Edward Frederick Knight
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
barrister
Barrister
A barrister is a member of one of the two classes of lawyer found in many common law jurisdictions with split legal professions. Barristers specialise in courtroom advocacy, drafting legal pleadings and giving expert legal opinions...
, soldier
Soldier
A soldier is a member of the land component of national armed forces; whereas a soldier hired for service in a foreign army would be termed a mercenary...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, and author of 20 books, many based on his dispatches as a war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
.
Biography
Knight was born in England, and travelled with his family to British India at an early age. He was educated at Westminster SchoolWestminster School
The Royal College of St. Peter in Westminster, almost always known as Westminster School, is one of Britain's leading independent schools, with the highest Oxford and Cambridge acceptance rate of any secondary school or college in Britain...
and Caius College, Cambridge, where he pursued legal studies. He was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn
Lincoln's Inn
The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn. Although Lincoln's Inn is able to trace its official records beyond...
in 1879. However, he abandoned the legal profession to pursue a career in journalism instead, writing primarily for the Morning Post
Morning Post
The Morning Post, as the paper was named on its masthead, was a conservative daily newspaper published in London from 1772 to 1937, when it was acquired by The Daily Telegraph.- History :...
and The Times
The Times
The Times is a British daily national newspaper, first published in London in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register . The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary since 1981 of News International...
.
During the Franco-Prussian War
Franco-Prussian War
The Franco-Prussian War or Franco-German War, often referred to in France as the 1870 War was a conflict between the Second French Empire and the Kingdom of Prussia. Prussia was aided by the North German Confederation, of which it was a member, and the South German states of Baden, Württemberg and...
of 1870, while living in France at his fathers house in Honfleur he attempted to enlist with the French Army near Rouen, but was turned down as he was an alien. In 1878, he explored Albania
Albania
Albania , officially known as the Republic of Albania , is a country in Southeastern Europe, in the Balkans region. It is bordered by Montenegro to the northwest, Kosovo to the northeast, the Republic of Macedonia to the east and Greece to the south and southeast. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea...
and Montenegro
Montenegro
Montenegro Montenegrin: Crna Gora Црна Гора , meaning "Black Mountain") is a country located in Southeastern Europe. It has a coast on the Adriatic Sea to the south-west and is bordered by Croatia to the west, Bosnia and Herzegovina to the northwest, Serbia to the northeast and Albania to the...
, returning to the Balkans during the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878).
In 1889 Knight sailed to the island of Trindade
Trindade and Martim Vaz
Trindade and Martim Vaz is an archipelago located about 1,200 kilometers east of Vitória in the Southern Atlantic Ocean, belonging to the State of Espírito Santo, Brazil. The archipelago has a total area of 10.4 km² and a population of 32...
off the coast of Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in a 64 foot cutter named the Alerte. He was in search of treasure. (He had previously visited the island in his first boat the Falcon I). He wrote the book The Cruise of the Alerte
The Cruise of the Alerte
In 1889, Edward Frederick Knight sailed to Trindade in a 64 foot yawl named the Alerte. He wrote the book The Cruise of the Alerte about his journey with detailed descriptions of Trindade....
about his journey with detailed descriptions of Trindade. He was an influence on children's author Arthur Ransome
Arthur Ransome
Arthur Michell Ransome was an English author and journalist, best known for writing the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books. These tell of school-holiday adventures of children, mostly in the Lake District and the Norfolk Broads. Many of the books involve sailing; other common subjects...
who used Knight's book Sailing to teach himself how to sail; and in the Swallows and Amazons series as a resource for his fictional characters, who often refer to Knight on Sailing. Ransome also used Knight's descriptions of Trindade as a model for his fictional Crab Island in the book Peter Duck
Peter Duck
Peter Duck is the third book in the Swallows and Amazons series by Arthur Ransome. The Swallows and Amazons sail to Crab Island with Captain Flint and Peter Duck an old sailor to recover buried treasure...
.
