3-047-006 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Monument to Lieutenant Waghorn at Suez, 1872. 'The Suez Canal Company has erected a monument to the memory of the late Lieutenant Waghorn, the ingenious and enterprising pioneer of the Overland and Red Sea Route to India and China. It is a colossal bust in bronze, on a handsome marble pedestal, with a bronze bas-relief of Waghorn surveying the desert on a camel, attended by a train of Orientals. The inscription is "La Compagnie Universelle du Canal Maritime de Suez, au Lieutenant Waghorn." The monument is placed at the entrance of the Canal, so that it can be seen by vessels entering; and the head looks as if it were surveying each passing ship; so Waghorn seems to be regarding the full accomplishment of his ideas in the Maritime Canal of Suez. The monument is a very fair specimen of art. The death of Lieutenant Waghorn, in 1850, deprived him of the opportunity of receiving those public acknowledgments which he had fairly earned, and which ought to have been more readily paid in his lifetime. It is not, however, too late for public liberality to make some amends by providing for the actual wants of his three aged sisters, who are said to be now in a condition of poverty, and in feeble or broken health'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.