Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/76

 shamefully ran away; one of the small vessels struck on a reef; Downie was killed; and Robertson, left in command, was obliged to surrender after the Confiance had sustained a loss of forty-one killed and eighty-three wounded, out of a complement of 270, and was herself sinking. Sir [q. v.], the naval commander-in-chief, preferred charges of gross misconduct against Prevost, who, however, died before he could be brought to trial. At the peace Robertson returned to England, was tried for the loss of the Confiance, and honourably acquitted. The next day, 29 Aug. 1815, he was promoted to the rank of commander. He had no further service; on 28 July 1851 he was promoted to be captain on the retired list, and died on 26 Oct. 1858. On 24 June 1824 he married, first, Ann, only daughter and heiress of William Walker of Gilgarran, near Whitehaven, and thereupon assumed the name of Walker. He married, secondly, Catherine (d. 1892), daughter of John Mackenzie of Ross. He left no issue.



WALKER, JAMES THOMAS (1826–1896), general royal engineers, surveyor-general of India, eldest son of John Walker of the Madras civil service, sometime judge at Cannanore, and of his wife, Margaret Allan (d. 1830) of Edinburgh, was born at Cannanore, India, on 1 Dec. 1826. Educated by a private tutor in Wales, and at the military college of the East India Company at Addiscombe, he received a commission as second lieutenant in the Bombay engineers on 9 Dec. 1844, and, after the usual professional instruction at Chatham, went to India, arriving at Bombay on 10 May 1846. The following year he was employed in Sind to officiate as executive engineer at Sakkar.

In October 1848 he was appointed an assistant field engineer in the Bombay column, under Sir H. Dundas, of the force assembled for the Punjab campaign. At the battle of Gujrat on 21 Feb. he was in command of a detachment of sappers attached to the Bombay horse artillery, and he took part under Sir Walter Gilbert in the pursuit of the Sikhs and Afghans. He was favourably mentioned in despatches (London Gazette, 7 March and 3 May 1849), and received for his services the medal with two clasps.

After the annexation of the Punjab, Walker was employed from 1849 to 1853 in making a military reconnaissance of the northern Trans-Indus frontier from Peshawar to Dehra Ismail Khan. He took part at the end of 1849 in the attacks on Suggao, Pali, and Zarmandi under Colonel Bradshaw, by whom he was mentioned in his despatch of 21 Dec. for the skill and ability with which he had bridged the rapid Kabul river. In 1850 he served under Sir Charles Napier in the expedition against the Afridis of the Kohat pass, and in 1852 under Sir Colin Campbell in the operation against the Utman Khels; he was thanked by Campbell in field-force orders of 10 May 1852 for his ingenuity and resource in bridging the swift Swat river. In 1853 he served under Colonel Boileau in his expedition against the Bori Afridis, and was mentioned in despatches.

But his active service in these frontier campaigns was but incidental in the work of the survey, which he vigorously prosecuted. It was attended with much danger, and in the country between the Khaibar and Kohat passes Walker was fired at on several occasions. With the aid of a khan of Shir Ali, who collected a considerable force, he reconnoitred the approaches to the Ambeyla pass, which ten years later was the scene of protracted fighting between the British, under Sir Neville Chamberlain, and the hillsmen. On the completion of the military survey of the Peshawar frontier, Walker received the thanks of the government of India, the despatch, 16 Nov. 1853, commending his ‘cool judgment and ready resource, united with great intrepidity, energy, and professional ability.’ Walker was promoted to be lieutenant on 2 July 1853, and, in recognition of his survey services on the frontier, was appointed on 1 Dec. second assistant on the great trigonometrical survey of India under Sir Andrew Scott Waugh [q. v.] He was promoted to be first assistant on 24 March 1854. Walker's first work in his new employment was the measurement of the Chach base, near Atak, and he had charge of the northern section of the Indus series of triangulation connecting the Chach and the Karachi bases.

On the outbreak of the Indian mutiny in 1857, Walker was attached to the staff of Brigadier-general (afterwards Sir) Neville Chamberlain, who commanded the Punjab movable column, and accompanied Chamberlain to Delhi, where he was appointed a field-engineer. On 14 July he was directed to blow in the gate of a serai occupied in force by the enemy, but could only obtain powder by applying to the nearest field-battery for cartridges. Carrying the cartridges himself, exposed to the enemy's fire, he succeeded in lodging them against the gate, lit the match,