Captain Sir Thomas Hyde Page (1746–1821) by James Northcote

Sir Thomas Hyde Page, FRS (1746–1821) was a decorated British military engineer and cartographer for the British crown. In 1777 he married Susanna, widow of Edmund Bastard of Kitley, Devon, and sister of Sir Thomas Crawley-Boevey, baronet. In 1783 he married Mary Albinia (d. 1794), daughter of John Woodward (formerly captain in the 70th regiment) of

Ringwould Ringwould is a village and electoral ward near Deal in Kent, England. The coastal confederation of Cinque Ports during its mediaeval period consisted of a confederation of 42 towns and villages in all. This included Ringwould, as a 'limb' of ...

, Kent, and they had five children. His third marriage, to Mary, widow of Captain Everett RN, was childless.

Early life

He was born in

Harley Street Harley Street is a street in Marylebone, Central London, which has, since the 19th century housed a large number of private specialists in medicine and surgery. It was named after Edward Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford and Earl Mortimer.< ...

City of Westminster The City of Westminster is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and London boroughs, borough in Inner London. It is the site of the United Kingdom's Houses of Parliament and much of the British government. It occupies a large area of cent ...

in London, England and was the son of Robert Hyde Page (d. 1764), also a military engineer, and Elizabeth, daughter of Francis Morewood. Thomas Hyde Page attended the

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

, receiving a gold medal from

King George III George III (George William Frederick; 4 June 173829 January 1820) was King of Great Britain and of Ireland from 25 October 1760 until the union of the two kingdoms on 1 January 1801, after which he was King of the United Kingdom of Great Br ...

Career

In July 1769, Page was appointed as a practitioner engineer and second lieutenant in the

Corps of Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

. Page was promoted sub-lieutenant and engineer in 1774. In 1775, Lord

George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend Field Marshal George Townshend, 1st Marquess Townshend, PC (28 February 172414 September 1807), known as The Viscount Townshend from 1764 to 1787, was a British soldier and politician. After serving at the Battle of Dettingen during the War of t ...

, master-general of the ordnance, asked Page 'to take a view of the Bedford Level' to improve the general drainage in the county. His report to Lord Townshend, dated 31 March 1775, was deposited in the library of the

Institution of Civil Engineers The Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) is an independent professional association for civil engineers and a charitable body in the United Kingdom. Based in London, ICE has over 92,000 members, of whom three-quarters are located in the UK, whi ...

. He constructed a ferry in

Chatham Chatham may refer to: Places and jurisdictions Canada * Chatham Islands (British Columbia) * Chatham Sound, British Columbia * Chatham, New Brunswick, a former town, now a neighbourhood of Miramichi * Chatham (electoral district), New Brunswic ...

for which he won a gold medal from the

Royal Society of Arts The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA), also known as the Royal Society of Arts, is a London-based organisation committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges. The RSA acronym is used m ...

in 1775. Page went with the corps of engineers to North America and distinguished himself in service to General Pigott at the

Battle of Bunker Hill The Battle of Bunker Hill was fought on June 17, 1775, during the Siege of Boston in the first stage of the American Revolutionary War. The battle is named after Bunker Hill in Charlestown, Massachusetts, which was peripherally involved in ...

on 17 June 1775, where he was severely wounded. As a result of this disability, he received a pension of 10 shillings per day. Boston, 1775bsmall1

In England, for the next few years he was the commanding royal engineer of the eastern coastal district and supervised the refurbishment of defences at Dover, Chatham, Tilbury, Gravesend, Sheerness, and

Landguard Fort Landguard Fort is a fort at the mouth of the River Orwell outside Felixstowe, Suffolk, designed to guard the mouth of the river. It is now managed by the charity English Heritage and is open to the public. History Originally known as Langer ...

. In 1780, he organised the Dover Volunteers. In 1782 the Board of Ordnance commissioned him to bore a well at

Sheerness Sheerness () is a town and civil parish beside the mouth of the River Medway on the north-west corner of the Isle of Sheppey in north Kent, England. With a population of 11,938, it is the second largest town on the island after the nearby town ...

garrison. He tried a new technique and the experiment failed, resulting in his being blamed. In the House of Commons the experiment was said to be 'not a well for fresh water, but a sink for the money of the public'. Page made a second attempt in Fort Townshend at

which was successful. Page's report on making the Sheerness well is dated 12 May 1783 and plans and sections were published in the

Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society ''Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society'' is a scientific journal published by the Royal Society. In its earliest days, it was a private venture of the Royal Society's secretary. It was established in 1665, making it the first journa ...

, 74. In 1783, Page was a candidate for the

Royal Society The Royal Society, formally The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, is a learned society and the United Kingdom's national academy of sciences. The society fulfils a number of roles: promoting science and its benefits, re ...

, supported by the mathematician

Charles Hutton Charles Hutton FRS FRSE LLD (14 August 1737 – 27 January 1823) was a British mathematician and surveyor. He was professor of mathematics at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1773 to 1807. He is remembered for his calculation of th ...

and others. He was made a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

on 10 July 1783 being described as 'a gentleman well versed in mechanics and many other branches of experimental philosophy'. He was knighted on 23 August 1783. Page was promoted to captain-lieutenant in 1784 and made a captain on 20 April 1787, before being moved to the invalid engineers months later. His expertise was still in demand and was made the chief consulting engineer in the improvement of the

port of Dublin Dublin Port ( ga, Calafort Átha Cliath) is the seaport of Dublin, Ireland, of both historical and contemporary economic importance. Approximatively two-thirds of Ireland's port traffic travels via the port, which is by far the busiest on the ...

