The Wreck of the Ava and the Unlucky

William Farquhar
Abhishek Bhuwalka

Some time back I bought an item of postal history (Figure 1) at an Argyll Etkin auction.1 While
it was a wreck cover, the most interesting point of it for me was the redirection. Not too many
such covers, given the perilous state that they are already in, are redirected and that too to
a different country. While the bidding was hectic I, for once, managed to not squander the
opportunity!

Figure 1: An Ava Wreck Cover. From Madras to London and then redirected to Geneva.

Having received the cover, rather a letter sheet, an examination of its inside showed a
dateline of 6 October 1858 and being a statement of account balance of a bank or loan
company. Apparently, a sum of Company Rupees 5,725.40 was lying to the credit of the
addressee, one Lieutenant W. G. Farquhar. Wondering who he might be and what an Indian

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 army office was doing in Geneva, I started
some research. Given the wonderous
possibilities offered by online resources, in
about four hours, I had stumbled upon his
story – a story as fascinating as nondescript,
a story which categorically disproves the
adage “Like father, like son.”

Most of the minute details of W. G.

Figure 2: Portrait of William Farquhar c. 1830. From
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Portrait_of_William_Farquh
ar_(c._1830).jpg
Farquhar’s life is known to us from his
preserved diary and the many tender and
affectionate letters that he wrote to his
sisters from 1847 to 1860. These letters
were found by the Great Granddaughter of
his sister Amelia Farquhar (later Lumsden),
Morag Sutcliffe, and was transcribed by
David F. Sangster, Amelia’s Great Grandson
in 2013.2 They infuse flesh and life and
colour to the otherwise ordinary and
mundane lives led by most people, then and
now!

The addressee

William Grant Farquhar (hereinafter referred to as William) was the first child and son of
Major-General William Farquhar (1774-1839), a Scottish employee of the East India Company
(Figure 2). The senior Farquhar is best known as the person who helped found the British
settlement on the island of Singapore and was the first British Resident and Commandant of
Singapore from 1819-1823. His run-ins with Sir Stamford Raffles, the Lieutenant-Governor
of Bencoolen and the founder of modern Singapore (who dismissed him) and later with
Raffles’ widow, are well-known; the subject, though interesting and complicated, is beyond
the scope of this article.3 Back in Scotland, Farquhar settled in Perth and married Margaret
Loban in 1828.4

Their first child and son born on 19 February 1829 was William Grant (Figure 3). Four
daughters followed including Amelia (b. 1833); Amelia was the only sibling who lived long
into 1914, the others were dead by 1860.

When their mother passed away in 1844, the young Farquhar siblings were left orphans.
Money was a problem, with not much coming from Farquhar’s estate due to the failure of his
agents in Calcutta and London.5 After boarding in school for a few years, they were given a
home at their cousin’s place in Edinburgh in 1848. Meanwhile, William enrolled himself as a
cadet in the East India Company’s army and passed his public examination on 12 December
1845. He joined the First Regiment of the Madras Native Infantry in 1846 as 2nd Ensign, a rank
effective from the date he passed the examination. Subsequently, on 30 October 1848, he
purchased his Lieutenancy for about Rs. 1,350.6

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In the first few years, he served at various
places in South India. Later in September
1852, he was posted to Burma. He
remained there till December 1855 and the
beginning of 1856 saw him back in Madras.
He finally got his much-looked forward to
furlough and sailed to Britain in August
1857. The mutiny had started a few months
earlier in May but its impact down South
was minimal; for example, none of the 52
Madras regiments ever revolted.

William spent some six months at home

before he took a tour of the Continent with
his brother officer, James George Roche
Forlong. They visited Paris, Naples, Rome,
Florence, Milan, and Geneva before
returning. By October 1858, William was
back in a ship sailing back to Calcutta. On
24 March 1860, when in Hoshangabad, a
town in the central provinces, he met an
untimely death due to cholera. He was just
32. Figure 3: Photograph of William Grant Farquhar taken on 24 May
1858 at the studio of the famous John Mayall at 224, Regent
Street. Currently owned by Bridget Atkins. Courtesy: David F.
Looking back, the contrast between his Sangster.
father’s achievements and his could not be
greater. In his many years in the army, he saw little promotion; he had advanced just 4 steps
in 10 years and was only 8th Lieutenant by late 1856. While hard work and talent are necessary
ingredients for success, so are getting the right opportunities and a great deal of luck.
Recognising the passing time and his stagnation, a diary entry from October 1856 reads, “I
suppose the sun will come some of these days but it can’t make me lucky - the day has gone
by.”

