The story of HE 842, a B24 liberator

I started out writing a fictional story set in our village at Pallavur starting with an object falling out of the skies and crashing into our paddy fields. The much consternation it subjected the villagers to, the investigation of the fallen object and the general furor it created would form the heart of the story. But I pondered a lot on what kind of a mechanical looking object could fall over Pallavur without conclusion. Satellite debris of this size cannot possibly survive reentry. Aircraft jettisoning waste was a possibility, but again they are all way off Palghat, if on a commercial flight path. It was during a study of debris scatter patterns and air crash investigations that I stumbled upon a brief mention of a B24 crash in Palakkad. I was mystified. An American WWII bomber crashing in Palghat in 1958?? How come? Well, let’s find out…..

That B24J liberator must have rolled out of a fleet manufactured in 1944, so many years before I was born. A warhorse of equal acclaim and disdain, the B24 was a fruit of the designers at the Consolidated Aircraft of San Diego, California. With its unconventional shoulder mounted wings and the four supercharged, powerful engines, it stood out as a rugged bomber and was just one among some 18,500 units mass produced during the World War II. The design was perhaps simple in concept but, was actually advanced for the times. Innovative features such as a tricycle landing gear and Davis wing were the new concepts. In its heydays, it served in every branch of the American, Canadian and British forces and was the bomber which decimated the axis powers in the western, pacific theaters, mainly the U boats in the Atlantic. Soon it found itself in the CBI – China Burma India Theater, flying over the Himalayan terrain or the ‘hump’ as the Yanks called it, ferrying equipment and forces to China. Before long, it was to serve the allies splendidly in the SE Asian wars over Burma and other dense tropical forests as well as in the Pacific theater, instilling dread and terror in the minds of the enemy, what with its twin bay bomb payload of some 8,000 lbs. The many B24 liberator models were produced in such short a period that it has been said that more aluminum, aircrew and effort went into the B-24 fleet than any other aircraft in history.

Many pilots who flew it, hated it, cursing the establishment for saddling them onto this beast of a machine, one which was relatively difficult to handle and had a poor low speed performance; even though it’s relatively thick wing provided increased tankage as well as increased lift and speed compared to the Boeing B17. The double fin tail also created many challenges, but remained integral to the thousands built and flying B24’s. As time went by it earned many a nick name, the popular ones being the flying boxcar or even the flying coffin. The Liberator carried a crew of up to 10. The pilot and co-pilot sat alongside each other in a well glazed ‘greenhouse style’ cockpit. The navigator and bombardier, sat in the nose, the radio/radar operator sat behind the pilots, facing sideways. The upper gun turret, when fitted, was located just behind the cockpit, in front of the wing, and was operated by the flight engineer, who sat adjacent to the radio operator behind the pilots. In the tail, up to four crew could be located, operating waist guns. The tail gunner's powered twin-gun turret was located at the end of the tail, behind the tail plane. Though not the most popular, the B24’s took differing roles as transporters, radar jammers, anti-submarine patrols and even as cargo carriers.

As the war dragged along, many B24’s came to the Indian theater, serving the USAF, RCAF and the RAF and based in various airfields, to help out with operations in SE Asia. But this was not the first time India got connected with a B24. Do you remember the story of Sabu Dastagir the Hollywood actor, which I had narrated some years ago? Well Sabu, the child actor from Mysore, had after settling down in California taken up American citizenship and joined the USAF. Being one of smaller build, he flew manning a B24's nose turret gun!

Another B24 story is recounted by a famous C87 Cargo pilot in his memoirs.  In “Fate is the Hunter”, (he hated the B24 C87 cargo, though not the B24 bomber) Ernest K. Gann explains how, while taking off with an overloaded C87 from Agra on a very hot summer day, he barely avoided crashing his plane into the Taj Mahal, dead ahead in his flight path. Digressing a little, let’s see what he did…

The pilot of the big American C-87 transport lined up his machine at the end of the heat-hazed runway at Agra. At the far end of the concrete runway, he could see the Taj Mahal. As the plane speeded up and rumbled along, he noticed with horror that the speed on display was not even half of what was needed. To take off, he had to be at 120mph and to his absolute consternation, he saw it was just 60 mph. Brake now and abort or increase speed? Increase speed was his decision, and throttling up to eighty mph, he saw the trees at the edge looming dangerously on his windscreen. The air speed indicator was still showing just a 100mph and Mann decided to pull back the column, just skimming past the tree tops. And then he saw, almost directly ahead of him and rapidly nearing, the majestic Taj Mahal. On a scaffold near the minaret tip, there were some laborers toiling with some repair work.

Mann states - We were obviously going to knock it down ... Desperate in the seconds remaining, I made a wild decision. I doubted if anyone had ever tried it in a C87 ... 'Hogarty!' I yelled. 'Give me full flaps!'' The plane lost speed, then ballooned upwards, barely missing the spike of a minaret. Workmen on scaffolding repairing the monument cowered back in terror, but the last-second maneuver had saved them, and India’s priceless memorial.

But there is more to the B24 and India as you can infer, so let me continue. Just imagine the contraption, all of 67 feet long and 110 feet wide, weighing 29,000 kg, powered by four 1200HP Pratt & Whitney engines and carrying some 8,000 liters of fuel, coasting along at 297 mph, at heights around 25,000 ft. A plane which was born in the Southern tip of the US west coast in San Diego California, serving in various Atlantic operations, bombing cities to smithereens and helping destroy many a German U boat, going back and forth across the Himalayas and finally bombing the Japanese at work on the dreadful death railway in Burma. It had covered many meritorious years, flown by a succession of nationalities trained in America, until the war finally ended with the surrender of the Japanese.

After the war ended in 1945, a large number (approximately 100 of them) of Consolidated B-24 Liberators were grounded at Chakeri in Kanpur. Britain had originally acquired all these aircraft under the US Lend-Lease terms, which stipulated that they should not fall into anyone else's hands after the war. In fact it is not even clear if this junk belonged only to the RAF, for there were birds of the USAF and the RCAF, in the heap, all once operating out of India, but under the responsibility of RAF. Britain was by now heavily indebted and consequently left in a quandary. There was no place for these planes back home, so the airmen and support staff, part of 322 maintenance Unit at Chakeri decided to vandalize these glorious machines of war before leaving, making them inoperable.

JEH Fail explains all this succinctly in his fine but saddening article. MU staff, torn between the feelings about the aircraft and the hope of ‘Demob’ back home did what they had to. All guns were removed according to instructions from America, and next all equipment useful to the aircraft, such as instruments, radios etc. Control wires were cut, armament ammo chutes destroyed, turret motors broken, even the first aid boxes were removed. Magnetos were removed from the engines rendering all engines useless. Once the aircraftsmen had immobilized the equipment inside the aircraft and the engines the army moved in with tractors and tugged the aircraft in order of their doom numbers for final destructions, smashing up the turret Perspex making holes in the Alclad (Aluminum outer skin) with picks and the dropping the aircraft to the ground by smashing one undercarriage leg, leaving the aircraft like a stranded whale.

Bulldozers were rammed into the fuselages, sand poured into the fuel tanks and instruments were smashed. In between all this, the maintenance staff almost went on a mutiny when a rumor spread that they may be retained in India to service the civilian forces, but it was sorted out quickly when the CO threatened to shoot a mutineer everyday till the mutiny was stopped. Kanpur was left with an immense scrapyard with hundreds of maimed B24’s. By 1947 India had become independent and the dump was handed over to India in Nov 1947.

Who would liberate the liberators? Why would they? Did They? The story takes an amazing and incredible turn. But I will retrace it backwards after going forward 13 years and get back to this in context.

On Wednesday, February 5^th, 1958, the B24J consolidated liberator which we started out with, slammed into a mountain side just over 2,500 ft high, somewhere near Nelliyampathy in Palghat (other reports mention Munnar). Visibility was apparently poor around the hills as the blue mountains of Niligiris were perpetually cloaked in dense mist during February. The plane, part of the 6^th or 16^th squadron, had taken off from Sulur Air Force base in Coimbatore and was perhaps headed towards the Arabian Sea for some naval exercises. Sulur was home to the IAF Administrative College Coimbatore and it appears the aircraft was on a routine mission. The pilot who was to fly it complained of some illness (per one source) and the 28 year old Flt Lt D Kochar took the controls. It was not meant to be, perhaps the plane never achieved sufficient lift, perhaps the altimeter or its sensors were bad, the B24 eventually slammed into the mountains. Why was it flying at such a low altitude, some 70 miles into its flight? Regrettably I have no answers, as a detailed report could not be located.

Reuters reported tersely - CRASH KILLS 10 ERNAKULAM- Ten men were believed to have died when an Indian Air Force Liberator crashed near Munnar, central Travancore, reports reaching here said Thursday. But most other accident report sites mention Palghat, not Munnar. The four dead were (Courtesy Bharat Rakshak pages) are Flt Lt Devindra Kochar (4453), Flg Offr Shashikumar Dattatatray Jadhav (4825), Navs P/O AK Ghosh (5210) and P/O NK Tamhankar (5212). The names of the other six dead airmen are not known.

