A travel journal of the British politician Stafford Northcote includes a first-hand account of the opening of the Suez Canal.

Sir Stafford Henry Northcote, 1st Earl of Iddesleigh, by Edwin Longsden Long (1882) NPG 2944 © National Portrait Gallery, London 

On 17 November 1869, the Suez Canal was opened for the first time and Sir Stafford Northcote, Earl of Iddesleigh and former Secretary of State for India, travelled to Port Said for the inaugural voyage.  Aboard Sir George Stucley’s yacht, the Deerhound, Northcote joined the procession down the new canal on the eighteenth vessel.

Steamships passing through the Suez Canal from Cassell's History of the War in the Soudan (London, 1885) BL flickr

The opening was attended by the great and the good, including the Emperor of Austria and Queen of Holland.  Following the opening ceremony, the evening of 16 November closed with a display of ‘illuminations’ and the dawn of 17 November began with a 21-gun salute!

However, the procession did not go completely to plan.  The captains navigating the new canal were short of experienced pilots to guide them.  The Deerhound soon received news that a vessel had run aground ahead.  This put them in ‘a ticklish position, sometimes drifting on to the bank, sometimes bashing’ into the ship in front.  Fortunately they were able to steer past several grounded vessels, and only briefly ‘stuck in the mud’ themselves.

On reaching Lake Timsah, the guests saw ‘a large building has been erected for a state ball, capable of accommodating 2000 or 3000 persons properly’ near the shore.  The Viceroy of Egypt had also summoned ‘a host of arab chiefs from Upper Egypt to come and encamp on the long sandy beach’.  Northcote praised the camp, calling it ‘by far the most interesting part of the sights which have been provided for us’.

In the evening, Northcote went ashore to attend the reception in the temporary ballroom.  He did not stay long, but took the opportunity to visit ‘the supper room and got some excellent ices, and dates, sugarplums, biscuits and very fair champagne at the buffet’.

Map of the Suez Canal from Lucien Lanier, L'Afrique (Paris, 1899) BL flickr

But the aim of the trip was not champagne and dancing.  On reaching Port Said, Northcote wondered at the luck of Egypt, now able to ‘boast the possession at once of the oldest and the newest of the great works of man’.  And on completing his voyage he began to consider the economic impact of this new trade route:
‘What the effect of the canal may be upon commerce it is too early to speculate.  Will Marseilles and Lyons fair so much by the abbreviation of the route to India as to cut out Liverpool and Manchester?  Or shall we build vessels which will run through from England to Bombay?’

Cover of Northcote's travel journal – photograph by Matthew Waters

Northcote’s voyage from Falmouth to Egypt to see the new canal and back again was recorded in his travel journal which is now available to view at the British Library (Add MS 89674/1).  This volume also includes a record of a second trip around the Mediterranean in 1882.  It is accompanied by a second diary (Add MS 89674/2) covering two journeys to North America in 1870 and in 1871.

Matthew Waters
Manuscripts Cataloguer

Further Reading:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography – Northcote, Stafford Henry, first Earl of Iddesleigh
Add MS 89674/1 - Journal of Stafford Northcote recording trips to Egypt and around the Mediterranean
Opening of the Suez Canal

 

Alice Thornton (1626–1707), a Yorkshire gentlewoman, made sure that her life didn’t go untold by writing at least four versions of it in the 1660s to 1690s, two of which were acquired by the British Library in 2009. But why was she so keen to record her life and what was the significance of a chick-induced eye injury which she included?

Flyleaf of Add MS 88897/2, with Thornton’s monogram (AWT), the date of her husband’s death and a later inscription by her grandson.

Halfway through Thornton’s final autobiographical account, she tells a story about the writing of an earlier book:

‘About March 25, 1669, I was writing of my first book of my life to enter the sad sicknesses and death of my dear husband, together with all those afflictions befell me that year, with the remarks of God’s dealing with myself, husband and children until my widowed condition… There happened [to] me then a very strange and dangerous accident… as I was writing in my said book, I took out this poor chicken, out of my pocket, to feed it with bread and set it on the table besides me. It, picking about the bread innocently, did peep up at my left eye … [and] picked one pick at the white of my left eye … which did so extremely smart and ache that I could not look up or see.’

Thornton recounts the incident with the chick, below the line: Add MS 88897/2, page 177.

This story about her pet chicken, though, soon turns into an account of why she never forgave her niece, Anne Danby, for spreading rumours about her and her family, a topic that much consumes her in this final book. Danby – like the chick – had been taken in, fed and looked after by Thornton. This connection is explicitly made by Thornton:  

‘There was some who jested with me and said they had heard of an old saying of bringing up a chicken to peck out their eye. But now they saw I had made good that old saying both in this bird and [in] what harm I had suffered from Mrs Danby of whom I had been so careful and preserved her and hers from starving.’

‘Upon my sad condition and sickness that befell me by the slanders raised against me, July 20^th 1668’: Add MS 88897/1, page 246.

