Sir Charles Augustus Hartley KCMG

FRSE Fellowship of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) is an award granted to individuals that the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland's national academy of science and letters, judged to be "eminently distinguished in their subject". This soci ...

MICE (3 February 1825 – 20 February 1915) was an eminent British

civil engineer A civil engineer is a person who practices civil engineering – the application of planning, designing, constructing, maintaining, and operating infrastructure while protecting the public and environmental health, as well as improving existing ...

in the Victorian era. Due to his extensive work mapping the longest river in western Europe, he became known as 'The Father of the Danube.'

Biography

Hartley was born in 1825 at Heworth,

Gateshead Gateshead () is a large town in northern England. It is on the River Tyne's southern bank, opposite Newcastle upon Tyne, Newcastle to which it is joined by seven bridges. The town contains the Gateshead Millennium Bridge, Millennium Bridge, Sage ...

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. He was educated at

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then Leeds. Like most engineers of his generation he was engaged in railway work in the early part of his career, being employed by the Scottish Central Railway. Subsequently, he devoted himself to hydraulic engineering and the improvement of estuaries and harbors for the purposes of navigation. From 1848 to 1855 he was employed overseeing the construction of Sutton harbour. He was employed in connection with some of the largest and most important waterways of the world, including the early work (1861) on the

Suez Canal The Suez Canal ( arz, قَنَاةُ ٱلسُّوَيْسِ, ') is an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt, connecting the Mediterranean Sea to the Red Sea through the Isthmus of Suez and dividing Africa and Asia. The long canal is a popular ...

and

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Harbour in 1867. After serving in the Crimean war (1853 - Feb 1856) as a captain of engineers in the Anglo-Turkish contingent, he was appointed engineer-in-chief for the works carried out by the European Commission of the Danube for improving the navigation at the mouths of that river, and that position he retained till 1872, when he became consulting engineer to the Commission. In 1875, he was one of the committee appointed by the authority of the United States Congress to report on the works necessary to form and maintain a deep channel through the south pass of the

Mississippi delta The Mississippi Delta, also known as the Yazoo–Mississippi Delta, or simply the Delta, is the distinctive northwest section of the U.S. state of Mississippi (and portions of Arkansas and Louisiana) that lies between the Mississippi and Yazoo ...

; and in 1884 the British government nominated him a member of the international technical commission for widening the

. In addition, he was consulted by the British and other governments in connection with many other river and harbour works, including the improvement of the navigation of the Scheldt, Hooghly, Don, and Dnieper, and of the ports of

, Trieste, Kustendjie (at present Constanţa), Burgas, Varna, and Durban. In 1869 he was created a Fellow of the

Royal Society of Edinburgh The Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland's national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity that operates on a wholly independent and non-partisan basis and provides public benefit throughout Scotland. It was established i ...

, his proposer being David Stevenson. He was knighted in 1862 and made

K.C.M.G. The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is a British order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George IV, Prince of Wales, while he was acting as prince regent for his father, King George III. It is named in hono ...

in 1884. He was an active member of the Institution of Civil Engineers and for his written papers was awarded their Telford, Watt, and Stephenson medals. He also received the Albert Medal from the Society of Arts in 1913 in recognition of his public service. Grave of Sir Charles Augustus Hartley in Highgate Cemetery

Grave of Sir Charles Augustus Hartley in Highgate Cemetery

1907 Events January * January 14 – 1907 Kingston earthquake: A 6.5 Mw earthquake in Kingston, Jamaica, kills between 800 and 1,000. February * February 11 – The French warship ''Jean Bart'' sinks off the coast of Morocco. ...

he was made a honorary member of the Romanian Academy. He died on the 20th February 1915 and was buried on the west side of Highgate Cemetery.

Works

* ''Description of the Delta of the Danube'' (1874) * ''Notes on Public Works in the United States and Canada'' (1875)

Biography

Works

Notes

References

Further reading