The crew must have died a sudden death, presumably in flames (I have to make these assumptions due to the lack of any details in the accident report). I am not sure if it caught fire for the records state that the plane was damaged beyond repair and written off. I am also not sure if the crash debris is still in the vicinity or cleared away. It must have been a spectacular explosion with a few thousand liters of fuel catching fire. The debris must have been scattered all over the nearby villages. The villagers must have been astounded, never for a moment believing that something like this would happen. A vast majority would never have seen a plane, let alone a plane crash. If I had a manufacturing serial number I could have traced some of its history through the war, but I could not find any. The Defense ministry statement was also brief and terse, reported in an American newspaper. Accident report sites mentioned Palakkad, Reuters mentioned Munnar and the exact location is not clear, though it is likely closer to the gap and not Munnar.

Interestingly this was not the first crash in the Palghat gap region for Wing Commander Russel in his book ‘Forgotten Skies’ stated - Jack Pickard, the soft-spoken New Zealander, disappeared on the short stretch to Coimbatore where he was ferrying an Albacore. The clouds and rain were down to a hundred feet, and there was only one gap two miles wide at Palghat, between the Nilgiris and the Annamallie mountains, where he could squeeze through to Coimbatore.

It was a sad end for a plane which may have had a distinguished past with possibly the Royal Canadian air force. But think back a bit, after a few glorious years of service in the WWII, it had been abandoned, then partially destroyed at Chakeri. How did it fly again? That is a splendid story, one that can be retold orally much better, after imbibing a couple of Jack Daniel’s. With a load of thanks to Group Capt Kapil Bhargava and K SreeKumar Nair who covered this in their articles, let me summarize the same for your reading pleasure…..

The B24’s had served their purpose, their masters had been ‘demobed’ and their crew were back home learning to adjust to civilian life and post traumatic disorders, some doing better than other. The planes spent years outdoors in the extremes of India’s climate, rains, hot sun, humidity, sand and dust, each of these being an aircraft’s worst enemy!

After independence, it was on October 20, 1947 that the so-called Pukhtoon tribal raiders invaded Kashmir and after much looting and killing reached the outskirts of Srinagar. Hari Singh the Maharaja requested help from India and the fledgling IAF was involved in strafing to push back the attackers. It was at this juncture that the lack of a bomber force was felt by the IAF. In 1948, the US offered to sell B-25 Mitchells, while Britain offered a few war-surplus Lancasters, but the IAF concluded that both types were unsuitable. A few airmen remembered the junkyard at Chakeri. What it they could refurbish a few bombers from the yard of rusting relics?

The Chakeri field with the B24's

It was a classic challenge, something nobody else would have ever even reconsidered today. HAL, then called Hindustan Aircraft (originally owned by W Pawley, an American), experienced in repairing American Dakota’s during the war agreed to attempt a salvage operation. One Mr Yellappa and his team surveyed the yard, identified repairable aircraft, did the required first aid by cannibalizing parts from other B24’s and made them somewhat flyable. But who would fly them? When qualified B24 American pilots contacted quoted an unacceptably large figure, the chief test pilot at HAL Jimmy- Jamshed Kaikobad Munshi took it on singlehandedly. Jimmy now had the job of ferrying B-24s, temporarily patched-up by Yelappa's men, from Kanpur to Bangalore. But then he had neither flown a B24 nor had he experience in any 4 engine aircraft. Rummaging in the hundreds of scrapped planes, Jimmy managed to put together a complete flying manual of the B24J. As he had flown DC-3’s previously, he did understand the P&W engines.

Jimmy’s incredible feat of flying these 42 salvaged planes to Bangalore may seem like unbelievable fiction, but he did bring every single one to its new home in Bangalore flying at low altitude with wheels down. All the ferried B-24s were then overhauled and refurbished while Jimmy tested and cleared them for service.

The Americans hearing about this were dismayed, but when they found that nothing was clandestine about it, they accepted the situation and let matters be for they had abandoned these and written them as junk, leaving no ownership questions on the table. The Indians proved to be brilliant engineers and managed to keep these B24 liberators flying for the next twenty years, 1948-68. The planes went to the Tuskers - 5^th, Flying Dragons - 6^th and 16^th Squadrons. The B24J - HE 842 was one of the two or three trainers at the 16^th squadron based in Sulur. Some continued to be used for training until 1981.

The 5^th and 16^th Squadrons converted to the English Electric Canberra in 1959. The surviving B24’s liberated by Yellappa, Jimmy and the HAL finally faced retirement and were sold as scrap by the IAF. Today five Liberators resurrected from Kanpur are known to be in museums in the USA, Canada and the UK. The 5^th, 6^th and 16^th Squadrons of the Indian Air Force still exist; all operate the British French Sepecat Jaguar.

One of the B24J’s owned by the Collins foundation, still flies, after having undergone further restoration and overhauls back home, in America, is now an incredible 75 years old!!  

As SK Nair stated – The B24’s remain testament to the robustness of an American design and construction, and to the Indian ingenuity and expertise (blended with considerable sweat and toil, and some improvisation!) which kept them flying in India for twenty years longer than anywhere else.

References

322 maintenance unit and the demolition of SEAC liberators ByJ.E.H. Fail

Consolidated B24 Liberator – KS Nair

India's Reclaimed Bombers: The B-24 Liberator Gp Capt Kapil Bhargava

Collings Foundation B24

Images courtesy – Wikimedia, weapons and warfare, google maps

Notes

I tried very hard to get further details of HE 842, but the plane’s antecedents are not to be found nor is it listed in the Joe Baugher database or the Bharat Rakshak archives. Anybody who can help or know about the specific B24 are encouraged to comment.

Some trivia – 3 companies, viz. Douglas Aircraft, North American Aviation, and Ford Motor Company made the B24’s during the war, but much of the production and quality issues were due to lack of good blueprints and precise bills of material. The B24’s greater range allowed it to be used to attack Nazi submarines in the mid-Atlantic where previously land based aircraft could not reach. The B17 was the press darling and most war movies do not show a B24 in them.

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Letters in Post

I am sure many of you will remember a time when we used to wait patiently for the postman to deliver a much-awaited letter. The post was always capable of evoking strong feelings, at times it was a job interview or an appointment letter or it could be a distasteful invoice or bill to be paid, a long awaited letter from home or a most awaited and endearing letter from a loved one, which made your day or say the whole week. Those were simple things which gave you so much joy. Fast forward to today, most of the communication is done with little words and even less character, now it is a smiley here or a social media acronym there, sent uniformly & electronically. Granted they are much faster than snail mail, but the feel and individuality is long gone.

I still remember the post card, the cover (that was what the envelope was called) and the blue inland latter which we used as our communication medium (An airmail letter or a parcel were rare object, not regularly encountered). So much had to be crammed into that little space with our squiggly cursive writing and so, much importance was attached to one’s handwriting, for it was meant to mirror our soul and define character. My uncle used to castigate me with the comment that if the writing slant was towards the left you were a goner (his handwriting was to the left and he did pretty well, actually!). Fountain pens were a joy for some and a pain for others, the latter sort blessing the manufacturer of the ballpoint pen. In my childhood days, I even saw some types of pens (not the older quills though!) which had to be dipped in ink for writing. With pen and paper, you had to think out and plan each line before putting pen to paper, for scouring out a line and writing again destroyed the look of the end product and also reduced space. There were no auto correct or erase possibilities, no backspace or delete buttons as you can imagine.

Picture yourself, holding the pen or usually nibbling at its rear end, eyes screwed in focus, mind lost in thought, pen hovering or poised above the paper, eventually bringing the pen down, pausing for some moments till the thought and the words it formed moved the fingers into action, over the paper. The pen moved fast and furiously creating a masterpiece. Everything had to be right, and each writer had a preference to get it all correct, thin nib, thick nib or medium nib (called tip or point in USA), the ink was usually royal blue or black, sometimes blue black (I had decided to be a bit different and used turquoise blue during my college days!).

Good pens were like watches, always inherited and mine came from my father, a plump Green bodied Parker 21. Of course, grown up kids had their trustworthy standby Hero pen, but holding a Parker just set you apart, as the affluent thinker.

Decades later, when I was researching Abraham Ben Yiju’s letters from the 12^th century, I could easily understand his predicament. As a calligrapher trading in medieval Malabar, he had no way of sourcing parchment or ink or quills. Malabar had only palm leaf ‘taliola granthas’ written with the iron stencil. The English term leaf and folio with reference to the printed word appear to be derived from palm leaf writing they observed in Malabar! So all of Yiju’s parchment was imported from Egypt, and he would use and reuse every bit of working space on it (light, grayish and thick paper). Replies came on the same parchment, and if space was still left, that would be used to reply a reply! It must have been tough for historians deciphering these Genizah scrolls, I suppose!

