James Rennell
Encyclopedia
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...
(3 December 1742 – 29 March 1830) was an English
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...
geographer
Geographer
A geographer is a scholar whose area of study is geography, the study of Earth's natural environment and human society.Although geographers are historically known as people who make maps, map making is actually the field of study of cartography, a subset of geography...
, historian
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
and a pioneer of oceanography
Oceanography
Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
.
Early life
Rennell was born near ChudleighChudleigh
Chudleigh is a small town in Devon, England located between the towns of Newton Abbot and Exeter.Chudleigh is very close to the edge of Dartmoor and bypassed by the A38 road in 1972. It began life as a small wool market town, though the nearby Castle Dyke is an Iron Age Hill Fort which demonstrates...
in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
. His father, John Rennell, an officer in the Royal Artillery
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery , is the artillery arm of the British Army. Despite its name, it comprises a number of regiments.-History:...
, was killed in action shortly after the birth of his son; his mother made a "poor second marriage", leading to Rennell being brought up by a guardian, the Rev. Gilbert Burrington, vicar of Chudleigh.
Rennell entered the navy
Royal Navy
The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
as a midshipman
Midshipman
A midshipman is an officer cadet, or a commissioned officer of the lowest rank, in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Singapore, Sri Lanka and Kenya...
in 1756 at the age of fourteen, and was present at the attack on Cherbourg (1758), and the disastrous action of St Cast in the same year. In 1760 he went out to the East Indian station, and served in the Grafton under Captain Hyde Parker
Sir Hyde Parker, 5th Baronet
Vice-Admiral Sir Hyde Parker, 5th Baronet was a British naval commander.Parker was born at Tredington, Gloucestershire. His father, a clergyman, was a son of Sir Henry Parker. His paternal grandfather had married a daughter of Alexander Hyde, Bishop of Salisbury. He began his career at sea in the...
(1714–1782) during the three following years, when he saw some active service, including a cutting-out expedition
Boarding (attack)
Boarding, in its simplest sense, refers to the insertion on to a ship's deck of individuals. However, when it is classified as an attack, in most contexts, it refers to the forcible insertion of personnel that are not members of the crew by another party without the consent of the captain or crew...
at Pondicherry
Puducherry (city)
Pondicherry is a city, an urban agglomeration and a municipality in Pondicherry district in the Indian union territory of Pondicherry. Both the Union Territory and the city were previously known as Pondicherry before September 2006. Pondicherry is the largest urban agglomeration in Pondicherry UT...
. He soon mastered the theory and practice of marine surveying
Marine surveyor
A Marine Surveyor is a person who conducts inspections, surveys or examinations of marine vessels to assess, monitor and report on their condition and the products on them. Marine Surveyors also inspect equipment intended for new or existing vessels to ensure compliance with various standards or...
, and, on account of his proficiency in this regard, Parker lent his services to the East India Company
British East India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
. He served for a year on board one of the company's ships bound to the Philippines
Philippines
The Philippines , officially known as the Republic of the Philippines , is a country in Southeast Asia in the western Pacific Ocean. To its north across the Luzon Strait lies Taiwan. West across the South China Sea sits Vietnam...
, with the object 'of establishing new branches of trade with the natives of the intervening places'. During this cruise Rennell drew several charts and plans of harbours, some of which have been engraved by Dalrymple.
At the end of the Seven Years' War
Seven Years' War
The Seven Years' War was a global military war between 1756 and 1763, involving most of the great powers of the time and affecting Europe, North America, Central America, the West African coast, India, and the Philippines...
