The fact of such men having thus personally and practically directed their attention to the subject, naturally led merchants and others interested in the trade of India to direct their attention with increased vigour to the best means of obtaining more rapid communication with the East. In their researches they were materially assisted by the report of Major C. F. Head,[300] who made the voyage from India to England through the Red Sea early in the year 1829, as again in 1830, being, at the same time, still further encouraged by the successful performances of the _Enterprize_ and other steam-ships by this time employed in India. Nor did they relax their efforts, dragging with them the Court of Directors, until this great object was accomplished by the establishment of a regular overland mail service. [Sidenote: Mr. Thomas Waghorn visits England to promote the Cape route, 1829-30.] [Sidenote: Returns to India by way of Trieste and the Red Sea.] Among the most zealous supporters of steam communication with the East, and subsequently one of the most arduous and conspicuous agitators of the overland route, was Mr. Thomas Waghorn.[301] He had been a mate in the Bengal pilot service, and, having piloted the _Enterprize_ on her arrival at Calcutta, at once saw the advantages to be derived from the extension of steam-ships to India. In 1827 he became associated with the committee which had been formed in Calcutta for the prosecution of steam communication with England, and in the following year was accredited by that association to persons in authority at Madras, Ceylon, the Mauritius, the Cape, St. Helena, and London. Failing, however, to obtain sufficient patronage for a regular service by way of the Cape of Good Hope, he resolved to return to India by the Isthmus of Suez, as he had heard that the _Enterprize_ was to be despatched up the Red Sea. With that object in view, he waited upon Lord Ellenborough, then President of the Board of Control, and also upon Mr. Lock, at that time Chairman of the Court of Directors of the East India Company, and offered to act as a courier to the East. His services having been accepted,[302] he left London on the evening of the 28th of October, 1829, crossed the continent of Europe to Trieste, and arrived at Alexandria on the 27th of November, at 8 A.M., passing through five kingdoms of Europe in nine and a half days; three days and seventeen hours of this arduous journey having been spent in stoppages. His orders were to meet the _Enterprize_ at Suez, and to convey in her despatches for Sir John Malcolm, then governor of Bombay, but, this steamer having broken down on the passage, did not reach her destination.