Back to pens, some held the pen’s nib slanted to the right, some to the left just to get that right thickness, some even wrote with the back of the nib to get the text super sharp! Older pens had leaks and you could see shirts with blotches or kids with stained fingers. Some pens had to be opened and filled straight into the barrel, some had these pump fillers (some side fillers had a lever pushing the rubber tube). Rare pens had filling pistons which were screwed in and out and as you all know, the very color of the barrel and the cap set the pen apart. Some pens had squeeze converters, some had pistons, some had built in piston filling systems, and the oldest of them all, using an external dropper or ink filler to transfer ink from bottles to the body! The material and the balance were not too important for us kids, though Europeans (and very rich people) spent fortunes to buy those masterpieces made with the right material and gold nibs. I was always happy with my dad’s Parker 21, which I still possess and used the workhorse pen mostly, the Chinese hero with its unique nib. Gold nibs, steel nibs, gold tipped nibs, double metal nibs, iridium tipped you name it, they had it in the market.

I wrote my first letters as a small boy growing up under the tutelage of my aunt and uncle in Calicut. As my uncle was a retired headmaster, you can imagine how strict he was in such matters. Now let me ask you a question, do any of you recall an object called the ruler? Not the colloquial usage for the footrule, or scale but a real wooden (usually teak or mahogany) highly polished cylinder, a foot long? Well, that was the device used for drawing lines, by rolling it along the paper and running a pencil along it!! Flat scales came later, in wood and eventually in plastic. Paper was always unlined, and the ruler was used to draw lines. Having them drawn equidistant was, as you can visualize, an acquired skill. And we had blotters to dry up the writing quickly.

Paper was not always white in our younger days; the highly bleached white variety of writing paper was a rarity. When ball point pens arrived, we were never allowed to even talk about it, they would as elders put it, not only destroy your handwriting, but also your character. It took many years before jotters (with imported jotter refills e.g. Parker) and ball points became commonplace, but they were not quite reliable in a tropical place like India, so much so when they stopped writing, we would resort to many tricks to get ink flowing, rolling the refill between our palms to warm it up, holding the tip to a flame, but only just… and inserting thin sticks in to release air locks! If that ink ever bled on your shirt, you had it! It could not be washed away, and it was eons later that we discovered the trick of asking a friendly girl in your class for a bit of her nail polish remover to get that mark off! It also presented many opportunities, as one could envision, though I suppose it may have been easier to ask your sister!

Unlike the west where pencils are still favored for school going children, Indians wanted their middle and high school kids to use pens and become gentlemen/ladies. I was trained in writing and keeping diaries (all thrown away, sadly) and writing often to my parents which I did. It was my dad who replied me; mostly in English, and his handwriting was not easy to decipher, but naturally, he was a doctor! My mother had a dainty handwriting, and thinking back both would write such beautiful letters, a bit of advice here and there and a lot of what was happening back home, relatives and all. My uncle was more stentorian, and his letters were short and to the point. There was a period when I was envious of my brother, he had a pen friend in Australia! Their letters told us about another world, far away!

College was fun and once I joined a silly pyramid scheme where you had to send a rupee to 6 people or something through a money order and I would soon see a torrent of money orders from all over the country, but the main intention was to go to the post office and eye that wonderfully beautiful lady we had at the counter. By now I had so many friends to write to, some of the fairer sex, and as you can imagine, it was a delightful period, exchanging thoughts through this medium.

My letter writing continued to flourish, during our courtship my wife and I exchanged hundreds of letters, keeping the post offices busy and it was only recently that we destroyed a whole tranche of them.

Soon ball point pens became the norm, and quickly thereafter, the roller ball pen. I did not let go of my fountain pen, though the ruler was long forgotten. As I started to work, the collector in me came out and my pen collection soared. I collected a variety, and soon I boasted of many a fine name -  Parker, Waterman, Sheaffer, Cross, Mont Blanc, Caran d’Ache, Rotring and many others. But by then I realized the sad fact that there was no commonplace paper supply available here in the USA for these fountain pens to write on (the ink spread!), simply put, to use them, you needed to buy special paper! As time went by, pens and ink bottles went out of fashion and vanished off the shelves of retailers like Staples & Office depot (Amazon still supplies them!), and ink cartridges became the norm.

During that forgotten era, clever analysts could figure out a lot about you, from your handwriting. Put simply, you could too, on a basic level, looking at a letter from person decide if she/he was sick or doing well, happy or sad. But there is much more if you were trained. Until quite recently, it was said that the way you dot your “i’s” and cross your “t’s” would reveal hundreds of differing personality traits. There is so much your handwriting can tell, for example, outgoing personalities tended to write in large letters, whereas shy, introverted preferred small text! Experts opined that if you left spaces between words, you were the type who enjoy freedom, while those who squeezed or cramped their words together were the ones who liked companions around.

All through your school., your teacher may have stressed about how one should handle their i’s and t’s. Well, it appears there is some science behind it, though I doubt your teacher knew it. Seems (per the article by Juliana and Brittany listed under references), if you dot your “i’s” high on the page, you could be one with an active imagination while an “i” with a dot up close showed that you were an organized person! Furthermore, they say that if you dot your “i’s” to the left, you might be a procrastinator, one who put off things for later but if you dotted your “i’s” with a circle, you could be one with playful qualities.

Juliana and Brittany state that T’s are equally important, that if you cap off your “t’s” with a long cross, you’re could very well be determined and enthusiastic, and possibly even be one with stubborn tendencies. If you use a short cross, however, it could be because you’re lazy. If you cross you lowercase “t’s” up high, you likely have many goals and aim high. If you cross them low, it could mean it’s time to raise the bar for yourself; low crossers tend to aim low as well. A tight handwriting may mean that you are intrusive or have the tendency to crowd people. A right slant means you like to meet and work with new people, while a left slant means you prefer to keep to yourself. Left slanters also tend to be reserved and introspective. While a very heavy pen pressure can suggest tension and anger, a moderately heavy pressure is a sign of commitment. A soft pressure means you’re empathetic and sensitive; you might also lack vitality. A legible signature is a sign of confidence and comfort in one’s own skin, while an illegible signature is the mark of a private or hard-to-read person. Pointed letters are a sign of an intelligent person who might be holding back aggression. Rounded letters signal creativity and artistic ability.

There is more - If you write the letter ‘I’ (as a pronoun) much larger than any other capital letter, you might be arrogant. If the slant of your writing (or any other feature of your handwriting) changes dramatically over the course of a piece of writing, there’s a good chance you’re lying, according to handwriting analysis experts. If you connect your letters when you’re writing, it might mean you’re very logical and most of your decisions are based on facts and experience. If your letters are disconnected, you might be more imaginative, impulsive, and base your decisions on intuition.

After my dad passed away, my mom continued to write, and after she left us, there were no one else who wrote and with that letters ceased to arrive our homes, by post. Soon emails took over and they too are becoming a rarity with the abbreviated exchanges over chats and whatsapp’s. My children do not follow my cursive writing anyway, so that was it, no point writing to them in that old fashion.

Nevertheless, I think often of times, when I would be half asleep in my college hostel room, and I would jump up in joy as the postman slid a latter under the door. Or the joy when I returned after a long day at the office and opened the door to see a couple of letters lying on the floor behind it. These day the only stuff we get in our physical mail box are tons of junk mail, soliciting a variety of goods or asking for donations. As you can imagine, I grumble as I toss them into the trash basket and my wife tells me repeatedly ‘I know you like getting these in your mail box. If you don’t see any you complain about that too’! I try to reason to her that nobody writes real letters nowadays and she chides me saying ‘but then you don’t write to anybody, so how can you get a reply’! Yeah! She has a point.

Analyzing chatter from social media is a new science, especially how you could decide if a Tom is an introvert looking at the emoji he posts! Deciphering aimless Doodles is another matter altogether, and we will get into that another day. They say that as humans, we are designed to de doing things with our hands, to check out all around with our eyes, and walk or run distances. If we are not doing all that, we tend to fidget, fret and doodle whenever we are forced to sit still and inactive for a long period.

Some moved progressively from writing on paper to pecking away on a typewriter and are totally comfortable today fingering a computer keyboard. I believe I can write quicker with a pen, though transcribing or wordsmithing it back to a word processor will take more time. I tried jumping over to a software which would convert voice to text, but it refused to understand my accent properly and I gave up on it. Maybe, one of these days a good responsive stylus will arrive, and I will start to use it for freehand writing, not yet though! For now, I double finger my text laboriously, noisily tapping away on my keyboard and thankfully the results are not too bad, I guess, for I have a few readers who stick on….

My pens live a lonely existence however, most of them have never been used in ages and are in deep hibernation, resting beside a few ballpoint pens and a few mechanical pencils. Gone are the days of traditional letter writing, and the smart phone, PC and the Ipad have taken over our lives.

Now do you want to take up that idle fountain pen from the drawer, fill her up and write a page of stuff? Do it naturally and then apply the process detailed by Juliana and Brittany, see if it makes sense and post a comment. Some may think it is not all that scientific, that it is like palm reading, but there were global standards such as the ASTM E444-09 for Forensic Document Examiners and it is a science in itself.