, seeing no chance of promotion, he entered the service of the East India Company's sea service. He at once received command of a vessel of two hundred tons; but she was destroyed by a hurricane in Madras roads in March 1763, with all hands. Fortunately, her captain was on shore, and he was at once appointed to command a small yacht called the Neptune, in which he executed surveys of the Palk Strait
Palk Strait
Palk Strait is a strait between the Tamil Nadu state of India and the Mannar district of the Northern Province of the island nation of Sri Lanka. It connects the Bay of Bengal in the northeast with the Palk Bay and thence with the Gulf of Mannar in the southwest. The strait is wide. Several...
and Pamben Channel. His next cruise was to Bengal
Bengal
Bengal is a historical and geographical region in the northeast region of the Indian Subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal. Today, it is mainly divided between the sovereign land of People's Republic of Bangladesh and the Indian state of West Bengal, although some regions of the previous...
, and he arrived at Calcutta
Kolkata
Kolkata , formerly known as Calcutta, is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal. Located on the east bank of the Hooghly River, it was the commercial capital of East India...
at the time when Governor Vansittart
Henry Vansittart
Henry Vansittart was the English Governor of Bengal from 1759 to 1764.Vansittart was born in Bloomsbury in Middlesex, the third son of Arthur van Sittart . His father and his grandfather, Peter van Sittart , were both wealthy merchants and directors of the Russia Company...
was anxious to initiate a survey of the British territory. Owing to the friendship of an old messmate, who had become the governor's secretary, Rennell was appointed surveyor-general
Surveyor General
The Surveyor General is an official responsible for government surveying in a specific country or territory. Originally this would often have been a military appointment, but is now more likely to be a civilian post....
of the East India Company's dominions in Bengal, with a commission in the Bengal Engineers, dated 9 April 1764. He was only twenty-one years of age when he met with this extraordinary piece of good fortune, and to this work he devoted the next thirteen years.
Rennell's work in India
Rennell's survey of Bengal, which was commenced in the autumn of 1764, was the first ever prepared. The headquarters of the surveyor-general were at DaccaDhaka
Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh and the principal city of Dhaka Division. Dhaka is a megacity and one of the major cities of South Asia. Located on the banks of the Buriganga River, Dhaka, along with its metropolitan area, had a population of over 15 million in 2010, making it the largest city...
, and in the successive working seasons he gradually completed his difficult, laborious, and dangerous task.
James Rennell, now known as the Father of Indian Geography, laboured in Bengal and elsewhere for a period of 13 years, during which he surveyed an area of about 300000 square miles (776,996.4 km²), stretching from the eastern boundaries of Lower Bengal to Agra
Agra
Agra a.k.a. Akbarabad is a city on the banks of the river Yamuna in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, India, west of state capital, Lucknow and south from national capital New Delhi. With a population of 1,686,976 , it is one of the most populous cities in Uttar Pradesh and the 19th most...
, and from 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 the borders of Bundelkhand
Bundelkhand
Bundelkhand anciently known as Chedi Kingdom is a geographic region of central India...
and Chota Nagpur
Chota Nagpur
Chota Nagpur may refer to*Chota Nagpur Plateau*Chhotanagpur*Chota Nagpur Division, a division of British India *Chota Nagpur States, a collection of princely states of British India...
. Rennell was originally just one surveyor among many, but he showed such enthusiasm and ability that Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive
Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive
Major-General Robert Clive, 1st Baron Clive, KB , also known as Clive of India, was a British officer who established the military and political supremacy of the East India Company in Bengal. He is credited with securing India, and the wealth that followed, for the British crown...
, the governor of Bengal and Bihar, promoted him to Surveyor-General in 1767. Rennell was only 24 at the time. The mapping project was originally a general survey of newly acquired lands, but the job soon gained a wider scope under Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...
, who was appointed as Governor-General in 1773. One of Hastings’ first projects was to begin a Domesday style reckoning of property, land, people, and culture for taxation of revenue. As for Rennell’s part in this, his project was carried out much like a military survey, searching for safe passage through territory, with information gathering a secondary object.
In 1776, when on the frontier of Bhutan
Bhutan
Bhutan , officially the Kingdom of Bhutan, is a landlocked state in South Asia, located at the eastern end of the Himalayas and bordered to the south, east and west by the Republic of India and to the north by the People's Republic of China...
