[301] Mr. Waghorn, born at Chatham in the year 1800, was brought up in the Royal Navy, where he served four years. He was afterwards, for twelve years a pilot in Bengal in the service of the East India Company, somewhat later rejoining the Royal Navy, wherein he remained till he passed as Lieutenant. Mr. Waghorn had piloted the _Enterprize_ soon after her arrival in India, and from that time devoted his especial attention to steam-vessels. In his evidence before the Select Committee of the House of Commons in 1834 (page 209), he says with regard to himself, “I was selected in 1827 by the Indian Government (Calcutta Steam Committee) for the purpose of establishing steam navigation between England and India.... My first object was the Cape of Good Hope.... I went to London, Liverpool, and to Manchester; I stated my plans in various parts of the kingdom, and all the success I received after three years’ toil, was the _loan_ of two fifty horse-power engines from the East India Company.” In 1842 he recommended the European route now in use by way of the Adriatic, dying, at length at Pentonville, January 7th, 1850, utterly broken down, and leaving his widow without any means beyond a small pension allowed to her by Government and the East India Company. [302] See “Annual Register,” October 1829. [303] Mr. Waghorn, in his evidence before the Committee of 1834, says that, had he met the _Enterprize_ at Suez as he expected, he would have conveyed his despatches from London to Bombay in fifty-three days. [304] In the _Bombay Courier_ of the 10th April, 1830, there will be found the following _notice_ from Mr. Waghorn: “The undersigned feels it his duty to state, for the information of the public throughout the Presidencies of Bombay, Madras, and Bengal, that he is not in any way connected with any scheme for steam-packet navigation with India, except that which he had the pleasure to lay before the Madras and Calcutta Committees in the year 1828, and that any use of his name in reference to it in any prospectus, &c., is perfectly unauthorized by him. “His motive in wishing this to be generally known is that it may not be supposed by those, on whom he depends for encouragement and support, that he has in any degree departed from his former engagements.” (Signed) “Thomas Waghorn.” See also _Bombay Gazette_, 21st April, 1830, where there will be found the report of a public meeting held on the 17th of that month, where Mr. Waghorn advocated the Cape route in preference to that viâ Red Sea.