If it does not interest you, don’t bother testing your writing, just punch in a comment anyway, I enjoy the interaction…

References

Here’s What Your Handwriting Says About You - Juliana LaBianca, Brittany Gibson - Readers Digest

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Farewell to a Friend - S Muthiah (1930-2019)

We are not destined to meet some people and, in my case, S Muthiah was one of them. I have always held him in great esteem, high regard and in our various communications found him never to be distant or aloof, considering the stature he had in Chennai, a city he would have loved to and I still continue to call, Madras.

I had not spent a long time in Madras, but the few years I lived there, remain etched deeply in my mind. As a footloose, greenhorn electrical engineer working with Easun’s at Parry’s corner, I spent a lot of my spare time wandering through that sprawling metropolis during the early 80’s. Tamil, both its music and films, have always held a fascination, so also the vestiges of the British Raj. My parents and uncle had studied there and throughout my growing years, I had heard so much about the city and its character. Of course, the Hindu Newspaper was as omnipresent as filter coffee in Madras, and it was among those pages that I came across S Muthiah for the very first time, years ago. I continued to read his prolific output over time, and after the arrival of search engines, any research on a landmark or person who lived in Madras, usually started or ended with an article penned by Muthiah. Before long I had perused, referred or leafed through almost all his books for some reason or the other and was soon in communication with him on subjects of mutual interest. I posted one or two articles or essays on ‘Madras Musings’ and often Muthiah remarked about their length, gently suggesting a trim here and there. Our last communication dated March 11^th was about Higginbothams, when I wrote to him seeking a small clarification, and as usual, the reply was definite and prompt. Interestingly, even with a wide disparity in our ages, our approach to the history of a land, almost always coincided.

He mentioned me now and then in his articles, once as ‘US-based ‘Maddy’ who tracks South Indian history and keeps me posted from time to time with his findings’. Another time, he wrote in the Hindu thus - Herbert Claus Friedmann was brought to mind the other day only by an item sent to me by Ullattil Manmadhan (Maddy to friends and the blogging fraternity), an electrical engineer settled in Raleigh, North Carolina, US. Maddy does historical research as a hobby and posts a wealth of little recalled Indian historical information on his blog site, often briefing me for this column before he puts up a long and detailed story on the site. Like you would imagine, those small mentions ‘made my day’ as they put it in this part of the world. Once he thoughtfully sent along a copy of a printed anniversary compilation of Madras musings, the post man as you would imagine, surprising me pleasantly, with that parcel from India.

A fascinating man, and I don’t think I need to mention his life’s work and achievements here, for all of you who know him, know it already! That was Muthiah, the ‘Chronicler of Madras’ a sobriquet he fully deserved. His columns ‘Madras Miscellany’, ‘When the postman knocks’ and of course ‘Madras Musings’ will continue with others stepping in, but the tone and the timbre of the prose will change, with the times. People like me will nevertheless miss that gentle and persuasive bent seen in his honest writing, reminiscent of a previous era, laced with a little bit of humor and always the right amount of correct fact.

Lest he frown at me from up above for a longer than necessary obituary, let me stop.

Muthiah – goodbye sir! and may your soul eternally rest in peace…

Pic courtesy – Madras Musings

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Sound memories from Sholay

1975 was the year the blockbuster film Sholay was released – I had finished school and joined College to master Electrical Engineering just the previous year. The music was already all over the radio waves. Radio Ceylon had been playing a couple of tracks and interestingly, the LP’s and EP’s which came out not only covered its enchanting music, but also dialogs. We had a regular song LP and an EP with bits of the background music, the songs and the classic villainous dialogs of the ominous Gabbar Singh. But what was new about the whole thing was that it was all in stereo. Playing them in the ‘record player’ upstairs at home and at full blast during vacations was something the three of us (my brother, cousin and myself) kept at, irritating all and sundry. But it was fun, and an experience which still brings out the chuckles when we meet and reminiscence.

Can you believe it, that was the time when we used to sport headbands (the owner of the ladies fancy store at Sultanpet must have been mystified about boys being keen about those fancy nylon headbands all of a sudden) wearing them at all times, even when we went to the temple. Old women would ask us why we were sporting such outlandish contraptions over an even sillier looking step cut which was the fashion those days, and we had to go to Coimbatore to get those cuts! And I agree looking at those photos today, it does look gross, to say the least. I don’t remember what triggered it all, but lots of youngsters followed the attire of bell and elephant bottoms, fancy colored shirts with those dog collars and some sported the headband.

But I should not digress and stray away from the topic which is about all that new sound we heard and enjoyed, the stereo music of Sholay, created by the one and only man who advanced change, Panchamda or Rahul Dev Burman. All the innovations and experimentations, the adjustments, jugads and difficulties are a stuff of the legends in the Bollywood music circles, and so let’s also try and get to know some of it. I can assure you, it is stimulating stuff and thinking about it, for a person to experiment like RD did, it took a lot of guts!

An Indianised dacoit curry Western, that is how the movie is classified, Sholay was set around the real life exploits of a dacoit Gabbar of Gwalior. The script writers were the dynamic duo of Salim Javed, Ramesh Sippy the producer, Amjad Khan made his debut while Sanjeev Kumar, Amitab, Jaya, Hema and Dharmendra starred. After the movie came out in 70mm, also something new, each person had a favorite. While most noticed the entry of Gabbar and his very unique dialog delivery, accentuated by the background set by RD, others rooted for Sanjeev Kumar or Dharm or Amitabh.  

As the movie shooting chugged along, and as many of you know, the heroes and the heroines of the film got romantically involved with each other, replete with a triangle as Sanjeev – Haribhai who very much in love with Hema, watched in horror as Hema and Dharam came closer and closer.

Time to go behind the scenes and check out how the soundman RD was progressing. While the story writers and the director wove a four line basic plot around many inspirational movies like Butch Cassidy & the Sundance kid, the magnificent seven, Seven Samurai and many others, planning a shoot around Ramanagaram near Bangalore, the choice of MD or music director was none other than the man at his peak, RD Burman. A string of hits testified to the success, Amar Prem, Aap ki kasam, Yadon Ki Barat, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Kati Patang, Namak Haram, Aradhana, establishing him as a hit creator not only with westernized tunes, but also classic desi tunes such as those in Amar Prem and Kati Patang.

RD heard the story line at Sippy’s house with Salim-Javed in tow, as well as details on the song situations. And the tune for Koi Haseena jab was the first to be created, with Anand Bakshi writing out the lyrics later. Most of the songs which were written for the film were recorded at Rajkamal studios, and a full orchestra with 60-70 musicians was the norm. RD’s assistants Manori and Basu arranged the songs, went through many rehearsals and finally it was RD’s task to come in and finish it off, balancing the song. The music had been sold in advance to the new entrant Polydor for Rs 5 lakhs, again something new, straying away from the powerful stalwart HMV (perhaps a catalyst for this was the family relationship, Sippy was married to the sister of Polydor India owner Shashi Patel). It was a challenge for Polydor as they had to sell at least 100,000 records to break even on the Sholay royalty deal.

Some may remember the haunting title theme, think back and you will hear the guitar tune strummed by Bhupinder Singh and Kesri Lord in your mind. This kept you hooked as the camera moves into the jungle through a dirt track with the French horn taking over, as the two men on the horse clip along showing viewers the hilly terrain of Ramgarh and takes you to the village and as the tune gets along, now the tune perks up with drums violins other and instruments join in and then, bits (I think) of the familiar Ennico Moricone ‘for a few dollars more’ whistling by Manohari Singh clips in.

Or recall the scene which introduces us to the villain in Amjad Khan, the ‘Are O’ Sambha, Kitne admi’ the scene, you will hear that creepy  background wail made with a cello by Vasudeo Chakravarty which was later associated with all other Gabbar scenes. Sholay’s music unlike most blockbuster musicals was in reality not just about the songs in the film, but its great background score which took over a month to compose,  using specially constructed devices to make screeches and groans. The BGM became such a hit, so also the dialogs as time went by, so much so that Polydor set up stalls in larger theaters to sell dialog and BGM discs. Soon the dialogs were burned into our memories, and the sounds still remain there in the heads of the people of that generation. Over 500,000 records were sold eventually, five times the breakeven plan. Polydor actually won a platinum disc for the sale of the 'Sholay' records in two years, the first time such a disc has been awarded in the 75- year-old history of the Indian record industry and this was what established Polydor as a proper competitor to HMV.

