William Moorcroft (explorer)

Moorcroft was born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, the illegitimate son of Ann Moorcroft, daughter of a local farmer.^[1] He was baptised in 1767 in St Peter & St Paul, the Parish Church of Ormskirk, where there is a commemorative plaque to his life. His family had sufficient means to secure an apprenticeship with a surgeon in Liverpool but during this time an unknown disease decimated cattle herds in Lancashire and young William was recruited to treat stricken animals. His proficiency so impressed the county landowners they offered to underwrite his education if he would abandon surgery to attend a veterinarian college in Lyon, France. He arrived in France in the revolutionary year of 1789 and became the first Englishman to qualify as a veterinary surgeon. On completing his course he began practice in London, established a "hospital for horses" on Oxford Street, helped found the first British veterinary college, proposed new surgical methods for curing lameness in horses, and acquired four patents on machines to manufacture horseshoes.^[1] In 1795, Moorcroft published a pamphlet of directions for the medical treatment of horses, with special reference to India, and in 1800 a Cursory Account of the Methods of Shoeing Horses.^[2]

Career

Superintendent of stud

In 1803 a citizen army was mobilised to defend Britain against a threatened Napoleonic invasion. Moorcroft joined the Westminster Volunteer Cavalry. He came to the attention of Edward Parry, a director of the East India Company (EIC), who recruited Moorcroft to manage the East India Company's stud in Bengal.^[1] In 1808 Moorcroft left for India and arrive in Calcutta, the then capital of British India.

Moorcroft found the company stud in dire shape, with apparently depressing signs of laxness, neglect and ignorance. Often undersized mares were bred with local stallions, the best colts were kept back and stud books falsified. He improved the procedures at the stud.^[3] He took brisk charge of his staff and weeded out deficient horses.^[1] Moorcroft also cultivated oats on a large scale in India and set aside 3,000 acres (12 km²) at Pusa for its production.^[1]

In 1811 Moorcroft travelled extensively in the northern sub-continent in search of better breeding stock. Despite travelling to

]

Bukhara

The journey to Tibet only served to whet Moorcroft's appetite for more extensive travel. But when he broached the idea of a new horse buying expedition to Bukhara in 1816, a searing reply from the EIC Board of Managers warned Moorcroft to keep "steady" at his stud duties and not "waste his time" on "wild and romantick (sic) excursions to the banks of the Amoo (

Charles Metcalfe, head of the EIC's Political and Secret Department, granted him leave to proceed. Metcalfe's goal was to use his friend as an intelligence scout on his epic journey.^[1]

Moorcroft's preparations took nearly a year. His roster of recruits included the Persian, Mir Izzat Khan, who had already made the trip alone some years before and an Afghan, Gulam Hyder Khan from his previous expedition to Tibet. Nineteen-year-old George Trebeck, a recent arrival in Calcutta, was selected as second in command. The total expedition totalled 300 persons, including an escort of 12 Gurkas, sixteen horses and mules along with £4,000 of trading goods as well as medical supplies and equipment.^[1]

Leaving the main caravan at the border of the

Buddhist kingdom of Ladakh. Leh was reached on 24 September where several months were spent exploring the surrounding country. A commercial treaty was concluded with the government of Ladakh, by which the whole of Central Asia was virtually opened to British trade in exchange for British protection.^[2] Unfortunately, this treaty would have required the Ladakhi's to break relations with Ranjit Singh, the Maharajah of the Sikh Empire. The EIC placed a high value on its alliance with Ranjit Singh so once again Moorcroft had overstepped his authority. His engagement with Ladakh was repudiated and his salary suspended. In all nearly two years were spent in Ladakh, awaiting permission from the Chinese in Yarkand to proceed.^[1]

While exploring Ladakh he had a chance encounter with another European,

Tibetan tongue. Moorcroft shared his own Tibetan dictionary with the traveller and although Csoma failed to prove his thesis he is now widely seen as the founder of Tibetology

. It was Moorcroft who steered Csoma towards the compilation of the first Tibetan-English dictionary and grammar book for the EIC.

Moorcroft continued his journey, reaching

Bokhara

on 25 February 1825, but found none of the rumored horses and also learned that a Russian mission had reached Bokhara four years before.

Death

Returning, at Andkhoy, in Afghan Turkestan, Moorcroft was seized with fever, of which he died on 27 August 1825, with Trebeck surviving him by only a few days. However, according to the Abbé Huc, Moorcroft reached Lhasa in 1826, and lived there twelve years, being assassinated on his way back to India in 1838,^[2][4] although this story of Moorcroft's "second life" has been explained by late 20th-century research as unlikely.^[5]

Posthumous publication of papers

In 1841, Moorcroft's papers were obtained by the

H. H. Wilson as Travels in the Himalayan Provinces of Hinduslan and the Punjab, in Ladakh and Kashnair, in Peshawur, Kabul, Kunduz and Bokhara, from 1819 to 1825.^[6][2]

References

1. ^
   ISBN 978-1-58243106-2.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link
   )
2. ^ ^{a b c d e f}  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Moorcroft, William". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 18 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 807.
3. ^ Chisholm 1911.
4. ISBN 0-486-25438-0
   .
5. ISBN 0728602415
6. Horace Hayman Wilson. Published by John Murray, London, 1841. Vol.1 and Vol. 2

Bibliography

• Garry Alder, Beyond Bokhara: The Life of William Moorcroft, Asian Explorer and Veterinary Surgeon, 1767–1825. Century, 1985,
  ISBN 0712607226
• ISBN 071954727X

External links

• "Moorcroft, William" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Moorcroft Pavilion.