, his party was attacked by some Sannyasa
Sannyasa
Sannyasa is the order of life of the renouncer within the Hindu scheme of āśramas, or life stages. It is considered the topmost and final stage of the ashram systems and is traditionally taken by men or women at or beyond the age of fifty years old or by young monks who wish to renounce worldly...
fakir
Fakir
The fakir or faqir ; ) Derived from faqr is a Muslim Sufi ascetic in Middle East and South Asia. The Faqirs were wandering Dervishes teaching Islam and living on alms....
s, and Rennell himself was desperately wounded. He never entirely recovered from the effects of his injuries, and was thenceforth less able to withstand the effects of the climate. He received the rank of major of Bengal engineers on 5 April 1776, and retired from active service in 1777. The government of Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings
Warren Hastings PC was the first Governor-General of India, from 1773 to 1785. He was famously accused of corruption in an impeachment in 1787, but was acquitted in 1795. He was made a Privy Councillor in 1814.-Early life:...
granted him a pension of £600 per annum, which the East India Company somewhat tardily confirmed.
The remaining fifty-three years of his life were spent in London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and were devoted to geographical research chiefly among the materials in the East India House
East India House
East India House in Leadenhall Street in the City of London in England was the headquarters of the British East India Company. It was built on the foundations of the Elizabethan mansion Craven House, the London residence of Sir William Craven, Lord Mayor of London, to designs by the merchant and...
. He took up his residence in Suffolk Street, near Portland Place
Portland Place
Portland Place is a street in the Marylebone district of central London, England.-History and topography:The street was laid out by the brothers Robert and James Adam for the Duke of Portland in the late 18th century and originally ran north from the gardens of a detached mansion called Foley House...
, where his house became a place of meeting for travellers from all parts of the world.
Rennell's achievements
His most valuable works include the Bengal Atlas (1779), the first approximately correct map of IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
(1783), the Geographical System of Herodotus
Herodotus
Herodotus was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus, Caria and lived in the 5th century BC . He has been called the "Father of History", and was the first historian known to collect his materials systematically, test their accuracy to a certain extent and arrange them in a...
(1800), the Comparative Geography of Western Asia
Asia
Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, located primarily in the eastern and northern hemispheres. It covers 8.7% of the Earth's total surface area and with approximately 3.879 billion people, it hosts 60% of the world's current human population...
(1831), and important studies on the geography of northern Africa—apparent in introductions to the Travels of Mungo Park
Mungo Park (explorer)
Mungo Park was a Scottish explorer of the African continent. He was credited as being the first Westerner to encounter the Niger River.-Early life:...
and Hornemann
Frederick Hornemann
Friedrich Conrad Hornemann was a German explorer in Africa.Hornemann was born in Hildesheim, a city in Lower Saxony, Germany, located about 30 km southeast of Hannover. He was a young man when, early in 1796, he offered his services to the African Association of London as an explorer in Africa...
. He also contributed papers to Archaeologia on the site of Babylon
Babylon
Babylon was an Akkadian city-state of ancient Mesopotamia, the remains of which are found in present-day Al Hillah, Babil Province, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad...
, the island of St Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...
's shipwreck, and the landing-place of Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
in Britain.
Hydrography
Hydrography is the measurement of the depths, the tides and currents of a body of water and establishment of the sea, river or lake bed topography and morphology. Normally and historically for the purpose of charting a body of water for the safe navigation of shipping...
works about the currents in the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
and Indian
Indian Ocean
The Indian Ocean is the third largest of the world's oceanic divisions, covering approximately 20% of the water on the Earth's surface. It is bounded on the north by the Indian Subcontinent and Arabian Peninsula ; on the west by eastern Africa; on the east by Indochina, the Sunda Islands, and...
oceans. He started his research on these topics, when he was travelling by a sailing ship with his family from India to Britain after his retirement in 1777. During the extraordinary long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
he mapped "the banks and currents at the Lagullas" and published in 1778 the work about what is today called the Agulhas Current
Agulhas Current
The Agulhas Current is the Western Boundary Current of the southwest Indian Ocean. It flows down the east coast of Africa from 27°S to 40°S. It is narrow, swift and strong...