In retrospect, one could ask how it would have been if Gabbar hummed a few lines in Sholay, and another would answer that Mehbooba Mehbooba would have been right with him lip-synching to that number, but the fact is that villains such as Gabbar are just not allowed to do such things in Hindi movies, as Anna Morcom was told by Bollywood bigwigs. Villains lose their fierceness if they were associated with music, they said, and were quite emphatic about it. So it was pictured as a gypsy song, and many of you would remember the famous Panchamda number as well as Helen’s dance in the film. The brainwave of using an inspired tune for Mehbooba did not actually come from RD, it was a suggestion by Sippy’s wife Geeta who had heard the Demi Russo number while visiting his brother Ajit at London. Panchamda agreed and decided to sing it himself (the original plan was it seems, to have Asha sing it) to match a right voice to the raunchy tune. RD had the Iranian santoor played by Shiv Kumar Sharma following on after the sounds of air blown into half-filled beer bottles matching the swing of Helen’s ample hips(it was perhaps changed later by Mangesh Desai when it was mixed at London, with a Rubab, as a recent report states)

Making it all stereo was what that made it a daunting proposition. The six-track sound, which was a difficult proposition technically at that time in India was the very thing which transformed the music scene in Indian films, forever and set the trends for big budget films thereafter. I still recall that coin toss, and the many sounds from that film, stuff we never noticed in a film until then (barring the train whistle at the ends of the Pakeezah song). One should also note here that Sholay was not the first 70mm movie or one using the six track stereo, but it was a Raj Kapoor movie shot 7 years earlier called ‘Around the World’ about an Indian who travels around the world with just 8 dollars.

Nobody has analyzed the music in the Sholay song ‘yeh dosti’ and how it fits its video better than Anna Morcom. A synthesizer was used in a film for the first time. Kesri Lord plays it as Jai and Viru spot a village girl during the second interlude of the Yeh Dosti song. Morcom explains it so beautifully – In interlude 2, trouble appears in the form of a pretty woman, and the music changes abruptly to a repetitive phrase built around two tritones played in a rough synthesizer sound as she smiles flirtatiously at them.  This phrase used the tritone to signify the potential threat to their friendship, and indeed, Jai and Veeru start arguing over her. …Jai and Veeru now toss a coin, which lands on its side, indicating that neither will have her, and they are meant to stick together. The woman sees that nothing is to be gained from either of these two and scuttles off in fast motion, to the strumming of high piano string glissandos…Jai and Veeru lose control of their vehicle, which starts to skid around, as this happens, violins begin to play fast and chromatic ‘dizzy’ phrases.

Her analysis continues on, but you can I hope, understand how music gets set in a song (listen to the song on youtube and visualize, but focusing on the music as you watch) and the visual sequence, and how it all comes out on screen, just the way you want it and now you can visualize the role and work a music director has!! If you did not know, it took 21 days to shoot this one song.

Recording for 70mm in multiple tracks and stereo output was nothing less than challenging. Each sound was recorded separately at Bombay. The Twickenham studios in London had initially sent out an engineer to Bombay who gave the Burman team the recording advice for taping the raw sound. Every sound, such as the tonga, the bike, was recorded and for three months Ramesh Sippy shuttled between London and Bombay carrying the sounds to London.

They used three magnetic tape recorders linked together on six tracks at Rajkamal studios to record these sounds. Deepan Chatterji, RD’s recording assistant, explains that it was a full orchestra playing in one go, with everything being recorded on the six tracks. As one of the tracks was the monitor (the mono being listened to) the other tracks composed the five track mono which was compiled and remixed to Stereo at London. The eerie Gabbar BG sound we talked about earlier was picked up by a contact microphone stuck on Vasudev’s cello and looped. Bhanu Gupta, RD Burman’s trusted musical hand explains “There were four sectional mikes for guitar, bass, drums and side rhythm sections. The singers had individual mikes. The balancing took ages. Once the balance was Okayed, we were supposed to maintain the volume. If someone moved a bit away from the mike or started tapping his feet, the recording had to be started all over again. Interestingly the fight and gun sounds were replaced with the popular ‘dishum dishum and dishkyon’ sounds at London, since Indian audiences liked it.

Bhanu Gupta adds an interesting aside about the music popularity, about him being stooped by a traffic policemen and being let off when he tells him that he was the Sholay (There is a poignant scene where Amitabh plays the mouth organ as Jaya the widow looks on from the Thakur house) harmonica player!

RD did have a setback though after Sholay and due to various reasons, RD’s enthusiasm slacked post Sholay perhaps even plagued by the plagiarism accusations about Mehbooba. Bengali’s incensed with the song even spread a rumor that Sachin Dev Burman, his father, had a fatal stroke listening to mehbooba. But well, today that cult song is one of the fondest memories from that great movie and one which continues to be remixed. It is ironic and life is strange, for it was only because of a 4 month CMA (Cine musicians association) strike in Bombay that Burman and team obtained all the leisure time to work out the details of the Sholay music!!

More than the vendetta in the film’s story line, there was another brewing in the background. Due to a tiff between a Delhi bureaucrat and the Sippy’s, the 70mm print being readied at London did not get the required import approvals in time and was seized by the high commission officials. Sippy used his connections with Rajni Patel and VC Shukla to push the bureaucrat who still managed to stall the print for some time and the premiere had to be done on the 14^th Aug with a 35mm print at Minerva Bombay (the print arrived later that evening). But apart from the technicians, nobody in the theatre realized what had happened. Only four 70mm prints of Sholay were released initially - one for Delhi, one for Uttar Pradesh and two for Bombay. The same 70mm print was screened at Plaza and Liberty in Delhi, which had different show timings so that the film could be taken back and forth between the two halls in a car.

But the film took a while to catch on, and was panned initially. K L Amladi, the critic with India Today, wrote that the film was a "dead ember" and added that "thematically, it's a gravely flawed attempt." As the picture hit the screens, it did not drum up any crowd enthusiasm initially and after a number of days rose up to the heights off and remained there for ages, as the numero-uno in Bollywood …

Lata Jha in Live mint explains about its continued impact - It was the film’s 25th anniversary in the year 2000 and Sholay was declared as the “Film of the Millennium" by BBC India. Bombay’s Minerva re-released the classic and the theatre was as expected, jam-packed. “I couldn’t hear a single dialogue," Sippy recalls of that show. “The audience kept anticipating each word, delightfully showing off what they knew. It was frustrating but so euphoric."

References

Sholay - the making of a classic – Anupama Chopra

Hindi film songs and the cinemas – Anna Morcom

Behind the curtain – Gregory D Booth

RD Burman – the man and the music Anirudha Bhattacharjee and Balajee Vittal

Sholay’s background score ( link ) 

When Melody was Queen - Part 1 From the soundtrack
When Melody was Queen - Making the song
When Melody was Queen - As music changed - The magic of RD Burman

pic - wikimedia

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The Peacock Throne and the Grosvenor

A Mughal throne in Pondoland?

Many years ago, I wrote about the peacock throne and touched upon this very topic at the tail end of that article. The story has not died despite the musicologist, historian and Grosvenor investigator Percevial Kirby’s empathic statement that the ship never really contained the kind of treasure it seemingly sailed with. Revisiting that story was a thought which had slipped in and out of my mind for some time now. The other day, I was staring absently at some of the books in my steadily growing home library over the years, and I saw the title ‘Caliban’s shore’ which I had purchased during my Peacock Throne research days. I then got hold of both of Kirby’s books on the Grosvenor and got to work unearthing the hoax behind this whole thing. So read on….

The Grosvenor an East Indiaman which sailed out of Madras in March 1782 destined for English shores, stopped for a few weeks at Trincomalee in Ceylon and on its home run to England, ran aground into rocks at the ‘bay of muscles’ on the uninhabited Pondoland coast of South Africa. The ship had a crew of 132 and 18 passengers (12 adults and 6 children) and substantial cargo. Of the 123 survivors, only 18 reached Cape Town. A 1783 report on British newspapers pointed out that the ship’s cargo was valued at around £300,000 signifying the size of its salvage value. But neither the British Crown nor the EIC did anything to locate or salvage the ship or track down the survivors. How come? 

Numerous stories on the fate of the survivors and the treasure being carried in the wrecked ship whirled around for many decades without satisfactory explanations. Many salvage attempts headed by treasure hunters to get to the sunken ship with a hope of recovering the purported treasure-trove failed. Was it all a legend, a hoax? Let’s check.

Interestingly, the indomitable Mrs Fay who once wrote about her confinement by Hyder Ali at Calicut, too had considered sailing on this trip in the Grosvenor, but could not afford the fare demanded.  

Anyway, the ship eventually left a nervous Madras (which had been waiting for an attack by Hyder Ali any time), with some £60,000 worth coast goods, passenger’s personal wealth worth £65,000 and diamonds worth £10,000, destined for a 2 month stopover at Trincomalee in Ceylon and from there to England. The voyage was eventful, the Grosvenor narrowly avoided a sea battle between the French and British near Ceylon. Two months later, at the break of dawn on 4^th August 1782, the ship stuck an undersea rock off the Pondoland coastline (some 135 miles north  South of Durban) and ended up as a marooned wreck. The survivors with little food and sustenance decided to trek some 250 miles towards Cape of Good hope, but it did not quite work out as some died and the remaining survivors drifted into the tribal regions of Pondoland. No real account of their travails are available, but it is presumed that the surviving women were taken by the Zulu and the men merged with various tribes in the region. Three of the surviving white women passengers of the Grosvenor were perhaps taken as wives by Zulu chiefs. While reports surfaced now and then of seeing white persons and half castes in black tribes, there was no concerted effort barring one in tracking them down. It is said that the Abelungu pale faced Pondoland clan points out that during the 200 or so years some of these survivors blended with the Zulus.

