Frederick Charles Danvers
Frederick Charles Danvers (c1833-1906)
Engineer from East India House.
1906 Obituary [1]
FREDERICK CHARLES DANVERS died on May 17, at his residence, Addlestone, Surrey, in his 74th year.
Educated at Merchant Taylors and King's College, he joined the clerical establishment of the East India House at the age of twenty. After the Board of Control had been superseded by the Secretary of State, he was deputed to Liverpool and Manchester, to report on traction engines with a view to their being used in India, where railway construction was in its infancy.
He entered the Public Works Department of the India Office, and rose to be senior clerk, and then assistant secretary.
He wrote frequently for the technical press on the subjects with which his Department was concerned, and his technical knowledge produced such an impression on the late Lord Iddesleigh, that when he was Secretary of State he sent out to India the detailed designs of Mr. Danvers for solving the problem, still unsettled, of carrying the East India Railway into Calcutta, his proposal being to construct a tunnel under the Hooghli.
He was the author of many papers—economic, statistical, and technical - some of which were read before the Society of Arts. He also wrote the Indian portion of "Spon's Information for Colonial Engineers."
In 1884 Lord Kimberley selected him for the responsible position of Registrar and Superintendent of Records, a post which he occupied for thirteen years. In anticipation of the fourth century of Vasco da Gama's first voyage to East India Mr. Danvers was deputed to Lisbon in 1891 to examine the Portuguese records relating to that country's brief period of power in the East. His report to the Secretary of State was issued in 1892, and formed the base of his chief work, "The Portuguese in India: A History of the Rise and Decline of their Eastern Empire."
He also published other works of historical interest.
1906 Obituary [2]
. . . Mr. Danvers was for more than thirteen years the Registrar and Superintendent of Records at the India Office, and was well known as the author of many engineering, statistical, and historical works relating to India. He was born in July 1833, . . . [more]