On his death, a couple of Scottish newspapers carried the news in just a couple of lines.
Buried in Hoshangabad Cemetery, his tombstone reads a simple, “Erected by his Brother
Officers as a mark of their esteem.”7 Like most people, he has faded into obscurity.

On the wreck of the Ava

The Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company’s (P&O) Ava8 was an iron screw
steamer of 1,620 tons (restated in 1857 to 1,373 tons) with engines of 1,056 iHP (320 HP) built
in 1855 by Tod & McGregor in Glasgow.9 She left Calcutta at 9.15 AM on 10 February 1858

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 carrying on board about 240 persons (a
few of them embarked at Madras)
including some 40 army officers, a
number of them distinguished and
many wounded, and 25 women and 19
children, many of whom were refugees
of the Indian Mutiny including those of
the Siege of Lucknow.10

On 14 February at 3.20 PM, the Ava

arrived at Madras. She would have
picked up this particular cover amongst
others; a Madras date stamp of 15
February confirms. She left that port at
4 PM on the latter date; the next stop on
this route would normally have been
Point de Galle on the southwest tip of
Ceylon (Figure 4). However, she has
Figure 4: Portion of the famous Overland Route map of John Tallis (c. been asked by the Government to drop
1850) showing the route that steamers of P&O’s ‘Calcutta Line’ took. about £5,000 of the £253,000 of specie
It clearly shows that but for the special drop, the Ava would have
steamed perhaps 50 to 60 miles away from Trincomalee. that she picked up at Madras at
Trincomalee, a port city in northeast
11
Ceylon; under their contract with the P&O, the government had the right to direct any of
the steamers to call at other intermediate ports. At 7.55 PM on 16 February, some 12 miles
away from her destination, she hit the rocks on ridge extending three-quarters of a mile from
shore, off Rocky Point, about a mile-and-a-half to the northwest of Pigeon Island. Her
passengers were put on boats and some rescued the next morning by local boats; they
reached Trincomalee the afternoon of 17 February. Fortunately, there was no loss of life.12

Most of the cargo including the specie and 64 boxes of mails (each box being about 2’ X 1’ x
1½’ deep) were rescued by the crew of the HMS Chesapeake and local divers over the next
few weeks. The mails were bought to Galle by HMS Pylades on 18 March. On the same day,
one smaller batch of mails, presumably such mails which were relatively dry, were put
onboard the P&O Candia (18.3) which sailed to Suez (2.4) via Aden. At Suez, the mails were
offloaded, moved overland to Alexandria, and transferred to P&O Pera (4.4) which
subsequently reached Southampton (17.4) and thereafter reached London (18.04); these
letters usually have a date stamp of 19-20 April.13 The next tranche was carried by P&O
Hindostan (2.4) to Suez (18.4) and then by the P&O Colombo from Alexandria (20.4) to
Southampton (10.5);14 this set of mails have a London date stamp of 11 May.

As is customary with survivors of this wreck, two lines in cursive script, Saved from the Wreck
/ of the Ava, was handstamped on all letters at the Foreign Branch Office of the London
G.P.O. This is “the first mishap from which collectors can reasonably hope to acquire a cover
with a wreck cachet.”

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 The redirected cover

On 11 May, the day the cover arrived in

London, William’s agent, J. Cockburn &
Co., of 11 New Broad Street London,
franked it with an 1856 one shilling
green (SG 72?) and dispatched it
onward to Geneva picking up
handstamps of Liverpool St., Calais,
and Paris to Lyon railway on the way.
Given that the addressee was on a
holiday, it was marked Poste Restante,
a service offered by the post office
whereby mail is kept for some period
until collected.

The East-India Register and Army List

for 1858 confirms that William was on
furlough at this time (Figure 5) but it
does not answer the Geneva puzzle. It is
from his letters that we can so clearly
Figure 5: An extract from The East-India Register and Army List for trace his movements. William reached
1858 Geneva on 12 May 1858 and this letter
followed him there likely on 13 May
(Figure 6); the Geneva postmark does not show a date but shows a time of 1½ S for 1.30 PM.
Obviously, William and his agent were in regular touch so that the latter knew where to
redirect it.

From a rates perspective, the letter was sent unpaid as evidenced by the INDIA UNPAID
crescent stamp. The manuscript “6”
reflects the postage due of 6d on
delivery; 6d being the then steam
postage between Great Britain and
India. Though sent unpaid, there was
no fine applicable on such bearing
letters until 1 September 1858. (Note
15) On the upper right is “1d”, the
credit due to India of the 6d collected
by the British post office. Both “6”
and “1d” have been struck through,
likely by the sender while
redirecting. The one shilling stamp
correctly paid the current rate from
Britain to Switzerland via France.

