Thomas Otho Travers (25 September 1785 – 9 July 1844) was a

soldier A soldier is a person who is a member of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer. Etymology The word ''soldier'' derives from the Middle English word , from Old French ...

, a friend of (and later aide-de-camp to)

Stamford Raffles Sir Thomas Stamford Bingley Raffles (5 July 1781 – 5 July 1826) was a British statesman who served as the Lieutenant-Governor of the Dutch East Indies between 1811 and 1816, and Lieutenant-Governor of Bencoolen between 1818 and 1824. He is ...

, and author of ''The Journal of Thomas Otho Travers 1813-1820,'' published more than a century after his death.BASTIN, JOHN. "RAFFLES' 'AIDES-DE-CAMP' IN JAVA". Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 65, no. 1 (262), 1992, pp. 1–14. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/41493195. He was born in Patrick Street, Cork, Ireland to Robert Travers a banker and Commissioner of the Peace for

County Cork County Cork ( ga, Contae Chorcaí) is the largest and the southernmost county of Ireland, named after the city of Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the province of Munster and the Southern Region. Its largest market towns are ...

. Thomas was twelve years old when his father died, and became a cadet with the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

in 1803, arriving in Bengal on 2 September 1804. He was commissioned as a Lieutenant of the 20th Regiment,

Bengal Native Infantry The regiments of Bengal Native Infantry, alongside the regiments of Bengal European Infantry, were the regular infantry components of the East India Company's Bengal Army from the raising of the first Native battalion in 1757 to the passing int ...

on the 21st of the same month. In 1806 he was posted with his Regiment to Prince of Wales' Island (

Penang Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay ...

), where he was to meet

. By 1811, Raffes was both ''de facto'' and ''de jure'' Lieutenant-Governor of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

and Travers and Captain Robert C. Garnham were Raffles' aides-de-camp. In 1815, control of Java reverted to the Dutch and in early 1816, Travers accompanied Raffles on a tour of the Island made to help smooth the transition. Travers then accompanied Raffles on his return to England in late 1816. Travers spent some time in Ireland, where he attended the wedding of his sister, Harriet, to Thomas Browne of Somerset House. In early 1817, Travis was again with Raffles in England, and often served as an escort for Raffles' new wife, Sophia. Later in 1817, That summer, Travers returned to Ireland to court Mary Lesley while Raffles toured Europe. Travers was engaged to Lesley by the end of July and travelled to Ireland on 24 July to get married. As summer came to an end, Raffles received a posting at

British Bencoolen British Bencoolen was a possession of the British East India Company (EIC) extending about 300 miles along the southwestern coast of Sumatra and centered on the area of what is now Bengkulu City. The EIC established a presence there in 1685, and ...

with headquarters at

Fort Marlborough Fort Marlborough (Indonesian Benteng Marlborough, also known as Malabero) is a former East India Company fort located in Bengkulu (city), Bengkulu City, Sumatra. It was built between 1713-1719 by the East India Company under the leadership of Gove ...

Sumatra Sumatra is one of the Sunda Islands of western Indonesia. It is the largest island that is fully within Indonesian territory, as well as the sixth-largest island in the world at 473,481 km2 (182,812 mi.2), not including adjacent i ...

and Travers accompanied him, leaving England in late October or early November and arriving in India on 19 March 1818 after a 14,244-mile voyage with no intermediate stops. In March 1820, Raffles appointed Travers, who had by then had a child, then his acting second assistant, to be Resident and Commandant at Singapore, to replace

Robert Townsend Farquhar Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, 1st Baronet (1776 – 16 March 1830) was an influential British merchant of the early nineteenth century who served as a colonial governor and Member of Parliament. During his lengthy service for both the East India ...

. Although Farquhar had requested the change, he decided that he preferred not to relinquish his position. After working a short time in Singapore as an assistant to Farquhar, Travers decided to return to Europe in December. Travis eventually returned to his home to Ireland, where he did not again meet Raffles until October 1824. Raffles, and to a lesser extent, Travers, were put into financial difficulties by the

Panic of 1825 The Panic of 1825 was a stock market crash that started in the Bank of England, arising in part out of speculative investments in Latin America, including an imaginary country: Poyais. The crisis was felt most acutely in Britain, where it led to ...

, and Travers had some money invested in McQuoid & Company, a concern which went bankrupt in March. In April, Travers and Mary moved to London to apartments on

South Audley Street South Audley Street is a major shopping street in Mayfair, London.'South Audley Street: Introduction', in Survey of London: Volume 40, the Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair, Part 2 (The Buildings), ed. F H W Sheppard (London, 1980), pp. 290–291. Bri ...

. Raffles died later that year and Travers continued to visit with Sophia and help her with a biography of Raffles which was published in 1830. Travers' diary is a notable work used for understanding Raffles and for understanding that period in East India Company history. No volume of his diary before 1813 survives, although excerpts from the earlier period survive in a memorandum prepared by Travers at the request of Raffles second wife.Wurtzburg 1954, p39 Travers died in July 1844 at Leemount, his home in County Cork, Ireland.

References

Bibliography

*Wurtzburg, Charles Edward
Raffles of the eastern isles
Hodder and Stoughton, 1954. {{DEFAULTSORT:Travers, Thomas Otho 1785 births 1844 deaths People of British Singapore People of British Malaya History of Malacca British East India Company Army officers