hunt, Henry George=, St. Catharines, Ontario, was born on the 16th of
June, 1846, at Sheerness, Kent, England. He is the eldest son of Harvey
Hunt, of Poole, Dorsetshire, England, and Sarah Tucker, of Horne, in the
same county, daughter of W. Tucker, the Swedish and Danish consul at
Poole. Henry George Hunt, the subject of this sketch, spent the first
six years of his life in Sheerness, and in 1852, his father having
received an appointment in her Majesty’s dockyards at Portsmouth, the
family removed to that place. Here Henry received his education at the
Grammar School of that town, and at the age of fourteen years he went
before the Civil Service commission and passed a most creditable
examination, being first out of one hundred and thirteen for a
scholarship in the Royal College of Naval Architecture at Portsmouth. At
the end of a three years’ course in this institution he was in 1863
promoted from the lower to the upper college. Two years later he was
appointed by the Imperial government to the Peninsular and Oriental
Company’s service in the East Indies, and left England on the 29th of
September, 1865, in H.M.S. _Octavia_, fifty-one-gun frigate, commanded
by Rear-Admiral Sir James Hilyar, K.C.B., for India. This ship on her
way out called at Madeira, Sierra Leone, Ascension, St. Helena, and
remained some weeks at each of these ports, arriving at the Cape of Good
Hope in the early part of 1866, and remained there about a month,
visiting Port Natal, Simonstown, and other places. He afterwards visited
Zanzibar, the island of Madagascar, etc. In 1867 he sailed for Bombay,
and entered upon his duties with the Peninsular and Oriental Company.
During the years 1867-8-9 he visited every stores depot owned by this
company in the east, among them being Suez, Aden in the Red Sea; Muscat
in the Persian Gulf; Kurachee, Bombay, Goa, Pondicherry, Madras,
Calcutta, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Canton in China; and Yokahama in Japan.
In the summer of 1869 he was taken down with the jungle fever, having
caught a severe cold when out shooting with some brother officers in
Ceylon, and when it was discovered to be a very serious case, he was
conveyed to the Madras Hospital, where, after a hard fight, he pulled
through. He then resigned his appointment and started for home by the
long sea-route round the Cape of Good Hope, having taken passage in
H.M.S. _Lyra_. On his arrival in England he was appointed landing waiter
in her Majesty’s customs, and was stationed at Portsmouth. He remained
in this service until the fall of 1871, when the Hon. Mr. Gladstone’s
“free breakfast-table policy” caused a great reduction in the staff of
customs officers at the out-ports, and Mr. Hunt, with many other
officers around the coast of Great Britain, received a few hundred
pounds cash as compensation for the loss of their commissions, and left
the service. In the spring of 1872 Mr. Hunt was married to Eleanor
Fanny, eldest daughter of Arthur Charles Lansley, of Andover, Hants; and
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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