C. Mitchell Grant
| C. Mitchell Grant FRGS | |||||||||
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| File:Grant, C. Mitchell.jpg | |||||||||
| Residence |
29 Belsize Park Gardens Siberia [June 72] 15 George Street, Hanover Square [1875] | ||||||||
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Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
proposed 1872.05.20
Notes From Elsewhere
Travelled to St Petersburg on commission for Baring Brothers, Jardine, Matheson and Company, and the Oriental Bank. His goal was to induce the Russian Government to construct a telegraph line to Peking and, if possible, Russian North America, from where it might easily be extended to the British colonies on the Pacific coast. Great hopes were entertained of Grant's success, for the reading of his memoir was attended by Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, as well as Horatio Nelson Lay, a former British consul serving as Inspector-General of Customs for the Chinese government. Lay was in London to oversee the fitting out of a fleet of gunboats purchased by the Chinese authorities for the supression of piracy on their coast, and he took care to advertise the merits of this scheme to facilitate commerce in the direction of Grant's paper. Though Sherard Osborn accepted command of the squadron and delivered it to China in 1863, a dispute over the chain of command would soon cause the flotilla to return to England.
Murchison having provided Grant with introductions to the Russian court, the traveller promised in turn to inform the President, who had suggested the telegraphic link across the Behring Sea, of any interesting geographical discoveries [from: Scientists of Empire ... by Robert A. Stafford]