It seems likely from internal evidence that Thornton was writing this final book in the 1690s, after the death of her only adult son. This loss might explain why Thornton writes so much about Danby’s earlier betrayal. Thornton’s main heir was now her daughter, also named Alice, who was married to Thomas Comber. Thornton’s close relationship with Comber was one of the topics of Danby’s gossip, as was his marriage to Thornton’s daughter (then only fourteen) in late 1668. Thornton was perhaps keen to set the record straight about this match a quarter of a century later, when the Thornton name was dying out and being succeeded by that of the Combers. 

The motives behind Thornton’s writing four versions of her life are being tackled by an AHRC-funded project, ‘Alice Thornton’s Books’, which will also make freely available an online edition of all four manuscripts.

Detail of a chicken pecking the ground, from a music score, 1650. British Library shelfmark: 59.e.19, between pages 30-31.

We haven’t been able to trace the saying about the chicken and the eye – have you heard it before?

Cordelia Beattie
Professor of Women’s and Gender History, University of Edinburgh

Further Reading:

Cordelia Beattie, Suzanne Trill, Joanne Edge, Sharon Howard. 'The Four Books By Alice Thornton'. Alice Thornton's Books [accessed 23 April 2023]

Charles Jackson. Ed. The Autobiography of Mrs. Alice Thornton of East Newton, Co. York. Durham: Surtees Society, 1875

Alice Thornton, My First Booke of My Life, ed. Raymond A. Anselment (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014)

In 1814 the East India ship Arniston was chartered as a British Government transport.  The ship sailed from Portsmouth in June and made for Ceylon, via Madeira and the Cape of Good Hope, arriving at Colombo in January 1815.

The old lighthouse, flagstaff, and gun battery at Colombo from John Ferguson, Ceylon in 1893 (London, 1893) British Library shelfmark: Digital Store 010057.e.2

The Arniston sailed on its return voyage from Ceylon on 4 April 1815 in a convoy with two Royal Navy ships and six East Indiamen.  Squally weather and heavy seas drove the ship away from the convoy.  All the sails were blown away or bent.  On 30 May 1815 the ship heeled and broke apart near Cape Lagullas or Aguilhas at the southern tip of Africa.

Only six of the crew managed to reach the shore and survive: Charles Stewart Scott, Philip Shea, William Drummond, William Fish, Thomas Mansfield, and John Lewis .  They tried to walk to safety but feared they were lost, so returned to the wreck and subsisted mainly on a cask of oatmeal which had come ashore.  On 14 June they were discovered by a farmer’s son who was out shooting.  The men stayed with the farmer for a week and then set off for Cape Town, arriving there on 26 June to tell their tragic tale.

Report of the wreck of the Arniston, naming the survivors and dead - Mirror of the Times 28 October 1815 British Newspaper Archive

About 345 men, women, and children drowned.  There were British Army invalids, and about 100 seamen from British warships in India.  The named fatalities included Lord Molesworth, Lt Col in the 2nd Ceylon Regiment, and his wife Frances; Lt Gilbert Brice, Royal Navy Agent for Transports; and Anna Twisleton, 12-year-old daughter of the Archdeacon of Colombo.

In September 1815 reports of the wreck began to appear in British newspapers.  Death notices were placed by the families of some of the victims, including one for seventeen-year-old Samuel Nugent Legh Richmond., eldest son of Reverend Legh Richmond of Turvey in Bedfordshire.  His father had planned for Nugent, as he was known, to follow him into the priesthood, and was very disappointed when the young man decided that he wanted to go to sea.  Nugent was found a place in a merchant vessel sailing to Ceylon – the Arniston.  In June 1814 Reverend Richmond said goodbye to his son at Portsmouth, giving him a Bible.

The family received letters from Nugent written on the outward voyage, expressing his regret for his past conduct and his hope that one day he would be a consolation to his parents.  Then his father saw reports of the loss of the Arniston. Nugent was not listed amongst the survivors and his family was plunged into mourning.

But in the winter, a letter from Nugent arrived.  He had not embarked for the return voyage of the Arniston and seemed unaware of what had happened to the ship.  He was then third officer of the brig Kandian.

Nugent stayed in Asia, working in different merchant ships.  In 1824 he was shipwrecked, losing his private investment in the voyage and nearly all his personal belongings except for a small trunk containing his Bible, a copy of Annals of the Poor, two suits of clothes, and his watch.  A subscription of 100 guineas was raised by Reverend Thomas Thomason to help him.

Having postponed marrying his fiancée in Calcutta until he had made money on another voyage, Nugent returned to discover that she had died in his absence.  Nugent then decided to go to his family in England, but died of fever on the way.

Margaret Makepeace
Lead Curator, East India Company Records

Further reading:
Asiatic Journal 2 (1816) pp.32-34 - wreck of the Arniston
Thomas Shuttleworth Grimshawe, A Memoir of the Rev. Legh Richmond (5th edition, 1829) 
Thomas Fry, Domestic portraiture… (London, 1835)