James Rennell (1742–1830), surveyor, hydrographer and one of the principal geographical figures of the eighteenth century, was born in Devon, the son of John Rennell, a captain in the Royal Artillery, and Anne Clarke of Chudleigh. Both parents died while he was still a boy, his father killed in action and his mother remarried without means. Rennell was taken into the household of the Rev. Gilbert Burrington, vicar of Chudleigh, who acted as guardian and remained a consistent supporter throughout his early life. His upbringing in the district, close to the naval ports of the South West, shaped the direction of his career.
Rennell entered the Royal Navy in 1756 at the age of fourteen and was present at the action of St Cast on the coast of Brittany. In 1760 he sailed to the East Indies and served for three years in the Grafton under Captain Hyde Parker, taking part in operations including a cutting-out expedition at Pondicherry. He quickly mastered the principles of marine surveying, producing charts and harbour plans that were later engraved by Dalrymple. At the end of the Seven Years’ War, with little prospect of promotion for an officer without influence, he left the Navy at Madras and entered the East India Company’s sea service. He briefly commanded a Company vessel of 200 tons, lost with all hands in a hurricane while he happened to be ashore, and was then appointed to the yacht Neptune, in which he surveyed the Palk Strait and Pamben Channel.
Rennell reached Calcutta at a moment when Governor Vansittart was seeking to establish a survey of the Company’s territories. Through the recommendation of a former messmate, now the governor’s secretary, he was appointed surveyor-general of Bengal on 9 April 1764, with a commission in the Bengal Engineers. He was twenty-one. His survey of Bengal, begun in the autumn of 1764, was the first systematic survey of the province. Working from headquarters at Dacca, he completed the task over thirteen seasons, combining riverine measurement, settlement mapping and topographical observation. In 1776, while on the Bhutan frontier, he was attacked and severely wounded by Sanashi fakirs, injuries from which he never fully recovered. He retired from active service in 1777 with the rank of major of Bengal Engineers. Warren Hastings granted him a pension, later confirmed by the Company.
Rennell’s Bengal Atlas appeared in 1779 and became a standard reference for administrative and military purposes. His map of India, first issued in 1783 and enlarged in 1793, was the first broadly accurate representation of the subcontinent. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1781 and settled in Suffolk Street, London, where his house became a meeting place for travellers and explorers. He received the Copley Medal in 1791 and was frequently consulted by the East India Company on geographical matters. His later work included studies in comparative geography, culminating in his Geography of Herodotus, and further publications on the topography of Troy and the retreat of the Ten Thousand. After his death his daughter published his Treatise on the Comparative Geography of Western Asia (1831).
Rennell also contributed significantly to the geography of Africa. In 1790 he produced a new map of northern Africa for the African Association, with an accompanying memoir. He analysed the route of Hanno and established its southern limit, and after the return of Mungo Park in 1797 he reconstructed Park’s journeys with care, producing maps and geographical illustrations used in Park’s published account. His long-standing interest in winds and currents led to extensive work on the Atlantic, including the identification of the northerly set south of the Scilly Isles, later known as “Rennell’s Current”. He declined the post of hydrographer to the Admiralty in order to continue his literary and scientific work.
After the death of Sir Joseph Banks, Rennell was regarded for a decade as the leading British geographer. He became an associate of the Institute of France in 1801 and received the gold medal of the Royal Society of Literature in 1825. He died on 29 March 1830 and was buried in the nave of Westminster Abbey, where a tablet with a bust commemorates him. The year of his death saw the foundation of the Royal Geographical Society, an institution shaped in part by the intellectual environment he had helped to create.
Rennell married, at Calcutta in 1772, Jane Thackeray, daughter of Dr Thomas Thackeray, headmaster of Harrow and great-aunt of the novelist William Makepeace Thackeray. She died in 1810. Of their children, William, of the Bengal Civil Service, died in 1819 without issue; Thomas survived until 1846; and their daughter Jane married Admiral Sir John Tremayne Rodd and later edited and published several of her father’s works.
For Chudleigh, Rennell represents a notable example of a locally raised figure whose early life in the parish led to a career of international significance. His connection with the Burrington family, his Devon upbringing and his naval training in the Channel formed the foundation of a career that linked the parish to the wider imperial and scientific world of the eighteenth century.
Below shows one of his maps of India from 1782.