, of

Wicklow Wicklow ( ; ga, Cill Mhantáin , meaning 'church of the toothless one'; non, Víkingaló) is the county town of County Wicklow in Ireland. It is located south of Dublin on the east coast of the island. According to the 2016 census, it has ...

harbour, of the inland navigation of Ireland, and of the

Royal Royal may refer to: People * Royal (name), a list of people with either the surname or given name * A member of a royal family Places United States * Royal, Arkansas, an unincorporated community * Royal, Illinois, a village * Royal, Iowa, a cit ...

, Shannon and

Newry canal The Newry Canal, located in Northern Ireland, was built to link the Tyrone coalfields (via Lough Neagh and the River Bann) to the Irish Sea at Carlingford Lough near Newry. It was the first summit level canal to be built in Ireland or Great Br ...

s. In 1792, he was the director for repairing the breach in the dock canal in Dublin. Page also worked on forming the new cut ("The

Eau Brink Cut Eau or EAU may refer to: * The French word for water * Eau (trigraph), a trigraph of the Latin script * EAU, the IATA code for the Chippewa Valley Regional Airport in Wisconsin, United States * East Africa University, a private university in Puntl ...

") and channel from Eau Brinck (Eau Brink) to

King's Lynn King's Lynn, known until 1537 as Bishop's Lynn and colloquially as Lynn, is a port and market town in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk in the county of Norfolk, England. It is located north of London, north-east of Peterborough, no ...

in Norfolk, England, and along the

River Great Ouse The River Great Ouse () is a river in England, the longest of several British rivers called "Ouse". From Syresham in Northamptonshire, the Great Ouse flows through Buckinghamshire, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Norfolk to drain into the Wa ...

, a problem of navigation and drainage that had baffled engineers since the time of King

Charles I of England Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, Scotland, and Ireland from 27 March 1625 until Execution of Charles I, his execution in 1649. He was born into the House of Stuart as the second son of King James VI of ...

in the 17th century.

Later years

Page married, and had children. His eldest daughter Mary Albinia (d. 1835) married Sir Thomas Crawley-Boevey, third baronet (1769–1847); his granddaughter Matilda Blanche Crawley-Boevey married businessman William Gibbs, both becoming religious philanthropists and supporters of the

Oxford Movement The Oxford Movement was a movement of high church members of the Church of England which began in the 1830s and eventually developed into Anglo-Catholicism. The movement, whose original devotees were mostly associated with the University of O ...

. Page lived for many years at Betshanger Park,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, but retired for reasons of health, abroad to France. He died in

Boulogne Boulogne-sur-Mer (; pcd, Boulonne-su-Mér; nl, Bonen; la, Gesoriacum or ''Bononia''), often called just Boulogne (, ), is a coastal city in Northern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department of Pas-de-Calais. Boulogne lies on the ...

, France on 30 June 1821, and was buried there.

Selected works

* Page, Thomas Hyde
"Considerations upon the state of Dover-harbour, with its relative consequence to the navy of Great Britain ... To which is prefixed, a letter, addressed to the Military Association for the defence of the town and harbour of Dover"
printed for the author, by Simmons and Kirkby, Canterbury : 1784 * Page, Thomas Hyde, "The reports or observations of Sir Thomas Hyde Page on the means of draining the south and middle levels of the Fens", Reprinted, ondon ?: 1794 * Page, Thomas Hyde; Mylne, Robert
''Correspondence Upon The Subject Of The Eau-Brink Cut, Between Sir Thomas Hyde Page And Mr. Mylne: In The Years 1801 And 1802
Lynn, England : Andrew Pigge, 1802

References

;Citations ;Sources * Rix, Herbert; Johnson, W. (revised)
"Thomas Hyde Page"
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004. And in Wikisource, at "Thomas Hyde Page", pp. 43–44. * 'Notitia historica', 1860, Royal Engineers' Library, Chatham, Kent, Connolly MSS, 4.25–35, 40–48 · Burke, Gen. GB age of Holbrook· W. Y. Carman, 'Sir Thomas Hyde Page, engineer', Journal of the Society for Army Historical Research, 33 (1955), 61–2 · R. F. Edwards, ed., Roll of officers of the corps of royal engineers from 1660 to 1898 (1898) · The Times (5 July 1821) * Archives: priv. coll., MSS , Inst. CE, archives · Royal Engineers' Library, Chatham, Kent, Connolly MSS, 'Notitia historica', 4.25–35, 40–48 · RS, book catalogue

External links

Works by Sir Thomas Hyde Page
stored in the National Library of Australia
Maps by Sir Thomas Hyde Page
– in the Library of Congress collection

– in ''The Peerage''. {{DEFAULTSORT:Page, Thomas Hyde 1746 births 1821 deaths British civil engineers Fellows of the Royal Society