Sir Speedy

Tristram Charles Sawyer Speedy (also known as Captain Speedy) (1836-1911) was an English explorer of the Victorian era.

He was born at Meerut, India and was sent to school in England. He served in India’s wild North-West Frontier Province (1854-60) receiving the Indian Mutiny, Punjab and Eufoszai medals.

On a hunting trip to the Horn of Africa, he was summoned to the court of Emperor Theodore of Abyssinia (modern-day Ethiopia) who bestowed on Speedy the title ‘Basha Felika’, equivalent to ‘Sir Speedy’ or ‘Commander Speedy’. The Emperor placed him in charge of training his army; however, Speedy later fell out with Theodore and fled the country.

Later he served as locum tenens and British vice-consul at the Red Sea port of Massawa.

Early in 1864 Speedy resigned this appointment in order to travel to New Zealand, where he served in the Waikato Militia, was promoted to captain in 1864, and received the Maori Wars medal.

During the Abyssinian War (1867-68) his knowledge of Abyssinia was crucial to the commander, Sir Robert Napier. Speedy was recalled from Auckland to join the expedition’s Intelligence Department and received the Abyssinian medal.

After meetings with Queen Victoria in England, Speedy was appointed guardian to the young prince Alamayu Simeon, son of the late Emperor Theodore.

Speedy married Cornelia Cotton and returned with his wife and the prince to India, where he was stationed at Sitapur as District Superintendent of the Oudh Police (1869-71). During this time he was a companion of the Duke of Edinburgh (the second son of Queen Victoria) on a shooting trip in Nepal.

In 1871 he sailed to the Straits Settlements in Malaya and took up an appointment as superintendent of police on the island of Penang. Speedy resigned in 1873 to raise and command a body of Indian troops to restore order in Larut, a highly profitable but anarchic Malayan mining district, for the Mentri (Chief Minister) Ngah Ibrahim.

In 1874 Speedy was appointed assistant British resident of Larut and he established and named Malaysia’s oldest town, ‘Thaipeng’ or ‘Taiping’ meaning ‘Heavenly Peace’. He remained assistant resident until 1877.

The following year Captain and Mrs Speedy spent several months ‘wandering in the Soudan’ and his wife published a book about their travels.

In 1883-85 Speedy went on a mission led by Vice-Admiral Sir William Hewett to the court of King John (Johannis) of Abyssinia to negotiate the region's disputed borders; he returned in 1897, as part of Rennell Rodd, 1st Baron Rennell's mission to the court of King Menelik to settle the frontiers by agreement.

Speedy appeared in newspaper stories and books. During the Abyssinian War (1867-68) the correspondents George A. Henty of The Standard and Henry M. Stanley of the New York Herald reported on him extensively. The pioneering society photographer Julia Margaret Cameron captured his image in a series of portraits in 1868.

Tristram Speedy appears in A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia; With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, His Country and People (1868) by Henry Blanc], .

The traveller Isabella Bird comments on Captain Speedy and his troops in The Golden Chersonese, and the Way Thither (1883).

Captain Speedy was the likely inspiration for Rudyard Kipling’s short story The Lang Men o’ Larut (1889). He is mentioned in Robert Louis Stevenson’s In the South Seas (1896) as dressed in Abyssinian costume.

Tristram Speedy’s life and experiences propelled him to fame. He has been immortalized by his appearance as a hero in ‘'Flashman on the March'’ (George MacDonald Fraser, 2005); A play, entitled ‘'I was a Stranger'’, written by Peter Spafford, based upon Tristram Speedy’s Abyssinian adventure, was broadcast on the BBC on 17 May 2004, 2.15 to 3.00 pm.

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