Tristam Speedy

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Captain Speedy (1836-1911)

Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy was one of the more renowned adventurers and explorers of the Victorian age, a legend in his own time and a gifted linguist (like his father), a commander of armies and the confidant of monarchs and maharajas.

The young Speedy had served in India’s wild North-West Frontier Province (1854-60) receiving the Indian Mutiny, Punjab and Eufoszai medals.

Bored with cantonment life, he sailed to the Horn of Africa to go big-game hunting. However he was summoned to the court of Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) who bestowed on Speedy the title ‘Basha Felika’, roughly equivalent to ‘Sir Speedy’ or ‘Commander Speedy’. The Emperor placed him in charge of training his army however Speedy later fell out with Theodore who was becoming increasingly paranoid and deluded and he had to flee!

This was followed by a stint as locum tenens at the Red Sea port of Massawa as British vice-consul.

Early in 1864 Speedy resigned this appointment. New Zealand now beckoned and he served in the Waikato Militia, was promoted to captain in 1864 and received the Maori Wars medal.

During the Abyssinian War (1867-68) his knowledge of Abyssinia was crucial to the commander, Sir Robert Napier (later 1st Baron Napier of Magdala). Speedy was recalled from Auckland to join the expedition’s Intelligence Department and received the Abyssinian medal.

After meetings with Queen Victoria in England, Speedy was appointed HM’s guardian to the young prince Alamayu Simeon, son of the late Emperor Theodore.

Speedy married Cornelia Cotton and returned with his wife and the prince to India and was stationed at Sitapur as District Superintendent Oudh Police (1869-71) and during this time was a companion of the Duke of Edinburgh (the second son of Queen Victoria) on a shooting trip in Nepal.

In 1871 he sailed to the Straits Settlements in Malaya and took up an appointment as superintendent of police on the island of Penang. Speedy resigns in 1873 to raise and command a body of troops or police from India to restore order in Larut, a highly profitable but lawless Malayan mining district, for the Mentri (Chief Minister) Ngah Ibrahim.

In 1874 Speedy was appointed assistant British resident of Larut and he established and named Malaysia’s oldest town, ‘Thaipeng’ or ‘Taiping’ meaning ‘Heavenly Peace’. He remained assistant resident until 1877.

The following year Captain and Mrs Speedy spent several months ‘wandering in the Soudan’ and his wife published a book of their travels.

In 1883-85 Speedy went on a mission led by Vice-Admiral Sir William Hewett to the court of King John (Johannis) of Abyssinia to negotiate over the regions disputed borders and in 1897 he was on the mission to Abyssinia under Rennell Rodd (the future Lord Rennell) to the court of King Menelik of Abyssinia to settle the frontiers by agreement before the King’s army could prevail. King Menelik awarded Speedy The Star of Ethiopia.

Speedy appeared in newspaper stories and books. During the Abyssinian War (1867-68) the correspondents George A. Henty of the Standard and Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald reported on him extensively.

He was mentioned most favourably in the official dispatches of Sir Robert Napier (later 1st Baron Napier of Magdala) during the Abyssinian War (1867-68) and a woodcut illustration of him was published in the Illustrated London News in 1868.

Queen Victoria wrote of meetings with Speedy and Prince Alamayu, son of Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia, in the Royal Diaries. The pioneering society photographer Julia Margaret Cameron captured his image in a series of portraits in 1868.

Tristram Speedy appears in A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia; With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, His Country and People (1868) by Henry Blanc.

Tristram’s wife, Cornelia Cotton, published books regarding some of their adventures: Anecdotes of Alamayu, The Late King Theodore’s Son (circa 1869) and My Wanderings in the Soudan (1884).

The naturalist Charles Darwin makes two references to Captain Speedy in The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872).

The journalist and explorer Sir Henry Stanley in Coomassie and Magdala (1874) says ‘Basha Felecca had a Turkish scimitar, the gift of an Indian Raja…he used to amuse Theodore with splitting sheep in two from head to tail, which feat no Abyssinian could imitate.’

The intrepid traveller Isabella Bird comments on Captain Speedy and his troops in The Golden Chersonese, and the Way Thither (1883).

Captain Speedy was the likely inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s short story The Lang Men o’ Larut (1889). He is mentioned in Robert Louis Stevenson’s In the South Seas (1896) as dressed in Abyssinian costume.

In 1899 an article written by Captain T.C.S. Speedy was published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine entitled A Glimpse at Nubia, Miscalled “The Soudan”. He died before completing Abyssinian colloquial book for travellers and an English-Amharic dictionary.

[edit] References

Henri Blanc, Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia with Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, His Country and People, is available at Project Gutenberg

Isabella Bird, The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither, is available at Project Gutenberg