INTRODUCTION. 
A very complete biography of James Rennell, the writer of this Journal, has 
been published by Sir Clements R. Markham,' and it will therefore be sufficient to give 
only a brief sketch of his career in this place. He was born on the 3rd of December, 
1742, near the village of Chudleigh in Devonshire, his father being John Rennell, a 
captain in the Artillery. In 1756 he entered the Navy as a midshipman on board 
the Brilliant frigate, under Captain Hyde Parker, and was present at the landing of 
the Duke of Marlborough’s troops in Cancale Bay, near St. Malo, in June 1758, at 
the taking of Cherbourg in August, and at the disastrous action at St. Cast on the 
coast of Brittany, in September of the same year. During this action Rennell was 
employed in making a survey of St. Cast Bay, and prepared a plan dedicated to 
Lord Howe, a copy of which is still preserved. 
At the end of 1759 Rennell volunteered for service in the East Indies under 
Captain Hyde Parker in the Norfolk, 74, but that ship having sailed before he could 
join her he went out to Madras in the America frigate, and after a six months’ 
voyage joined Captain Parker on the Grafton, 68, in September. During the next 
two years he saw a good deal of service and spent his leisure time in making surveys 
of the harbours visited by the fleet. 
In 1763 he entered the sea service of the East India Company, and went on a 
voyage to the Philippine Islands as surveyor. On his return to Madras he obtained 
his discharge from the Navy and received command of a ship, but on the 21st Octo- 
ber, 1763, she was lost in a hurricane. Fortunately for himself Rennell was on shore 
at the time, and soon after was appointed to the Neptune, a small vessel owned by a 
merchant of Madras, in which he surveyed the Pamben Channel and Palk Strait. 
Early in the year 1764 Rennell went to Bengal, where he met with friends 
through whose influence, chiefly that of Mr. Topham, who had been a midshipman 
with him on board the Brilliant, he received a commission as Probationer Engineer 
in the Fort and was ordered by Mr. Vansittart, then Governor of Bengal, to make a 
survey of the delta of the Ganges. 4 Sir C. Markham quotes a letter of Rennell him- 
self, but without giving the date of it, in which he says that his friend Captain 
Tinker, in command of the king’s squadron, “procured me a commission as Sur- 
veyor-General of the East India Company’s dominions in Bengal,” and alludes to 
the share that Mr. Topham took in promoting his interests 3 ; but from the Journal 
now published it appears that he was not appointed Surveyor-General till the 1st 
January, 176 7/ just before the departure of Lord Clive at the end of his second 
administration of Bengal. 
1895. 
1 Major J ames Rennell and the Rise of Modern English Geography , 
2 Journal, p. 9. 
8 Op. cit., p. 41. 
[ 101 ] 
* Journal, p. 86. 
