Proby Cautley

English engineer and palaeontologist

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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,[1] 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.[2] At the time of completion, it had the greatest discharge of any irrigation canal in the world.[2]

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.[3]

## Parents and childhood

[edit]

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.[4] 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.[4] 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.[4]

## Education and military career

[edit]

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.[4] 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.[4] 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.[4] 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.[4] 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.[4]

## Doab canal

[edit]

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, 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.[4] 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 their beds 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.[4] 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.[4]

## Ganges canal

[edit]

Main article: Ganges canal

In 1840 Cautley reported on the proposed Ganges canal, for the irrigation of the country between the rivers Ganges, Hindan and Yamuna (then called the Jumna), which was his most important work. Cautley began working towards his dream of building a Ganges canal, and spent six months walking and riding through the area taking each measurement himself. He was confident that a 500-kilometre canal was feasible. There were many obstacles and objections to his project, mostly financial, but Cautley persevered and eventually persuaded the British East India Company to back him. This project was sanctioned in 1841, but the work was not begun till 1843, and even then Cautley found himself hampered in its execution by the opposition of Lord Ellenborough.

Digging of the canal began in April 1842.[5] 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,[6] 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.[7]

## Dehradun canal network

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Main article: Dehradun canals

While the first canal in Dehradun was laid in the 17th century, Cautley significantly expanded the network in the 1850s. Five canals were laid in the city that irrigated the surrounding villages and produced a cooler microclimate. Since 2000, when the city became the state capital, most of the heritage canal network has been covered or demolished to expand the roads for ever-increasing traffic.[8]

## Fossil work

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Cautley was actively involved in Dr Hugh Falconer's fossil expeditions in the Siwalik Hills. He presented a large collection of mammalian fossils, including hippopotamus and crocodile fossils indicating that the area had once been a swampland. Other animal remains that he found here included the sabre-toothed tiger, Elephis ganesa (an elephant with a trunk length of about 101⁄2 feet), the bones of a fossil ostrich and the remains of giant cranes and tortoises.

He also contributed numerous memoirs, some written in collaboration with Falconer, to the Proceedings of the Bengal Asiatic Society and the Geological Society of London on the geology and fossil remains of the Sivalik Hills.

## Writings

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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

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In 1837, he received Wollaston medal of the Geological Survey of Great Britain.

The plant genus Cautleya is named in his honour.[9]

A student hostel (Cautley Bhawan) in Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee is named after him.[7]

## Death

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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

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* 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)

## Notes

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1. ^ History of Physical Anthropology - Frank Spencer - Google Books Retrieved 2016-11-03.
2. ^ a b Stone (2002) p.18
3. ^ "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\. 29 February 1980. doi:10.1098/rsnr.1980.0008. ISSN 0035-9149.
4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k McConnell 2004.
5. ^ Upper Ganges Canal The Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 12, p. 138.
6. ^ Cautley, Proby Thomas (1 January 1860). Report on the Ganges canal works:from their commencement until the opening of the canal in 1854. London. hdl:2027/uc1.c2697499.
7. ^ a b "Cautley Bhawan". IIT Roorkee. Retrieved 11 October 2013.
8. ^ "The missing canals of Dun - Times of India". The Times of India.
9. ^ Bream, Roland (2013), "An overview of Cautleya", The Plantsman, New Series, 12 (2): 122–125

## References

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Wikisource has the text of a 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article about Sir Proby Thomas Cautley.

* 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.

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