It was in 1880 or thereabouts, that a man named Sidney Turner stumbled upon some wreckage and chanced on some gold mohurs and star pagodas. The press came up with a sensational news to report ‘that the Grosvenor had much gold bullion on board” which started the stream of treasure hunts. The next was one Alfred Raleigh who using a medium (a child named Andy) and hypnosis to divine the wreck, declared that the ship was full of gold and silver. In 1896, one Alexander Lindsay found some 340 coins. Local kaffirs fanned the blaze of rumors with their belief that a box of treasure had been buried close to the wreck when it beached ashore near the mouth of the Tezani River.

In 1905 Lindsay formed a company called ‘the Grosvenor recovery syndicate’ which brought in a steam winch and a dredger. The story floated was that the crew departing the wreck had dragged and buried much of the treasure (some £1,000,000 worth) on land and had drawn the map which this syndicate had a copy of. Equipment was brought in to bring up the sunken treasure and the shipwreck which was supposedly covered by mounds of sand. Other than news of the rusting away of the winch and the dredger Duiker (and a sailor perishing in the attempt) running aground, nothing was obtained by way of treasure. There was a lull after this event due to the tragic outbreak of WW1.

It was in 1921 that Martin and David Webster established the Grosvenor Bullion syndicate floating 700,000 shares, after publishing copies of the captain’s log and a bill of lading, listing the treasure. The treasure according to them comprised 19 boxes of precious stones worth £517,000, 720 gold bars worth £420,000, 1450 silver bars, and coins worth £717,000.The value of the wreck was pegged at £1,714,710 and it was stated that the wreck was just under 18’ of water with 10’ of sand over it. The promoters claimed that they had a solid plan of boring through the sea bed to the hull of the submerged ship.

A full 1,000 (or 2,000) shares were purchased by Arthur Conan Doyle and a letter from him was added part of the company’s prospectus. He said – ‘Distance prevents me from taking a more active part in your enterprise, but it seems to me to be approached in a very workmanlike manner and to offer every prospect of success. . . . There are obvious risks, but the stake is a large one, and it seems to be a good speculative venture’.  

The scams continued milking greedy investors off their money. A spurious letter purportedly issues by a port Captain Bowden about the wreck and unsuccessful attempts of getting to the bullion, lent further credence. Two years later, perhaps seeing no return or wreck, another share holder even suggested that Conan Doyle being a spiritualist be asked to divine the location of the ship. After 8 years of no activity other than digging a hole in the ground, the company wound up.

It was around this time that a newspaper article came out stating that the ship had been carrying the two peacocks from the Mughal peacock throne worth £5,000,000, embedded in concrete and placed in brass chests. One CBAC Chase mentioned it for the first time in the periodical ‘overseas’ titled ‘the world’s biggest treasure hunt’ in Sept 1921. He stated ‘It is said that in addition to the treasure actually known to have been in the Grosvenor, were two wonderful golden peacocks, encrusted with gems, that were parts of the famous golden peacock throne of Delhi, India.’

The western Argus 13 Mar 1923 declared - Stored in its stronghold were boxes of emeralds and rubies, bars of gold- specie to the value of considerably, over half a million, bars of-silver, and other treasure. It was an open secret that a large portion of the looted Crown jewels of India was on board, chief of which were the two Golden Peacocks which were valued at an enormous figure. There is (or -was) over 11 tons of gold aboard, and; today the value of the treasure is something like £2,000,000.

In Sept 1923 the story was rereleased by the Daily representative and Free Press to revive interest in the Syndicate. The story went on to say that the pieces of the throne valued at £5,000,000 finally ended up in Calcutta and added further mystery by stating that it had in fact been smuggled onto the ships hold in secret! That was when the story went viral. From a £60,000 manifest, the treasure had ballooned to millions of pounds!!

What about these peacocks? Bernier had previously described them - The construction and workmanship of the throne are not worthy of the materials; but two peacocks, covered with jewels and pearls, are well conceived and executed. They were made by a workman of astonishing powers, a Frenchman by birth, named..... who, after defrauding several of the Princes of Europe, by means of false gems, which he fabricated with peculiar skill, sought refuge in the Great Mogul's court, where he made his fortune. Tavernier stated - The underside of the canopy is covered with diamonds and pearls, with a fringe of pearls all round, and above the canopy, which is a quadrangular-shaped dome, there is to be seen a peacock with elevated tail made of blue sapphires and other coloured stones, the body being of gold inlaid with precious stones, having a large ruby in front of the breast, from whence hangs a pear-shaped pearl of 50 carats or thereabouts, and of a somewhat yellow water. On both sides of the peacock there is a large bouquet of the same height as the bird, and consisting of many kinds of flowers made of gold inlaid with precious stones.

How about Conan Doyle’s involvement in all this? We do know he was a shareholder and promoter of the syndicate. Well, as it occurred during the Boer war at the turn of the 20th century, Arthur Conan Doyle serving for England in S Africa as a doctor came to hear about the potential treasure. He added fuel to the fire by remarking in his memories and adventures published in 1924 that the Grosvenor carried the old crown regalia from Delhi! That is how Delhi got connected to the Grosvenor and now news reports grandly stated that the Grosvenor treasure included the loot from the sack of Delhi.

He wrote thus, attaching a cryptic picture - Buried treasures are naturally among the problems which have come to Mr. Holmes. One genuine case was accompanied by a diagram here reproduced. It refers to an Indiaman which was wrecked upon the South African coast in the year 1782. If I were a younger man, I should be seriously inclined to go personally and look into the matter.

The ship contained a remarkable treasure, including, I believe, the old crown regalia of Delhi. It is surmised that they buried these near the coast, and that this chart is a note of the spot. Each Indiaman in those days had its own semaphore code, and it is conjectured that the three marks upon the left are signals from a three-armed semaphore. Some record of their meaning might perhaps even now be found in the old papers of the India Office. The circle upon the right gives the compass bearings. The larger semi-circle may be the curved edge of a reef or of a rock. The figures above are the indications how to reach the X which marks the treasure. Possibly they may give the bearings as 186 feet from the 4 upon the semi-circle. The scene of the wreck is a lonely part of the country, but I shall be surprised if sooner or later, someone does not seriously set to work to solve the mystery—indeed at the present moment (1923) there is a small company working to that end.

But the syndicate collapsed and ceased operation in 1924 after spending some £12,500 leaving behind an incomplete tunnel to what was believed to be the hull of the Grosvenor.

The legend died down for a while but it was in 1927 that American millionaire Pitcarin, primarily interested in restoring the peacocks to their rightful owners (??) acquired the syndicate. He spent £25,000 in efforts but stopped thereafter for religious reasons! In 1938 the Grosvenor treasure recovery company was formed and a new story crept in, that Hyder Ali’s treasure worth £3,000,000 was also on board. WWII intervened and interest sagged. It was at this point that Prof Percival Kirby a renowned musicologist and authority on African music and races, published his first Grosvenor book which revealed that this was all fantastic nonsense.

After more hunts and attempts, the throne came back to news in 1950, 1954 and again in 1957. Prof Kirby published his second book (True story of the Grosvenor) in 1960 which emphatically rubbished the treasure stories. Kirby also wrote – I also hope that in future the rather juvenile legend will be allowed to die, but I fear that this may not happen. The treasure hunts were finally called off, with the public no longer believing in the treasure, but well, as you can imagine such myths and legends do not die.

Percival R. Kirby who passed away in 1970, stated: `undoubtedly the Grosvenor was a richly laden vessel, but the visions of bullion (if by that is meant hundreds of bars of gold and silver), and of scores of chests of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and the like … are but idle dreams’. Tony Carnie reporting in 2000 concludes succinctly   ‘But that's all it was, a legend. An extravagant falsehood invented to tantalize fortune-seekers to invest in the Grosvenor Bullion Syndicate Ltd in 1923, along with several other syndicates and salvage companies formed over the past several decades’. 

Interestingly there was one unfortunate soul who did find some treasure from the Grosvenor. In 1927, a small time prospector named John Bock found a bunch of 1038 diamonds. The rightful man reported the find, but was charged under the Diamond trade act for having found locally mined stones and placed them elsewhere near the Grosvenor wreck (to salt the find). Even though expert’s stated that these were not South African, pointing to an Indian origin (and thus the Grosvenor), the diamonds were confiscated and Bock instead of enjoying his days, counted prison bars for 3 years.  What an unlucky man!

It is time to go back to Delhi and check what happened to the Peacock throne. As we know the real peacock throne was part of Nadir Shah’s loot which he took back to Persia. On the way back, he had to battle Afghan and Kurdish tribes and the throne was ransacked with only a portion of it reaching Persia eventually. After some years, succeeding Moghul kings built another throne and even Bahadur Shah used it until he was deposed.

