The _Falcon_, a sailing ship of 176 tons, and having steam auxiliary, went to Calcutta in 1825, but it is to the steamer _Enterprise_ that the honour belongs of having first reached Calcutta as a steamer. All that the voyage of the _Falcon_ proved was that she arrived safely; her engines were not much used and her small size shows that even if she had been filled with coal she could not have steamed all the way to Calcutta, nor were there sufficient coaling stations to enable her to do so. The pilot of the _Enterprise_ at Calcutta was Thomas Waghorn, then in the Bengal pilot service. The Calcutta Steam Committee, on behalf of the Indian Government, consulted him in 1827 on the question of the establishment of steam navigation between England and India, but though he visited a number of towns in England, his project of establishing a regular line of steamers via the Cape of Good Hope was not carried out. This, however, was not his only scheme. One of the difficulties in the way of establishing steamers on the Red Sea route was the high price of coal at Suez. Waghorn ascertained that coal could be brought to Suez by camel from Cairo at a reasonably cheap rate, and he therefore urged the adoption of this route. While he was still in England he heard that the East India Company intended to send the _Enterprise_ from India to Suez, and he then offered to make a trial voyage. He was appointed courier to the East, and left London in 1829, undertaking to carry despatches to Bombay and return with the reply in three months, a time which was usually occupied by sailing ships in voyaging one way. When he reached Suez he found that the _Enterprise_ had broken down on the way, and he accordingly took an open boat and began the journey down the Red Sea. Fortunately, the company’s sloop _Thetis_, which had been sent to look for him, picked him up and took him to Bombay, and he returned to London in the appointed time. A steamer service down the Red Sea was then established. The _Hugh Lindsay_ made the voyage from Bombay to Suez and back once a year until 1836, when two large steamers, the _Atalanta_ and _Berenice_, took her place. During these years Waghorn devoted himself to overcoming the difficulties and dangers of travel across the desert from Alexandria to Suez. “He associated with the Arabs, he lived in their tents, and gradually taught them that pay was better than plunder. He established a regular service of caravans, built eight halting-places between Cairo and Suez, and made what had been a dangerous path beset with robbers a secure highway. Before he left Egypt in 1841 he had a service of English carriages, vans, and horses to convey travellers.”[68] [68] “Dictionary of National Biography.” Meanwhile the service on the Cape route had been steadily improving.