Bax, Henry Bonham (1798-1869)

Henry Bax was born in 1798; he joined the Royal Navy in 1813 only to leave it a few years later in 1817. At least one hobby that seems to have kept him busy during this period, and indeed for the rest of his life, seems to have been the painting of watercolours.

Several paintings found on the internet include views of the coasts of England, France, Italy, Minorca and Gibraltar, as well as Portugal.

After leaving the service in 1817, Bonham Bax joined the East India Company which appears to have proved a long and prosperous association. According to records shown in a supplement to the Register of Ships employed in the service of the Hon the United East India Company published in 1835, from 1818 to 1831 Bonham was involved in no less than seven major trips to the Orient using four different ships all of which he appears to have been the ship’s husband acting as agent for the owner of the ship. He is also often described on some of these voyages as the ship’s captain.

A list of his travels throughout his career in the Company includes the following where he is identified as a Commander HEIC (Hon East India Company)

1818-1819 – East Indiaman, Prince Regent – destination, Madras and Bengal
1819-1820 – East Indiaman, Prince Regent – destination, Madras and Bengal
1820/1821 – East Indiaman, Prince Regent – destination, Madras and China
1822/1823 – East Indiaman Asia – destination, Madras and China Season
1826/1827 – East Indiaman Abercrombie Robinson – destination, Bombay and China
1828/1829 – East Indiaman Edinburgh – Bombay and China
1829/1830 – East Indiaman Marq. Wellington – Bengal
1830/1831 – East Indiaman Edinburgh – Bombay and China

In an older registry of ships employed by the East India Company from 1760 to 1819 a certain Henry Bonham appears as commander or ship’s husband for numerous trips to the Orient dating from 1803 to 1810. One can only speculate that this gentleman was Henry Bonham Bax’s father. Two of his ships the “Calcutta” and the “Lord Nelson” were reported as lost, the first off Mauritius the second “in a gale of Wind.” Luckily for all concerned Bonham senior was not on board either of them.

Bonham junior was also not on board for the 1829 trip to Bengal as he got married to Ann Hansen, a West Yorkshire girl from a very large family that same year. Whatever he did after his last trip for the East India Company, is a mystery as there appears to be no further information until 1844 when he makes an appearance in several documents.

Henry had left the East India Company to become a member of the Trinity House Fraternity. This peculiarly British independent institution was set up by Henry VIII in 1514. During the 19th century it had made itself responsible for a range of maritime concerns such as ship and port safety.

By 1844 he had become a member of the Court of Elder Brethren selected from the much larger ranks of what were known as the Younger Brethren. He appears as such in the Royal Calendar of 1847 where he appears as having become an elder in 1844.

By the 1850s, Henry’s connections and hard work seem to have been paying dividends elsewhere. Adverts on several contemporary newspapers for the London Assurance Company show him as one of the directors of the company. One of the earliest to do so is the 1851 Directory of Croydon.

His name continued to be included in these adverts for the next 17 years, one of the last appearing in the Chronicle and Directory for China, Japan and the Philippines. It is dated 1868. He died a year later.

Nearly a hundred years after Bonham Bax’s death, Admiral R.N. Bax, presumably a descendent of Bonham’s, presented a series of family documents to the Royal Museums Greenwich that included an illustrated list of buoys and light vessels and another illustrated book of lighthouse owned by Bax as an Elder Brother of Trinity. There were also sketches of proceedings of the 74 guns HMS Musgrave kept by Midshipman Henry Bonham Bax. It strongly suggests that most of his Royal Navy travelling was aboard the Musgrave.