16 Facts About Proby Cautley

Sir Proby Thomas Cautley, KCB, English engineer and palaeontologist, born in Stratford St Mary, Suffolk, is best known for conceiving and supervising the construction of the Ganges canal during East India Company rule in India.

Proby Cautley was educated at Charterhouse School, followed by the East India Company's Military Seminary at Addiscombe.

Proby Cautley was in charge of this canal for 12 years between 1831 and 1843.

In 1840 Proby Cautley reported on the proposed Ganges canal, for the irrigation of the country between the rivers Ganges, Hindan and Yamuna, which was his most important work.

Proby Cautley began working towards his dream of building a Ganges canal, and spent six months walking and riding through the area taking each measurement himself.

Proby Cautley was confident that a 500-kilometre canal was feasible.

Proby Cautley had to make his own bricks, brick kiln and mortar.

Proby Cautley further appeased the priests by undertaking the repair of bathing ghats along the river.

Proby Cautley inaugurated the dam by the worship of Lord Ganesh, the god of good beginnings.

Near Roorkee, the land fell away sharply and Proby Cautley had to build an aqueduct to carry the canal for half a kilometre.

Proby Cautley was instrumental in the establishment of the Roorkee college, named the Thomason College of Civil Engineering in 1854 and now known as IIT Roorkee.

Proby Cautley was actively involved in Dr Hugh Falconer's fossil expeditions in the Siwalik Hills.

Proby Cautley presented a large collection of mammalian fossils, including hippopotamus and crocodile fossils indicating that the area had once been a swampland.

Proby Cautley contributed numerous memoirs, some written in collaboration with Falconer, to the Proceedings of the Bengal Asiatic Society and the Geological Society of London on the geology and fossil remains of the Sivalik Hills.

Proby Cautley wrote on a submerged city, twenty feet underground, in the Doab: on the coal and lignite in the Himalayas; on gold washings in the Siwaliks, between the Sutlej and the Yamuna; on a new species of snake; on the mastodons of the Siwaliks and on the manufacture of tar.

Proby Cautley died at Sydenham, near London, on 25 January 1871.