During 1890, Knight visited Kashmir
Kashmir
Kashmir is the northwestern region of the Indian subcontinent. Until the mid-19th century, the term Kashmir geographically denoted only the valley between the Great Himalayas and the Pir Panjal mountain range...
and went travelling in the Himalayas
Himalayas
The Himalaya Range or Himalaya Mountains Sanskrit: Devanagari: हिमालय, literally "abode of snow"), usually called the Himalayas or Himalaya for short, is a mountain range in Asia, separating the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau...
to gather material for his book "Where Three Empires Meet". He visited Ladakh
Ladakh
Ladakh is a region of Jammu and Kashmir, the northernmost state of the Republic of India. It lies between the Kunlun mountain range in the north and the main Great Himalayas to the south, inhabited by people of Indo-Aryan and Tibetan descent...
and went on to Gilgit
Gilgit
Gilgit is a city in northern PakistanGilgit may refer to other terms related with the area of the city:* Gilgit River* Gilgit Valley* Gilgit District* Gilgit Agency * Gilgit Airport...
. He arrived in Gilgit in time to become involved in the 1891 British campaign against the minor states of Hunza
Hunza
Hunza may refer to*Hunza Valley*Former State of Hunza*Hunza River*Hunza Peak*Hunza people*Hunza is the Muisca name of the city of Tunja, Colombia...
and Nagar, led by the Resident, Col. Algernon Durand. He was temporarily appointed an officer in charge of some native troops, and acted as a correspondent for The Times.
Knight subsequently covered Kitchener
Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener
Field Marshal Horatio Herbert Kitchener, 1st Earl Kitchener KG, KP, GCB, OM, GCSI, GCMG, GCIE, ADC, PC , was an Irish-born British Field Marshal and proconsul who won fame for his imperial campaigns and later played a central role in the early part of the First World War, although he died halfway...
's Soudan Expedition
Mahdist War
The Mahdist War was a colonial war of the late 19th century. It was fought between the Mahdist Sudanese and the Egyptian and later British forces. It has also been called the Anglo-Sudan War or the Sudanese Mahdist Revolt. The British have called their part in the conflict the Sudan Campaign...
, the Spanish-American War
Spanish-American War
The Spanish–American War was a conflict in 1898 between Spain and the United States, effectively the result of American intervention in the ongoing Cuban War of Independence...
in Cuba, the French expedition against Madagascar
Second Madagascar expedition
-References:* Curtin, Philip D. Disease and empire: the health of European troops in the conquest of Africa by Philip D. Curtin * Ingram, Priestley Herbert France overseas: a study of modern imperialism...
, the Anglo-Boer War. He was severely wounded in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
during the Battle of Belmont
Battle of Belmont (1899)
The Battle of Belmont is the name of an engagement of the Second Boer War near the town of Belmont, 23 November 1899, where the British under Lord Methuen assaulted a Boer position on a kopje....
, resulting in the amputation of his right arm.
In 1894 he had visited the new territory of Rhodesia
Rhodesia
Rhodesia , officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state located in southern Africa that existed between 1965 and 1979 following its Unilateral Declaration of Independence from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965...
just as Cecil Rhodes was conquering Matabeleland
Matabeleland
Modern day Matabeleland is a region in Zimbabwe divided into three provinces: Matabeleland North, Bulawayo and Matabeleland South. These provinces are in the west and south-west of Zimbabwe, between the Limpopo and Zambezi rivers. The region is named after its inhabitants, the Ndebele people...
in south-western Rhodesia and his assessment of the country, presented in a series of articles written for The Times, later appeared in book form under the title of Rhodesia of Today.
From 1904-1905, he covered the Russo-Japanese War
Russo-Japanese War
The Russo-Japanese War was "the first great war of the 20th century." It grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea...
, as a reported embedded within the Imperial Japanese Army
Imperial Japanese Army
-Foundation:During the Meiji Restoration, the military forces loyal to the Emperor were samurai drawn primarily from the loyalist feudal domains of Satsuma and Chōshū...
. He was mistakenly reported as killed in action by the New York Times, which ran his obituary on June 4, 1904.
Knight died in 1925 after a long retirement.
Selected works
- 1880 -- Albania
- 1884 -- The Cruise of the Falcon: A voyage to South America in a 30-ton yacht (2 volumes)
- 1889 -- The Cruise of the 'Alerte'
- 1890 -- Sailing
- 1895 -- Where Three Empires Meet
- 1897 -- Letters from the Sudan
- 1895 –- Rhodesia of Today
- 1909 -- The Awakening Of Turkey A History Of The Turkish Revolution
- 1910 –- Knots and Tackles
- 1919 -- The Harwich Naval Forces – Their Part in the Great War
- 1920 –- Small Boat Sailing
- 1923 -- Falcon in the Baltic.
- 1923 -- Reminiscences: The Wanderings of a Yachtsman and War Correspondent