After the Sepoy mutiny and the sacking of Delhi by the English, this peacock throne was the target and Captain Tytler, the officer left in charge of the palace, managed to save two of the four pedestals which supported this platform. Some years after his death, his widow sold one to the South Kensington Museum. This lady died early in 1908, when Sir Purdon Clarke purchased the remaining marble pedestal from her estate, for the New York Metropolitan Museum. The picture shows what can be seen at the museum, but Lord Curzon who spent years tracing the story of the throne testified that this was not part of the original peacock throne, but belonged to the later throne.

Back to Port Grosvenor, we see that in 1982 Steve Valentine a diver in Cape Town discovered a lot remains from the wreck at a location some 600 yards north of where hunters had originally concentrated. A few buckles, coins and cutlery came up. Archeological excavations on the Grosvenor wreck site continued since 1999. Small number of rupees, silver coins, gold mohurs, various artifacts and personal belongings were collected over time. No treasure, at least not yet!

The legend and the myth of the peacock throne did not die. Sheelagh Mccay Antrobus takes us back to the legend with a 2010 article mentioning that the peacocks may have lain hidden in the heart of the Hella Hella Valley near Richmond. She narrates that before the loot of Delhi by the British, the Shah tried to avert war by offering the peacock throne to King George III of England.

As the story goes, tribesmen from a remote Xhosa clan found a big wooden box in the days following the Grosvenor’s sinking and on breaking it open, found themselves staring at the glittering glory of the Peacock Throne. It took 25 men to carry it to their chief, who thence sat on it grandly for many decades.

The neighboring Chaka Zulu chief heard about it and sent 300 men to retrieve it for himself. They defeated the Xhosa in a bloody battle and sped away with the Peacock Throne through the Hella Hella Valley. As some of them rested on a hilltop, guarding the Peacock Throne, they saw that their comrades were being set upon by the remnants of the Bhaca tribe whom they had previously attacked. The eight Zulus fled with the Peacock Throne, hiding it in a deep pool on a river before fleeing back to Zululand to request support from the chief Chaka. But in the intervening period Chaka had been killed and his position taken by his brother Dingaan. The eight men kept silent about the throne for they had no allegiance with the new chief. They died and the story should have died with them, but it did not for one of them had told his great grandson about the throne. He narrated the story to a farmer named Stone and came to an agreement that he would show him the location of the throne the next day in return for 11 cows. But in a twist of fate, the Zulu simply vanished the next day, never to be seen again. Nevertheless, , it seems that a wood carving of the peacock throne dating back to Zulu times can be seen in a museum somewhere in Zululand, made perhaps by one of the 8 who buried it.

Another version of this story (50 years of Umko 1966-2016) goes on to state that Pondo tribesmen found the shipwrecked “Peacock Throne” and transported it to the local chief’s residence where it was used by him and his descendants. Around 1828 the Zulu raided the village and found the Peacock Throne. When the return party reached the vicinity of Hella Hella they left the heavy throne hidden in a cave. The story goes on like the previous one and now the grandson of the Zulu is on an expedition back to Hella Hella to find the treasure. He found the throne stowed away in a large cave, secured to the roof. But while attempting to take it down the weakened ropes gave way, the heavy throne fell crushing them to death. So it is still there or somewhere, as the Zulu surmise, hidden in a cave.

Legends never die, as Kirby concluded…..

If you recall I mentioned about the 25 Indian lascars and maids on the ship. A Dutch rescue team found 10 of them, 8 lascars and 2 maids and they were shipped back to India. Unfortunately five of the lascars and one of the maids drowned on their return voyage when, in a cruel twist of fate, the ship they were traveling in, the Nicobar, sank, East of Cape Agulhas. The remaining maid and 3 Lascars arrived at Calcutta, never to tell their tale, in fact nobody asked them. So there you go, of the 140 who left on the Grosvenor, only eight Europeans, three lascars and 1 maid made it back home.

What about the Calcutta barrister and emissary of Warren Hastings, the eminent Charles Newman who was a passenger of the ship and the secret documents which he was carrying to London? Hastings deputed Charles Newman to Madras to conduct the inquiry into the alleged corruption of the Company's servants and Newman collected a lot of information which the EIC did not want exposed. Newman wanted to deliver these secrets only to superiors in London and that is why he was sailing back on the Grosvenor. His secrets also died with the Grosvenor mishap for he never made it out of the Pondoland forests. What could he have found about the 1776 revolution attempt by the Nawab of Arcot? Was he the reason why the EIC did not bother to track down the ship and its survivors? Was that why the Indians were never interrogated? That my friends is another mystery waiting to be unearthed. We’ll see..

References

The Story of the Peacock Throne – Maddy's Ramblings 

The true story of the Grosvenor - Percevial R Kirby

 Source book of the wreck of the Grosvenor - Percevial R Kirby

The Great treasure hunts – Rupert Furneaux

Caliban’s shore – Stephen Taylor

Zulu Journey –Carel Birkby

The doctor and the detective – Martin Booth

The Wide World Magazine Vol 50 -The search for the Grosvenor treasure – EB Dawson

The peacock throne legend -The Witness, 5 Apr 2010 - Sheelagh McKay Antrobus

Memories and Adventures – Arthur Conan Doyle

Pics: Peacock throne, Grosvenor wreck – Wikimedia, Signs – Conan Doyle M&A, Throne base (The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 10, Oct 1908)

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Dr Barnard – The X-Ray man at Madras

Perhaps Dr. Christian Barnard’s blazing trail with his work on open heart surgery during the late 60’s eclipsed the valuable contributions of another, the Captain Thomas William Barnard, O.B.E., F.H.A., F.R.P.S., M.S.R. who refined X-Ray techniques some three decades earlier, during his tenure at Madras. That he made a world standard institution of it at Madras would not be known to many and so I thought it a good idea to share some of TWB’s experiences and his charming insights with you all.

Prof Arcot Gajaraj wrote - Captain Barnard belonged to the category of great men who had a modest beginning, but by dint of hard work, perseverance and foresight brought laurels not only on themselves but also made valuable contributions to the welfare of mankind. He was not a product of any medical school and began his life as an ordinary X-ray operator hardly 10 years after the very discovery of X-rays. What is even more astounding, as our esteemed Madras Chronicler S. Muthiah explained, is the fact that Radiology came to Madras in 1900, when the General Hospital got an X-ray unit a mere five years after Wilhelm Roentgen’s discovery and before such facilities, it is claimed, were established in much of Europe and the rest of the world. As time went by and the first world war wrought tribulations on much of the western world, this invention was to bring about rapid developments in correct diagnosis of diseases, orthopedic issues and go on to impact medical sciences immensely. Let’s now trace the voyage of both man and equipment, their chance meeting at Bombay and see how it impacted the history of Indian medicine.

But before we get to Barnard and his X-ray work, we should hasten to find out how the first X-ray unit reached Madras so early. It appears to have been installed during the days when senior surgeon and Professor Lt Col John Maitland served at the GH. We are given to understand that it was a primitive unit, run from a small set of accumulators. The radiologist who handled the equipment did not quite remain upto date with technology and was not well regarded, so avenues for private investment were opened and Dr. P. Rama Rao filled the void and set up his own X-Ray institute at Kilpauk. One could conclude that Rama Rao and the unit at the GH, managed various patients of the Madras presidency, with Rao sharing a larger percentage of the clientele. As the anxiety of the Asst Surgeon General Dr Govindarajalu Naidu peaked with this deplorable state of affairs, he started a search for a qualified and experienced radiographer.

GH Madras

Captain Barnard’s entry into this dangerous field was deliberate. Why dangerous, you who have been under an X-ray machine so many times, would ask! In those days, the apparatus to produce these all seeing rays was quite crude compared with that now used. It consisted of induction coils with various types of interrupters and many gadgets and devices and well, the naked X-Ray Tube had to be kept cool by various means. Earlier machines were single phase self-rectified x-ray machines with air-cooled rectified valves, cones and cylinders. The tables were mechanically or manually operated with crude spot film devices, etc. There was but little protection against Radiation and Electrical dangers and the risks "X-Ray Operators" (as the staff were named in those days) were called upon to incur were many. Most of the early operators lost limbs and developed dermatitis and other related injuries.

T. W. Barnard joined the staff of the X-ray department of the London Hospital, Whitechapel in 1908. One aspect he picked up quite early was that even with poor equipment, one could obtain good results by dint of hard work. Quoting TWB from his memoirs “Although I used a 'naked' X-Ray Tubes with no protective shield, I escaped serious injury apart from damaged finger nails, as I took precautions ignored by my Seniors, the most important being to keep a safe distance from the X-Ray Tube when it was in action; I attribute the fact that I am alive today being due to my use of a length of insulated flex by means of which I switched the Tube mounted on my Ward apparatus "on and of' from a distance of about 10 feet”! Now you should also note that it was not a quick flash like you see today, but the patient was subjected to prolonged exposure for over 15 minutes to get a good image, so it was indeed a lot of radiation!

