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 exhibition, and received the gold medal and decoration of knight of the Legion of Honour from Napoleon III. In 1856 he constructed for the government the Erebus, and in 1860 the Black Prince, of 6,040 tons, one of the two armour-clad vessels first built; and from this time onwards built more than three hundred vessels for the government and great companies, first paddle-wheel, and then screw steamers. Among them was the troopship Malabar, the Scotia for the Cunard Company, the Hector, Agitator, Audacious, and Invincible. He also built men-of-war for the French, Turkish, Danish, and Dutch governments.

In 1862 Napier was chairman of the jury on naval architecture at the London international exhibition; from 1863 to 1865 he was president of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, of which he had become a member in 1856. In 1866 he took out two patents—one for a new method of constructing the upper deck of ships of war, the other for an improved method of constructing turrets. In 1867 he was royal commissioner at the Paris exhibition, and in 1868 the king of Denmark conferred on him the commandership of the most ancient order of Dannebrog. Napier died at West Shandon, Glasgow, on 23 June 1876, and his valuable collection of works of art was sold by Messrs. Christie.

He married in 1816 the sister of his cousin David, and by her, who died in 1875, he had three daughters and four sons, two of whom died young. The other two, James Robert and John, were taken into partnership in 1853. An engraving of Napier is given in ‘Engineering,’ iv. 594, and another in ‘The Clyde,’ &c., p. 209.

[Engineering, 1867, pp. 594–7; 1876, pp. 554–555; Proc. Inst. Civil Engineers, xlv. 246–51; Proc. Inst. Mechanical Engineers, 1877, pp. 3, 20–1; Scotsman and Times, 24 June 1876; Imperial Dict. of Biography; English Cyclopædia; Men of the Time, 9th edit.; Men of the Reign; Griffin's Contemporary Biography in Brit. Mus. Add. MS. 28511; Armstrong's British Navy; Pollock's Modern Shipbuilding; Woodcroft's Abridgments of Specifications for Patents (Shipbuilding, &c.), pp. 613, 687.]  NAPIER, ROBERT CORNELIS, (1810–1890), field-marshal, son of Major Charles Frederick Napier, royal artillery, and of Catherine, his wife, daughter of Codrington Carrington, esq., of the Chapel and Carrington, Barbados, West Indies, was born in Colombo, Ceylon, on 6 Dec. 1810. His second name commemorated the storming, on 26 Aug. 1810, of Fort Cornelis in Java, in which his father was engaged. It was during this campaign that his father was wounded, and he died on his way to England. Napier entered the military college of the East India Company at Addiscombe in 1824, and on 15 Dec. 1826 received his commission as second lieutenant in the Bengal engineers. After the usual course of instruction at the royal engineer establishment at Chatham, during which he was promoted first lieutenant, he sailed for India, and landed at Calcutta in November 1828.

After a few months spent at Alighur, then the headquarters of the Bengal sappers and miners, Napier was sent to Delhi to command a company. In 1830 a serious illness compelled him to take sick leave to Mussori, where he made an extensive collection of plants, which he presented to the government museum of Saharunpúr. In March 1831 he was employed in the irrigation branch of the public works department on the Eastern Jamna Canal with Captain (afterwards Sir) Proby Thomas Cautley [q. v.] At the time of his arrival the canal was in a critical state, and it was a daily fight against time and nature to save it. Napier's recreations were the study of geology, under the guidance of Falconer the palæontologist, whose discoveries in the miocene beds of the Siwálik hills he followed up, and made the first drawing of a Siwálik fossil. At Addiscombe he had been a pupil of Theodore Henry Adolphus Fielding [q. v.], brother of Copley Fielding, and showed some skill both in landscape and portrait painting. The former was a favourite amusement to the end of his life. In 1835 he had another severe illness, brought on by exposure, and in April 1836 he obtained three years' furlough, went to Europe, and was indefatigable in visiting all sorts of engineering works, both civil and military. He made the acquaintance of Stephenson and Brunel, and visited with them the railways on which they were engaged. He spent some time in Belgium, Germany, and Italy, and, as he was proficient in French, he gained valuable knowledge about irrigation.

Early in 1838 he returned to Bengal, and, after a tour of travel, was sent to Darjiling, the beautiful station in the hill country of Sikkim, which at that time consisted of a few mud huts and wooden houses, cut off by the dense forests from the world, and without roads or even regular supply of provisions. Napier laid out the new settlement and established easy communication with the plain, some seven thousand feet below. To supply the deficiency of skilled workmen and of labourers he completed the organisation of a local corps, called ‘Sebundy sappers,’ which owed its origin to Gilmore.