Proby Cautley

Proby Cautley
Portrait of Proby Cautley
Born	Proby Cautley (1802-01-03)3 January 1802
Died	25 January 1871(1871-01-25) (aged 69)

Sir Proby Thomas Cautley, KCB (3 January 1802 – 25 January 1871), English engineer and palaeontologist, born in Stratford St Mary, Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and supervising the construction of the Ganges canal during East India Company rule in India. The canal stretches some 350 miles between its headworks at Haridwar and, after bifurcation near Aligarh, its confluences with the Ganges river mainstem in Kanpur and the Yamuna river in Etawah. At the time of completion, it had the greatest discharge of any irrigation canal in the world.

Proby Cautley was educated at Charterhouse School (1813–18), followed by the East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe (1818–19). After less than a year there, he was commissioned second lieutenant and dispatched to India, joining the Bengal Presidency artillery in Calcutta. In 1825, he assisted Captain Robert Smith, the engineer in charge of constructing the Eastern Yamuna canal, also called the Doab canal. He was in charge of this canal for 12 years between 1831 and 1843. By 1836, he was Superintendent-General of Canals.

Cautley is also known for his research in collaboration with Hugh Falconer on fossils found in India, particularly those found in the Siwalik Hills, for which he was made a fellow of the Royal Society in 1846.

Parents and childhood

Proby Cautley was born on 3 January 1802 to Catherine, née Proby (c. 1772–1830), and Thomas Cautley (c. 1756–1817). Catherine was Thomas Cautley's second wife. His first wife had died after giving birth to two daughters. Proby Cautley was the eldest surviving son from the second marriage; two daughters and a son were to follow him. During his unmarried years, Thomas Cautley had a long association with Trinity College, Cambridge. He received two degrees there. After being elected a fellow, he held various administrative positions. In 1791, he was granted a living and rectorship at Raydon, Suffolk, where after his marriage and departure from Trinity, he took up residence. The Cautley family lived comfortably, and the children grew up in a mentally invigorating atmosphere.

Education and military career

Proby Cautley was educated at Charterhouse School. It was an institution with a close and long-established association with military service in India during the period of East India Company rule there. Cautley joined Charterhouse in 1813 and remained there for five years. In July 1818 he entered the East India Company's Addiscombe College after being sponsored by an uncle, Archibald Impey, and by James Pattison, who served on the Court of Directors of the Company. Cautley had not completed a full year at Addiscombe when he was selected to be dispatched to India in response to a pressing call for artillerymen. On 19 April 1819 he was commissioned as a second lieutenant. On reaching Calcutta (now Kolkata) on 11 September 1819, he was inducted into military service. After several years on artillery duties, he was sent early in 1825 to the Himalayan foothills to assist in the rebuilding of the Doab Canal. Except for a single reassignment to military duty later that year, he was to work in hydraulic engineering for the rest of his years in India.

Doab canal

Capt Robert Smith, Bengal Engineers.

In the early 19th century, two historical canals branched out from one or the other side of the Jumna (now Yamuna) river. These were the Western Jumna Canal and the Doab Canal, also known as the Eastern Jumna Canal. They had been created during the Mughal period; they were a network of canals and reservoirs that connected different rivers, allowing water to be diverted between them. However, due to neglect, lack of maintenance, or other factors that made them unusable, both required repairs. Cautley joined Captain Robert Smith, who had begun work on the eastern canal two years earlier. The canal ran for 140 miles over varying and challenging terrain. Cautley and Smith cleared the bed and erected masonry bridges, sluices, and dams. The Doab canal was formally opened in 1830. Smith, thereafter, returned to Europe, and Cautley took over managing the canal during its first months. Cautley was appointed superintendent in 1831. He was directly responsible for the Doab Canal until 1843, remaining nominally in control thereafter as superintendent of canals in the North-Western Provinces. Between 1837 and 1841, he designed several smaller canals in the Dehra Dun region, which served as important sources of irrigation and drinking water.

Fossil work

Hugh Falconer in 1844

Hugh Falconer was a Scottish surgeon in the Bengal Presidency of the East India Company. His enthusiastic pursuit of geological topics, especially fossils, had led to his appointment as superintendent of the Company's botanical gardens in Saharanpur, then in the Ceded and Conquered Provinces of the western Presidency. Cautley, who was living nearby, was also interested in the topic. In 1832 a new aspect was added to Cautley's career through his friendship with Falconer. The two soon began to mount expeditions into the nearby Siwalik hills, where they hoped animal fossils would be found in the tertiary rock layers. Cautley's other friends and assistants took part in the expeditions. Controlled use of explosives uncovered an abundant fauna of great variety, consisting of animals, birds, reptiles, and fish, many in excellent condition. (Notable finds included hippopotamus and crocodile fossils, which indicated that the area had once been a swampland. Other animal remains included the sabre-toothed tiger, Elephis ganesa (an elephant with a trunk length of about 101⁄2 feet), a fossil ostrich, and giant cranes and tortoises.) After they were carefully measured and illustrated in drawings, the most significant results were published in Indian and British journals. (These included those of the The Asiatic Society of Bengal and the Geological Society of London.) Recognition soon followed: the Geological Society of London awarded its 1837 Wollaston medal to Falconer and Cautley. The two offered to donate their large collection to the Society, which, however, was constrained by a lack of space. Cautley ultimately induced the British Museum to accept and pay for the shipment of well over 200 cases, which he had packed himself.

