Robert Moresby

Robert Moresby (15 June 1794 – 15 June 1854) was a captain of the East India Company's Bombay Marine/Indian Navy who distinguished himself as a hydrographer, maritime surveyor and draughtsman.

As a Lieutenant under Commander Thomas Elwon, Moresby was part of a two ship exercise engaged (from 1829 to 1832) in charting the dangerous waters of the Red Sea. Later, he also charted some coralline archipelagoes of the Indian Ocean, such as the Maldives, Laccadives and Chagos in the 1820s and '30s. This work ensured that the route from Europe to the East Indies became viable for the new steam vessels.

Robert Moresby was a son of Mr Fairfax Moresby of Lichfield, Staffs, late of India, where Fairfax Moresby had practised as a lawyer. Fairfax Moresby and his wife Mary Rotten had 6 boys and 3 girls, the eldest of whom was Sir Fairfax Moresby, Admiral of the British Fleet, and Commander in Chief, Channel Squadron and Pacific Station. Robert Moresby's relation to the family is uncertain and it is possible he was the son of another liaison of his father, which might explain his employment in the Bombay Marine, which suffered greatly from being at the bottom of the East India Company's pecking order.

In the nineteenth century, the sea route between the Mediterranean Sea and India would come to play a key role in a new era of communication. Already before the opening of the Suez Canal, industrial Britain had a rapidly expanding economy and needed improved communication with British India, with its raw materials and imperial requirements. Crucial in the development of the Red Sea route between the two countries was the harnessing of steam power, most notably in the form of the marine steam engine. A further vital factor in this revolution in trade and transport was the charting of the hazardous waterway commissioned by the British East India Company and carried out by Commander Thomas Elwon of the Bombay Marine in the ship Benares, supported by his second-in-command, Lt Robert Moresby in the Bombay Marine's brig Palinurus. This was the culmination of a series of efforts to get such a survey under way that the Marine had begun with the work of Lieutenant White of the Marine in the HEICS Panther in 1795.

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