Acknowledgement: I would like to

Figure 6: William Grant’s letter dated 12 May 1858 written from Geneva
thank David F. Sangster for going addressed to his sisters Nipper (one of the nicknames for Amelia) and
through a draft of this article and Moths (Agnes). Courtesy: David F. Sangster.

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providing me with a photo of William Grant and his Geneva letter. I also thank Jean Voruz for
helping me with the Geneva postmark on the redirected cover. Any feedback can be sent to
my email id: abbh@hotmail.com.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1
Lot no. 359 in auction held on 2 October 2020. The letter has now been certified as genuine by The Royal
Philatelic Society’s Expert Committee.
2
The letters and diary entries can be seen and downloaded from here: https://www.myheritage.com/site-
141143171/morison-farquhar-dingwall-fordyce-others. Accessed 21 December 2020.
3
In September 2019, the descendants of Raffles and Farquhar met for the first time in almost 200 years at the
bicentennial-themed exhibition at the National Museum in Singapore, for which they loaned their personal
collections. The Straits Times, Singapore’s preeminent English newspaper, reported that they seemed to
“maintain some distance!”
4
While in the Straits, Farquhar had at least six children through his mistress Antoinette “Nonio” Clement, a
Malaccan woman of French-Malay descent. Their first daughter, Esther Farquhar Bernard, is the great-great-
great-great-grandmother of the current Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau.
5
Extracts from William Farquhar’s will can be found on the website of the National Records of Scotland:
https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/learning/hall-of-fame/hall-of-fame-a-z/farquhar-william. Accessed
30 January 2021.
6
The purchase of commissions in the East India Company as well as the British army was the common practice
of an officer paying money to buy into a more senior post in the regiment as William does in 1849 when he
purchases his Lieutenancy after three years’ service as Ensign.
7
Crofton, O. S. List of Inscriptions on Tombs or Monuments in the Central Provinces and Berar. Nagpur:
Government Printing, C. P. 1932.
8
Ava or Inwa was the ancient capital of Burma. Information in the part of the article has been taken from (1)
Hopkins, A. E. A History of Wreck Covers Originating at Sea, on Land and in the Air. 3rd ed. London: Robson Lowe
Ltd., 1967; (2) Hoggarth, Norman, and Robin Gwynn. Maritime Disaster Mail: A Study of Mail Salvaged from
Maritime Disasters, as Casualties of War, Collisions, Fires, Shipwrecks and Stranding. Bristol, Great Britain: Stuart
Rossiter Trust Fund, 2004; (3) Ford, Eric H. “Saved from the Wreck of the “Ava”.” India’s Stamp Journal 15 no.
11 (November 1952): 251-254; and (4) Kirk, R. The P&O Lines to the Far East. Vol. 2. 4 vols. British Maritime
Postal History. Heathfield, East Sussex: Proud-Bailey Co. Ltd., 1982. Further, the official report of the two-
member court of investigation constituted by the Board of Trade to inquire into the loss, contemporary
newspapers, and online resources have been referred to and some of the earlier information published in the
first two books above have been corrected.
9
Ominously in her maiden voyage from Southampton to Alexandria in August 1855, she broke a screw blade
and had to be towed to Malta.
10
Among the refugees and passengers was Lady Julia Inglis, wife of (later) Major-General Sir John Inglis,
commander of the British troops at the Lucknow residency, and their three children. She kept a dairy which was
published as The Siege of Lucknow: A Diary in 1892; the book also contains her experiences with this wreck.
11
Clause 38 of the Contract between the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company and the
Commissioners for executing the office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
dated (and effective) 1 January 1853. This contract included the conveying the mails from Calcutta to Suez via
Galle but not from Bombay to Aden; the latter was a separate contract of 1854.
12
The investigators held Captain Cooper Kirton (1828-1915) of being in default for the loss of the vessel by not
following standard procedures. The Board of Trade suspended his Certificate of Competency as Master, issued
just 15 months earlier on 6 November 1856, for six months. After the suspension, Kirton was awarded with a
post in Malta as P&O’s representative. He worked for P&O until 1902. Interestingly, Lady Inglis (see note above)
records Kirton’s first exclamation when the ship struck as, “Oh! My poor father!”
13
Surprisingly, the British newspapers of that period contain no news about the first of rescued mails being
received. They were expecting the P&O Ripon to carry them and arrive around 26 April.
14
P&O Colombo arrived in Malta on 23 April and left the next day. But she had to come back the following day
for engine repairs. Further, she herself was wrecked on Minicoy Island, the southernmost of the Laccadive chain
in the Indian Ocean, on 19 November 1862.
15
Treasury Warrant dated 13 August 1858 published in The London Gazette of 17 August 1858.

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