. This was one of the first contributions to the science of Oceanography
Oceanography
Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
. He was the first to explain the causes of the occasional northern current found to the south of the Scilly Isles, which has since become known as Rennell's Current.
While in India he had married (1772) Jane Thackeray, daughter of Dr. Thomas Thackeray, headmaster of Harrow
Harrow School
Harrow School, commonly known simply as "Harrow", is an English independent school for boys situated in the town of Harrow, in north-west London.. The school is of worldwide renown. There is some evidence that there has been a school on the site since 1243 but the Harrow School we know today was...
, and a great-aunt of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray
William Makepeace Thackeray was an English novelist of the 19th century. He was famous for his satirical works, particularly Vanity Fair, a panoramic portrait of English society.-Biography:...
. His second son, William, was in the Bengal civil service, and died in 1819, leaving no children; the eldest, Thomas, was unmarried, and survived until 1846. His talented daughter Jane was married, in 1809, to Admiral Sir John Tremayne Rodd
John Tremayne Rodd
Vice-Admiral Sir John Tremayne Rodd, KCB was an officer of the Royal Navy noted for his services during the Napoleonic Wars. Rodd served in a number of ships, including under Admiral Sir Charles Cotton and during the Battle of the Basque Roads...
, KCB
Order of the Bath
The Most Honourable Order of the Bath is a British order of chivalry founded by George I on 18 May 1725. The name derives from the elaborate mediæval ceremony for creating a knight, which involved bathing as one of its elements. The knights so created were known as Knights of the Bath...
. Lady Rodd devoted several years to the labour of publishing her father's current charts and revising new editions of his principal works. She died in December 1863.
After the death of his wife in 1810 he returned to the oceanographic topics. His numerous naval friends gave him a mass of data from their logs
Logbook
A logbook was originally a book for recording readings from the chip log, and is used to determine the distance a ship traveled within a certain amount of time...
, which he assimilated to a chart of all currents in the Atlantic ocean. During his last years he wrote his final and most important work Currents of the Atlantic Ocean, published posthumously by his daughter Jane in 1832, which was not significantly overtaken until 1936.
He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1781; and he received the Copley Medal
Copley Medal
The Copley Medal is an award given by the Royal Society of London for "outstanding achievements in research in any branch of science, and alternates between the physical sciences and the biological sciences"...
of the Royal Society in 1791, and the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature
Royal Society of Literature
The Royal Society of Literature is the "senior literary organisation in Britain". It was founded in 1820 by George IV, in order to "reward literary merit and excite literary talent". The Society's first president was Thomas Burgess, who later became the Bishop of Salisbury...
in 1825.
He died on 29 March 1830. He was interred in the nave of Westminster Abbey
Westminster Abbey
The Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster, popularly known as Westminster Abbey, is a large, mainly Gothic church, in the City of Westminster, London, United Kingdom, located just to the west of the Palace of Westminster. It is the traditional place of coronation and burial site for English,...
, and there is a tablet to his memory, with a bust, near the western door. The year of his death saw the foundation of the Royal Geographical Society
Royal Geographical Society
The Royal Geographical Society is a British learned society founded in 1830 for the advancement of geographical sciences...
.
Rennell was "of middle height, well proportioned, with a grave yet sweet expression of countenance. He was diffident and unassuming, but ever ready to impart information. His conversation was interesting, and he had a remarkable flow of spirits. In all his discussions he was candid and ingenuous".
Further reading
ISBN 3253029875. The Military Engineer in India, Vol II (1935) The Institution of Royal Engineers, Chatham, Great Gritain.- Dictionary of National BiographyDictionary of National BiographyThe Dictionary of National Biography is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published from 1885...
volume 48, 1896.