1919-20.] Obituary Notices. 183 
Pola, and made for the Russian Government surveys and proposals for 
a second Trans-Siberian Railway, estimated to cost £20,000,000, which 
was not proceeded with on account of the outbreak of war. For the 
Spanish Government he constructed the arsenal at Ferrol, for the Chilian 
Government a metre-gauge railway across the Andes, joining Arica and 
La Paz in Bolivia, through difficult country with a summit level of 
14,000 ft. For the Turkish Government he built the great Hindiad 
Barrage across the Euphrates, a masonry dam with sluice gates for 
irrigation, and a navigation lock, which were intended to be the first 
instalments of a great Mesopotamian scheme, estimated to cost £18,000,000, 
but which was brought to a stop by the War. 
When the question of constructing a bridge over the Channel between 
Dover and Calais was under discussion, the French engineers who were 
entertaining the project invited Sir John to confer with them, and he was 
also consulted in connection with the Nicaraguan Canal scheme. When 
Messrs D. & C. Stevenson, M.Inst.C.E., brought their scheme for a Forth 
and Clyde Ship Canal by the Loch Lomond route before him, he entered 
into it with characteristic energy, and to the end of his life was a strong 
supporter and able advocate of that scheme. He served on the Royal 
Commission that was appointed to inquire into the military preparation 
and other matters connected with the War in South Africa. 
When the Great War broke out, he offered his own and his staff’s 
services to the War Office, and his firm were appointed Superintending 
Engineers to the War Department. Lord Kitchener gave Sir John a 
practically free hand, with the result that, in an extraordinary short time, 
quarters for enormous bodies of troops and cavalry were established at 
such places as Salisbury Plain, Grantham, Purfleet, and Ormskirk, involv- 
ing the provision of water supplies, electric light installations, roads, rail- 
ways, sidings, and bridges. 
In addition to the knighthood conferred on him in connection with the 
completion of the Manchester Ship Canal, the University of Edinburgh, 
his Alma Mater, conferred on him the degree of LL.D. The King of 
Spain presented him with the Grand Cross of Naval Merit, the Chilian 
Government with the Order of Merit First Class, and the Duke of Connaught 
conferred on him the Victorian Order. 
He represented Devonport in Parliament as a Unionist from 1910 to 
1918, when, Devonport having become a single-member constituency, he 
resigned his seat. 
With such a record of work performed, it is hardly necessary to say 
that Sir John was a man of great energy and an untiring worker. He 
