Last Boat Journey 1857 – Fatehgarh to Bithur (Kanpur) is a rare historical river expedition.Sail for 3 days on a simple re-fabricated rowing boat with two boatmen, an accompanying butler and a tour manager. This trip is in memory of the last boat journey of Gavin Jones, the survivor of the Fatehgarh massacre in 1857. This boat trip traces the route and history of the journey taken by Gavin Jones to survive the bloody massacre of Fatehgarh and fleeing to Kanpur. This trip is based on an account of Gavin Jones as mentioned in a book ‘Fatehgarh & The Mutiny’. After a great deal of research this trip was formalized and the descendants of Gavin Jones, Mallaby & his son Hugo. This is an unpretentious expedition of 3-4 days and is a once in a lifetime opportunity for history enthusiasts.
An expedition tracing an episode from the uprising of 1857, one of the most dramatic episodes of the 1857 Mutiny river journey, in Fatehgarh… (though the original trip was up to Cawnpore, now called Kanpur, but now with the construction of a water-gate, the trip has to be abandoned in Bithur, 30 km before Kanpur)”.This unique experience involves sailing for three to four days on a simple, re-fabricated row boat, accompanied by two boatmen, a butler, and a tour manager. A ground crew takes the road and assists at accessible places, Night-stops are in the camp on the river banks (by prior permission).
This trip commemorates Gavin Jones’s boat journey from Fatehpur to Cawnpore (Kanpur), where Gavin Jones survived the Fatehgarh massacre in 1857. It retraces his historic route, based on his account in the book ‘Fatehgarh & The Mutiny,’ detailing his escape to Cawnpore after the bloody massacre. The journey began with 13 boats and only one could make it after a lot of adventure and nail-biting moments en route. .
Following extensive research, this trip was formalised to support the trip of Gavin Jones’s descendants, Mallaby and his son Hugo, who took this trip in 2014 with Tornos & Indian Frontiers, our sister tour companies that specialise in British India Tours. This unpretentious 3-4 day expedition offers history enthusiasts a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to connect with this event and relive the past on the river.
On a recent visit to India with my son, tracing the escape route of my great grandfather Gavin Jones, one of only two survivors from the Fatehgarh community during the Mutiny , we managed to get into Fatehgarh Fort, which is normally forbidden since it is in a restricted military area.’ How can one resist such a splendid opening sentence? Or fail to admire the resourcefulness of BACSA members? Antony Mallaby has sent a fascinating account of his journey and some good photographs too. Inside the Fort is a pre-Mutiny British cemetery, which still bears the marks of battle, with a musket-ball hole in Lieutenant James Fisher’s headstone. Fatehgarh is on the river Ganges, about eighty miles north of Cawnpore, and it was from here that a party of 157 fugitives set off on the morning of 4 June 1857 travelling downriver. They had hoped to find refuge at the large British cantonment of Cawnpore, unaware that it had already fallen to mutinous troops. The refugees split into two groups, one heading to their deaths at Cawnpore, and the second, including the Probyn family, seeking shelter with a sympathetic zamindar (landholder) called Hardeo Baksh Singh.
Gavin Jones had also found refuge with the zamindar, which prompted the Mallabys’ visit to Kassowra, where the Europeans had been holed up in its fort. Grateful as the refugees were, it was a wretched experience because ‘the fort consisted of little more than a mud-walled pen containing a few sheds and trees’. Their diet was sparse, and because the zamindar had forbidden them to keep milk goats, two of the infant Probyns died from malnutrition. Antony Mallaby takes up the story: ‘We went to Kassowra. The fort has long since vanished, but the village is probably unchanged since 1857. Grass huts, cow dung cakes drying in the sun, buffalo and goats everywhere, acrid smoke and a dim glimpse into a hut reveals nothing but a charpoy or two. We enquired about the location of the graves of the two Probyn children. We found the standard Archaeological Survey of India blue notice, but there was no sign of the graves. However, willing hands produced a mattock and both were uncovered from under some two feet of dirt and manure. I’m afraid we did not have the time for the whole grave to be uncovered .. . I was not able to get the full inscription, but think it was as follows:
In fact the correct name is Whitten and by chance Mrs. George had been doing some research on his widow, Caroline. Arthur Whitten was born in Jersey on 24 April 1883. ‘In 1901 he was an apprentice mechanical engineer in Bow, east London. His career in India seems to have begun before the First World War, during which he was in the Indian Army Reserve of Officers, apparently serving with a Light Cavalry Regiment.
In 1924 Arthur Whitten was the manager of the Doyang Tea Estate in the Golaghat area of Assam. It seems there was some discontent among his workers and he was brutally murdered by a group of them on 27 June that year. Fourteen men were arrested and lodged in Golaghat gaol. The Bishop of Assam officiated at the funeral the next day.
Arthur Whitten had been married in 1923 in India to Caroline Lowry. She was born in China in 1892, the daughter of an official of the Imperial Maritime Customs. Orphaned as a child she was brought up by grandparents in Ireland and Kent. She returned a widow to Kent in 1925 and later shared a house with my great-great-aunt Emily Rowntree. Aunt Em was 29 years older than Carol Whitten, but lived until 1951 and I remember them both.’Today, the Last Boat Journey 1857 stands as a unique Ganges heritage expedition and a powerful 1857 history tour experience for serious heritage travellers.
River Rhapsody specializes in immersive river tourism. We offer intimate river boat tours along carefully curated itineraries, enhanced by luxury camping for overnight experiences and wilderness meal stops.