Ballinrobe to Baghdad – the many adventures of Henry Blosse Lynch

Ernest Shackleton and Tom Crean are two well-known Irish explorers – and there are many more but not so well known is Henry Blosse Lynch, also a linguist and diplomat and who died 150 years ago on April 14th. Some of his brothers also became intrepid explorers and together they set up successful shipping businesses in the parts of the world they traversed.

He was born on November 24th, 1807, at Partry House, Ballinrobe, Co Mayo, the third of 11 sons of Henry Blois Lynch, a British army major, and Eliza Finnis, who was from Kent in England. Henry jnr volunteered to join the Indian navy at 15 and served as a midshipman. He participated in the surveying of the Gulf and became greatly interested in the area, as did many of his brothers. A capable linguist, he mastered Arabic, Persian and Hindustani and following his promotion to lieutenant in 1829, he became interpreter for the Gulf Squadron as its ships mapped the Gulf and Arabian coasts.

Taking leave from the navy in 1832, he did some more exploring in the Gulf and was fortunate to survive a shipwreck on his way back to Britain. In 1834, when the first Euphrates Expedition was launched under Col Francis Rawdon Chesney (born in Co Down and known as the “father of the Suez Canal”), Lynch was made second in command. For the expedition to have any success, good relations with the Arabs in the region were vital and Lynch was given responsibility for managing the sometimes fragile and difficult negotiations that might ensue. JS Guest labelled him “a clever diplomatist and expert in oriental languages” in his book The Euphrates Expedition (1992).

The expedition consisted of two ships, Tigris and Euphrates, and Lynch was given command of the former. However, he and Chesney did not get on well, clashing at times especially over discipline. For two years they charted the 800km route of the Euphrates to India but on May 21st, 1836, the Tigris sank in a hurricane and Henry’s brother, Lieut Robert Blosse Lynch, aged 30, was among the 20 lives lost. Following Chesney’s return to England the next year, Lynch was given command of the Euphrates and charge of the Second Euphrates Expedition and charted the entire course of the Tigris to Baghdad by 1839.

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In that year he was promoted to commander but lost another brother, Lieut Michael Lynch, aged 28, in an expedition in 1840. A younger brother, Thomas Kerr Lynch, was attending Trinity College Dublin when he left to join the second Euphrates Expedition and, on Henry’s advice, he established a river transport company with others to exploit the commercial opportunities offered by Mesopotamia.

An enigmatic, contradictory figure, Lynch was remembered for his ‘ready Irish wit, untampered by cynicism, and his exuberant geniality’

The Euphrates expeditions had opened up communication between Baghdad and India; the Lynch brothers were savvy enough to realise the potential of this and set up a business house in Baghdad and a financial company for trading-steamers. Lynch Brothers Ltd (London) and Stephen Lynch and Co Ltd (Baghdad) were run by Thomas and another brother, Stephen Finnis Lynch, and their business thrived. With Henry they established the Euphrates and Tigris Steam Navigation Co in 1861, which became centrally involved in railroad construction in the region (under the patronage of the British government). The company belonged to the Lynch family for almost a century.

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As well as his commercial activities, Henry was assistant to the superintendent of the Indian navy (1843-51). During that time he was an active member of the Bombay Geographical Society and founded the Indian Naval Club. He fought in the second Burma War (1851-1853), which was caused by trading disputes and resulted in further British annexation of Burmese territory. Awarded Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB), he retired to France in 1856 but the British prime minister Lord Palmerston employed his services as a diplomat and he helped to negotiate the Treaty of Paris (1857) at the end of the Crimean War, for which he received further awards.

He had married, in 1838, Caroline Anne Taylor, daughter of Colonel Robert Taylor, who was head of British intelligence in Baghdad. They had four children. He died at his residence on Rue Royal, Faubourg St Honoré in Paris and is buried in Père Lachaise, Île-de-France. “An enigmatic, contradictory figure, Lynch was remembered for his ‘ready Irish wit, untampered by cynicism, and his exuberant geniality’,” according to Patrick M Geoghegan, who wrote the entry on him in the Dictionary of Irish Biography.