Charles Pasley (engineer)

Major-General Hon. Charles Pasley, C.B., R.E., (14 November 1824 – 11 November 1890) was a British Army officer and Colonial Engineer, Commissioner of Public Works and politician in colonial Victoria.

Pasley was the son of Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Pasley, K.C.B., and his second wife Martha Matilda née Roberts. He was born at Brompton barracksChatham, Kent, England, and was educated at the King's School, Rochester, and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich from 1840. He obtained a commission as second lieutenant in the royal engineers on 20 December 1843. He went through the usual course of professional instruction at the military school at Chatham, of which his father was the head, and proved himself so good a surveyor and mathematician that for some months he temporarily held the appointment of instructor in surveying and astronomy. After serving at several home stations he was promoted first lieutenant on 1 April 1846, and in June was sent to Canada. He was employed on the ordinary military duties of his corps until 1848, when he was appointed to assist in the survey of the extensive and scattered ordnance lands on the Rideau canal. The outdoor survey was done in the winter to enable the surveyors to chain over the frozen lakes, and to avoid the malaria and mosquitoes of the swamps.

In 1849 he was sent to the Bermuda islands, and while there was mainly employed in superintending, on behalf of the colonial government, the work of deepening the channel into St. George's Harbour. In November 1850 he returned to England on account of ill-health. In February 1851 he was selected to join the staff of the Great Exhibition of that year. He served at Bermuda in 1850.

Pasley arrived at Melbourne on 18 September 1853, having been appointed in the spring of that year Colonial Engineer to the colony of Victoria. He found himself at the head of a considerable department, to which that of Colonial Architect was very soon added, and subsequently that of Central Road Board. In 1854 he was member of a commission to make arrangements for an exhibition of colonial products at the Paris Exhibition in the following year. In October 1854 he was nominated to a seat on the Victorian Legislative Council. About this time the Ballarat riots broke out, and he offered his services to the Governor, Sir Charles Hotham, and was sent to the goldfields on a special mission. In 1855 the new constitution came into force in Victoria, and the first responsible ministry was formed by William Haines in November 1855, General Pasley taking the portfolio of Commissioner of Public Works. On 10 December he was appointed a member of the Executive Council, and a few months later was made by an Act of Council a joint trustee with Captain (later Lieut.-General Sir) Andrew Clarke, R.E., for the Melbourne and Mount Alexander Railway, purchased by Government. In 1856 Captain Pasley was elected to the first Victorian Legislative Assembly for South Bourke, and in March 1857 he resigned with the rest of the Ministry, but ultimately consented to remain as professional head of the Department of Public Works.

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