Chesney

Chesney, Francis Rawdon, explorer, was born in 1789 at Annalong, county Down. After a period at Woolwich, he was in 1805 gazetted to the Royal Artillery. Visiting Turkey in 1829, he surveyed the Isthmus of Suez, and proved the canal to be a practicable undertaking. He next sought to discover an alternative route to India by way of Syria and the Euphrates, and four different times journeyed to the East for this purpose. He was subsidised by a grant of £20,000 by the English Government, but the opposition of Russia interfered with his success. In 1837 he received the Geographical Society's gold medal, and received the honorary degree of D.C.L. from the University of Oxford. He wrote Past and Present State of Firearms, Russo-Turkish Campaign of 1828-9, Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition. He died in 1872 at Mourne.