The equipment at Mudros

When the WW1 started in 1914, there was a great demand for X-ray operators and initially TWB was not allowed to go to the war fronts but had to stay on at the ‘London’ hospital. It was in 1916 that he was deputed to the Cumbala hospital in Bombay. Reaching there he found no X ray unit to work with but just a leaky room filled with a number of packing cases.How those cases reached there is another interesting story, which I pieced together from diverse sources. If you recall, one of the fiercest losing conflicts fought by the British was with Mustafa Kemal’s Turkish army at Gallipoli, one which left so many Australians, Brits and Indians dead. There had been virtually no x-ray service in the Dardanelles, and its lack was keenly felt. 1 ASH at Mudros was the only medical facility on the Island of Lemnos which possessed an x-ray machine, and this had to serve one Indian and three British hospitals as well as meet its own needs. When the British retreated finally, this X-Ray unit which had provided yeoman service to these soldiers, was packed up (hurriedly) and sent off to Bombay.

A friendly electrician and the ‘mad sahib’ TWB decided to install and commission this condemned system from Gallipoli, it use having been served at the war front. As the story goes, when powered up, the top of the gas tube promptly blew up due to moisture ingress. After scouring the Bombay bazaars for repair material, the duo patched it all up and after finding a willing patient, powered the system again only to see sparks flying all around the bewildered and terrified patient, who promptly fled.

It was from these humble beginnings in Bombay that TWB learnt so many important lessons such as cooling the film bed which usually could not withstand the X-Ray heat or earthing the system (an invention wholly his, but something he never bothered to patent) to drain leakage currents. After moving to a hospital at Colaba and authoring a few papers, he found himself appointed as ‘Radiologist to the Government of Madras’. Barnard was enthusiastic because, as he stated - Madras has always had a good reputation for its Medical facilities and its high standard of Medical Education (I must add, my late father Dr Viswanatha Menon was a Stanley Medical College Alumni from the 50’s and would have warmed up to this statement!). By then, there was another X-Ray unit in Tanjore and a second private clinic in Madras. Would you believe that the prime mover of the generator powering the Tanjore unit was run by a bullock trotting around?

Anyway, Dr TWB quickly got the new department (not the bullock) into a gallop and he was to remain there until 1941 as Chief Officer of Radiology Services with supervision of all X-ray services covering an area three times that of England and a population of 50 million. During that period Captain Barnard opened some twenty new X-ray departments in the state and developed the services in the Madras General Hospital and Medical College as a major teaching center for South India. T. W.B. then established the Madras Government Institute of Radiology, which to his surprise was named after him on the day of the official opening in March 1934 as the Barnard Institute of Radiology.  The center had a primary GE supplied Victor XP4 X-ray unit and a secondary screener unit and it became a major center in South India with the initial cost of this section contributed by Dewan Bahadur M. R. Subbiah Chettiar.

Barnard, who continued on as Director of the Institute till 1940, used the 400KV X-ray unit installed in 1934 for the first time in India on his wife’s hand, just as Roentgen had done the first X-ray ever on his wife’s hand!

H Miller explains in his obituary of Capt Barnard - There was nothing like it in India or in South East Asia, and not much like it in the USA or Great Britain at that time. It was a two storey building around a courtyard where playing fountains formed part of the air-conditioning plant of the X-ray diagnostic department. Its therapy unit housed a 400 kV apparatus, three 200 kV units, two superficial and two contact sets. It had a radium department including a radon plant for supplying radon for up-country hospitals. It had a physics department and laboratory, a physiotherapy department and a clinical photography unit. With its protected walls of locally made brick loaded with barium it had a layout so far in advance of its time that for a generation it remained the outstanding radiological center of South East Asia. The equipment has been kept up up-to-date by adding new units such as the Convergent Beam, Pendulum and another type of moving beam Therapy apparatus - long before important centers in England received such Units.

Captain Barnard ‘Cappy’ remained with the Institute until he left India in 1940 and under his guidance a number of courses for the Diploma of Medical Radiology and for Certified Radiological Assistants were instituted with Captain Barnard serving as the President of the Board of Examiners for both diplomas. Though he had no basic medical qualifications, he was instrumental in initiating several research programs, in collaboration with medical colleagues, such as estimating the age with radio-graphic examination of epiphysis and the study of endemic fluorosis poisoning.

Captain Barnard's had varied interests, he was associated with the Madras Boy Scouts Association and was a keen collector of art objects. But of course, his case files present the more interesting insight to his life and times. As an invention which could see though body tissues, it found instant acceptance with the London police who with Barnard’s help collared a thief who had swallowed gold sovereigns, he later used the same method to catch a Madras thief who had snatched a girl’s chain and swallowed it. Other instances involved the seizing of stolen jewels secreted inside cheek cavities of a woman member of a gang of robbers, a few involving gemology and identification of gemstones, uncovering the sleazy tricks of some charlatans, catching smugglers, determining the age of certain persons (process called epiphysis),  and so on.

Captain Barnard finally called it a day in 1940 and moved back to England. Tracing his later days, H Miller continues - In November 1942 Captain Barnard took charge of a tiny office in the Sheffield Royal Infirmary as Secretary of the Sheffield National Centre for Radiotherapy. From that time until he retired in 1964 his influence on the development of radiotherapy services in Sheffield was immense.

He worked with upcoming technologies such as megavoltage therapy, isotope facilities and started a new radiotherapy hospital. In 1946 T.W.B. began negotiations with MIT about building a 2 MV Van de Graf generator for Sheffield, the first commercial installation of such an equipment. Age never mattered for when he started all this in Sheffield, he was 58!

He passed away in 1978, aged a ripe 93 years old.

Life has come a long way, nobody bats an eyelid thinking about the radiographer o radiologist. But I am sure many are aware that global radiology requirements these days are mostly outsourced to and handled from India, something Barnard can be proud about. The concept has even got a new name, tele-radiology, though it relates not to the X-ray work, but studying the pictures and sending the diagnosis back taking advantage of time differences and having a report ready by the start of the next working day.

But you may wonder how I stumbled into researching Capt Barnard’s life in Madras. Well as it happened, some months ago, my good friend Nick Balmer from the UK sent me a link from the British Library suggesting that it could present an interesting challenge. The archives department was trying to unearth the story behind a letter received by Capt Barnard in June 1923, a letter sent by 4 girls from a small village near Trichur in Kerala, requesting monetary help. I tried as hard as I could to find some information, but only succeeded in figuring out that the girls belonged to St Mary’s school in Chenagloor. Did Capt Barnard visit that area with a mobile Xray or something or did he just pass by the Trichur area and the school? He must have visited Malabar just after he got to India, so was it a pleasure trip, a vacation or on an X-Ray camp??I could find no details at all, but the fact that he did many such camps. S Muthiah put out a clarion call in his ‘postman knocked’, but I doubt if anybody answered. If I do hear something, I will update this page.

The letter reads:

Jesus Mercy.

The good God rewardeth even a cup of Cold Water given in His name to one of His little ones.

O.J. Annie, Mary, Catherine and Elizabeth. Poor Students. Chemgaloor, Pudukad Post, Malabar

Most Honred Sir,

We, four poor student girls (Mary and Catherine are orphans) most respectfully and humbly beg to state that we are in great difficulties and distress. We are badly in need of food and Clothes. We are promoted to our new class. We have not got new books. We most humbly pray you will be kind enough to send us some help. We pray you will not refuse our humble prayer. Thanking you in anticipation, we beg to remain

Yours most obedient and humble servants.

O.J. Anne and others

22.6.1923

One thing is clear, Capt Barnard made an impression on those little girls at Trichur as you can make out from the picture attached. OJ Annie, Catherine, Mary and Elizabeth remain ghosts from the past. I don’t know if they received the food, books and clothes they requested, but I believe they did since Capt Barnard treasured this letter and stored it in his collection till he died. The letter itself is remarkable and bordered with all the used stamps the girls could find, of Cochin Raja’s, Travancore,

On that note, I will conclude, happy that I chose to spend some time researching yet another luminary, about whom you would otherwise never hear of…

References

Obituary - Captain T. W. Barnard, 0.8.E. 1885-1978 London - Madras – Sheffield, H Miller - The British journal of radiology, Vol 51, # 611, Nov 1978

Obituary – Capt TW Barnard – Prof A Gajaraj, Indian journal of Radiology, vol 32, issue 4-5, 1978

X rays – Personal Recollections, Capt TW Barnard, Journal of Medical Physics / Association of Medical Physicists of India. 1995, vol 20, issue 3

Hindu Articles – The radiologist from Chipstead S Muthiah, April 4, 2010

British library request - Karen Stapley, Curator, India Office Records

Note: The title states Dr Barnard. He was not a doctor licensed with a medical degree, but was virtually considered one by dint of his meritorious service and the knowledge he possessed about his own field.

pics - Capt TWB - courtesy - Journal of Medical Physics, X-ray unit - I I and P magazine

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