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At this time, while Lord Clive was, by a series of victories, laying the foundation of the British Empire in the east, Admiral Watson commanded in the Indian seas. To assist the army the squadron entered the Hooghly, when a body of seamen was landed to attack the fort of Boujee. By a singular event it was carried without bloodshed.
Captain Toynbee, the late highly respected and admired Marine Superintendent of the British Meteorological Office, has told us how, during a cyclone which he rode out in the HOTSPUR at Sandheads, the mouth of the Hooghly, the three naked topgallant-masts of his ship, though of well-tested timber a foot in diameter, and supported by all the usual network of stays, and without the yards, were snapped off and carried away solely by the violence of the wind.
The fortune of war turned to the side of the gallant Englishman, and Dupleix, who was no general, retreated before the victors. Clive obtained the command of Fort St. David, an important fortress near Madras, and soon controlled the Carnatic. About this time, the settlements on the Hooghly were plundered by Suraj-w Dowlah, Viceroy of Bengal.
What a godsend this cool hill-station is to Calcutta, for in twenty hours the par-boiled Europeans by the Hooghly can find themselves in a temperature like that of an English April. At Silliguri, where the East Bengal Railway ends, some humorist has erected, close to the station, a sign-post inscribed "To Lhassa 359 miles."
Steamer 'Ava' September 10th. I have had a very bad time of it since I finished my last letter on my way down the Hooghly. Probably it may have been something of the Calcutta fever brought with me.... But on the second night after our departure, it came on to blow hard towards morning. I was in my cot on the windward side.
So I was fitted out with the proper number of shirts and socks, and sent on board the Hooghly. "I made two voyages, but did not find life in an Indiaman anything like what I expected; so I left her, and hearing of a brig which had a roving commission to go wherever there was any trade to be done, I offered to join her.
Since the days of the East India Company, the forerunner of British rule in India, the pilots of the Hooghly have been esteemed as personages and they have taken rank but slightly lower than officers of the navy, and much ahead of ordinary commercial people and mariners.
I know my kind father has a sincere regard for you, and he is only at present unwilling to sanction our engagement because he believes that it would not conduce to my happiness," she answered. The following day the Glamorgan Castle dropped her anchor in the Hooghly. Shortly afterwards a man-of-war steamer hove in sight, and brought-to at a short distance from the ship.
In these latter days one can hardly credit the account given of the consternation in Calcutta in 1775, when the equality of men before the law was asserted, and the brahman, Nanda-kumar, was hanged for forgery. Many of the orthodox brahmans shook off the dust of the polluted city from their feet and quitted Calcutta for a new residence across the Hooghly.
He was in the constant enjoyment of the society of Edda Armytage. She no longer concealed her love for him, and his attentions appeared to meet the approval of both her parents. The days thus glided swiftly by. It was with anything but satisfaction to him that the "Osterley" at length made the mouth of the Hooghly. A line-of-battle ship was at the anchorage.
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