Patrick Stewart
Patrick Stewart (1832-1865)
1832 Born at Minnigaff, Kirkcudbrightshire, the son of James Stewart, a Land Owner, and his wife Elizabeth Macleod
Colonel in the Bengal engineers and Director General of the Indo-European Telegraph.
1860 Married at Westminster to Jane McDoball
1865 Died aged 32 years. He died on the same day the Persian Gulf cable was completed.[1]; buried in Istanbul.
1865 Obituary.[2]
The death of such gallant and distinguished young officer as Lieut.-Colonel Patrick Stewart, C.B., demands something more than the mere record of the sad event. Those who are well acquainted with recent Indian affairs know how great a career his early efforts promised. He was distinguished at Addiscombe, where he won not only the Pollock sword but the gold medal, being the first and best conducted boy of his year, and we believe he was the first who combined the qualities which gained those rewards in his own person.
At the time of his death he was only 32 years of age, and he went to India when all was calm, but his scientific attainments and activity recommended him for various employments in which he won golden opinions from his superiors, and when the mutiny broke out he was attached to the Telegraph Department, which, under Sir C. O'Shaughnessy, was then spreading its branches all over India. He was specially appointed to keep the column under Sir Colin Campbell in communication with the Government during the advance upon Lucknow, and he served throughout the first advance, the second advance, the siege, and operations in Oude under Lord Clyde, always displaying the same coolness, courage, and zeal which made him conspicuous even in such a gallant and distinguished corps as the Bengal Engineers. He was the first who ever marked the successive days' progress of an army by telegraph posts and stations, and his escapes from the enemy's horse were numberless; but nothing could daunt his spirit of enterprise and energy.
Lord Canning, Lord Clyde, Sir James Outram, all those, in fact, who could appreciate devotion to duty, fearlessness, skill, and modesty, regarded him as one of the most rising officers in the army. On his return to England he was favourably received, and corroborated the impression produced on those who recommended him to the notice of the authorities at home by his aptitude for affairs and extraordinary intelligence. He was selected eventually to superintend the construction of the telegraph route to India, and made two journeys through Arabia and Persia with that object, in the first of which he returned home by Russia and arrived somewhat injured in health, and in the second he was arrested by the hand of death as he was on his way homeward, and he died of fever at Constantinople.