Henry Alabaster, 1836- 1884
by
Derick
Garnier
Henry Alabaster arrived in
Henry Alabaster was a brilliant student. He
won a scholarship to King’s College, later to become London University; he was
elected an Associate of the College and Senior Scholar, and studied
international law, engineering, surveying, construction and botany. He would
use his knowledge of all these subjects when he worked for the King in
developing the new city of Bangkok.
In 1856, there was no city of Bangkok. There was the Grand Palace and the
Temple of the Emerald Buddha within the huge, white walls. Outside there were a number of Buddhist monasteries scattered about among
the trees; and simple wooden houses floating on rafts along the banks of the
Chao Phraya river. For the rest there
was nothing but palm trees, orchards,
paddy fields and empty, waterlogged land. There were no roads, so people
travelled about by boat, or were carried if they were very grand. The only
Westerners were ships’ captains and missionaries.
The British Consulate had just been built, of wood, on the site of the present
General Post Office, just off New Road. All the fittings had to be sent out
from England: locks, hinges, door handles and panes of glass; the journey often
took six to eight months. Wild life roamed the grounds: 13 varieties of snakes
and 27 kinds of butterfly were found in the garden. There was even a consular
gaol.
It must have been a depressing scene for the young Henry Alabaster when he
arrived as a deputy Consul in 1857. He was only 21 years old. He came as a
Student Interpreter and busily set abut learning the language. Interpreters were
needed because hardly any Thais spoke English. He soon made friends with Thai
scholars and began to study Buddhism. Eventually he wrote a book on the
Buddhist faith called “The Wheel of the
Law”, published in London in 1871 and widely praised. He became a friend of
King Mongkut and was allowed to read in the royal library. In 1868 he led a
British contingent of astronomers to Hua Wan, south of Hua Hinh, to view a
total eclipse of the sun predicted by King Mongkut, to which the King had
invited French astronomers, the Governor of Singapore and many others. At the
same time, he was appointed Acting Consul when the Consul was on home leave. He
also helped the Thais to survey the land and build roads; indeed he helped in
the construction of New Road, one of the first roads to be built out into the
country. “Day after day (he) went through the fruit orchards, and rice fields,
jumping ditches, wading through mud, surveying the ground to plot out these
roads.” (from the ‘Siam Repository’, the local English newspaper)
Eventually, in 1873, the young King Chulalongkorn, invited Alabaster to become
his personal adviser. At last he had a chance to use his many skills. He
designed and constructed the Gardens at Saranarom Palace as a place for the
public to relax and study plants and animals, as was being done by Western
countries, at Kew for example. He
introduced Catalaya orchids to Thailand. In 1875, he helped to start the Survey
Office and trained the first Thai surveyors. Together they plotted the route
for a land telegraph cable from Bangkok to Battambang in the then French colony
of Cambodia and so to the outside world. He mapped the Gulf of Thailand and
administered the first Thai lighthouse. He suggested the employment of James
McCarthy who came from the Survey of India to map the frontiers of Thailand
where they met the borders of the English colony of Burma and the French colony
of Indo-China, and stayed many years. Alabaster also started the first museum
in Thailand, inside the Grand Palace. He
catalogued the royal library and taught Thai librarians how to classify books.
Finally, he started the Post and Telegraph Office, trained the staff and
arranged the first postal deliveries.
Perhaps his greatest value to the King was his knowledge of the Colonial Powers
and the designs they had on Thai territory. “He came to Thailand to turn her
into a colony of the British, but he stayed in Thailand to help prevent her
becoming a British colony,” said her grandson. This point did not go unnoticed
by the British Foreign Office; “a good for nothing fellow who was dismissed,”
they wrote. King Chulalongkorn thought rather differently and asked him to
draft royal letters to Western heads of state; he was given the rank of Phya
First Class, almost the highest rank ever attained by a foreigner in Thai
service. When he died he was buried in the Protestant Cemetery and his grave is
marked by the most imposing memorial of them all. It was given by the King
himself.
Henry Alabaster died quite suddenly at the early age of 48. His lower jaw
became paralyzed and three days later he was dead. He left two families behind
him: three sons by his English wife, Palacia; and two by his Thai wife, Perm.
Both her sons served in the Thai civil service and both were awarded the same
rank of ‘Phya’ as their father. King Rama Vl introduced the use of surnames for
Thai families and himself gave this family the name ‘Savetsila’, which in Thai
means ‘white stone’, or ‘alabaster’. One of Henry Alabaster’s grandsons was
Siddhi Savetsila who had a most distinguished career. He parachuted into
Japanese occupied Thailand at the end of the Second World War as a member of
the underground Resistance. He rose to the rank of Air Chief Marshall, Foreign
Minister and Privy Councillor to the King. The Savetsila family now has many
members; a living memorial to that brilliant young Language Student who stepped ashore in
Bangkok so many years ago.