Marriage

At Landour, in the foothills of the Himalayas, Cautley was married to Frances Bacon on 20 September 1838. The bride was the third daughter of Anthony Bacon of Saharanpur. Walter George Cautley, their only child, was born on 30 July 1840. Early in 1843, Frances, who had begun to worry about the child's health, left with him for England.

Ganges canal

Main article: Ganges canal

Planning for Cautley's major project, the Ganges Canal, had begun in 1836.  The proposed canal took off from the Ganges' right bank a short distance above Hardwar (now Haridwar), where the river debouches onto the plains of northern India.  It flowed past Roorkee and down the upper Doab, the interfluve between the Ganges and its major tributary, the Jumna river.  At Nanu (now Nanau), a small village near Aligarh, the canal split, its left branch rejoining the Ganges near Cawnpore (now Kanpur) and the right meeting the Jumna, near Farrukhabad. The original proposal was for a canal channel of 255 miles and branch lines of 73 miles, but the proposal was modified during construction.

The project was sanctioned by the East India Company in 1841, but work did not begin until 1843. Cautley found himself hampered in execution by the Governor-General, Lord Ellenborough. Digging of the canal began in April 1842. Cautley had to make his own bricks, brick kiln and mortar. Initially, he was opposed by the Hindu priests at Haridwar, who felt that the waters of the holy river Ganges would be imprisoned; but Cautley pacified them by agreeing to leave a gap in the dam from where the water could flow unchecked. He further appeased the priests by undertaking the repair of bathing ghats along the river. He also inaugurated the dam by the worship of Lord Ganesh, the god of good beginnings. Construction of the dam faced many complications, including the problem of the mountainous streams that threatened the canal. Near Roorkee, the land fell away sharply and Cautley had to build an aqueduct to carry the canal for half a kilometre. As a result, at Roorkee the canal is 25 metres higher than the original river. From 1845 to 1848 he was absent in England owing to ill-health, and on his return to India he was appointed director of canals in the North-Western Provinces. When the canal formally opened on 8 April 1854, its main channel was 348 miles (560 km) long, its branches 306 miles (492 km) long and the various tributaries over 3,000 miles (4,800 km) long. Over 767,000 acres (3,100 km²) in 5,000 villages were irrigated.

He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Roorkee college, named the Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854 and now known as IIT Roorkee. One of the twelve student hostels of IIT Roorkee is named after him.

Writings

Cautley's writings indicated his large and varied interests. He wrote on a submerged city, twenty feet underground, in the Doab: on the coal and lignite in the Himalayas; on gold washings in the Siwaliks, between the Sutlej and the Yamuna; on a new species of snake; on the mastodons of the Siwaliks and on the manufacture of tar.

In 1860 he published a full account of the making of the Ganges canal.

Awards and honours

The plant genus Cautleya is named in his honour.

A student hostel (Cautley Bhawan) in Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is named after him.

Death

After the Ganges canal was opened in 1854 he went back to England, where he was made KCB, and from 1858 to 1868 he occupied a seat on the Council of India. He died at Sydenham, near London, on 25 January 1871.

Works

• Cautley, Proby T. (1860). Report on the Ganges Canal Works: from their commencement until the opening of the Canal in 1854. London: Smith, Elder. (2 vols.)
• Cautley, Proby Thomas (1864). Ganges canal: a disquisition on the heads of the Ganges of Jumna canals, North-western Provinces. London.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)

References

• Brown, Joyce (1980), "A Memoir of Colonel Sir Proby Cautley, F.R.S., 1802–1871, Engineer and Palaeontologist", Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 34 (2): 185–225, doi:10.1098/rsnr.1980.0008, JSTOR 531808, S2CID 145414793
• McConnell, Anita (2004). "Cautley, Sir Proby Thomas (1802–1871)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/4915. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
• Stone, Ian (2002), Canal Irrigation in British India: Perspectives on Technological Change in a Peasant Economy (Cambridge South Asian Studies), Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 392, ISBN 0-521-52663-9
• Vibart, H.M. (1894). Addiscombe: its heroes and men of note. Westminster: Archibald Constable. pp. 333–6. OL 23336661M.