Colonial Despatches

Col. Henry James, was born at Rose-in-Vale, near St. Anges, Cornwall. He attended Exeter and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before joining the Royal Engineers in 1825. In 1827 he was appointed to the Ordnance Survey, remaining there until 1843, when he was appointed local superintendent of the Geological Survey of Ireland.1

James joined the Admiralty in 1846, returning to the Ordnance Survey in 1850. On 16 December 1854, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and on 22 August 1857 he was appointed director of the Topographical and Statistical Department of the War Office. James became a colonel on 16 December 1857, was knighted in 1860, and promoted to lieutenant general on 21 November 1874. He resigned from the Ordnance Survey in August 1875 and died on 14 June 1877 at Southampton.2

• 1. R. H. Vetch and Elizabeth Baigent, James, Sir Henry, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
• 2. Henry James, Sir, H.E., British Geological Survey.