Kedgeree Roads Anchorage 

‘At Kedgeree, the flood tide accelerated as we sailed past the Company fort and anchorage, and entered the Hooghly river. Seeing the dwellings of the natives was a revelation. Their huts are built only with mud and straw. This construction is called kutcha.’ This is a quote from The Claudians: gardens, landscapes, reason and faith: John Claudius Loudon and Claudius Buchanan, Tom Turner (Kindle, 2024).

More about Kedgeree Roads Anchorage

Kedgeree was a large anchorage where ships could safely anchor and wait for further instructions or trade activities. During the Raj it served as a crucial hub for trade and passenger ships coming to and from British India.

The usefulness of Kedgeree Roads as an anchorage varied from year to year. ‘ Above Kedgeree Point, which was then called the Inner Roads, there was good anchorage from 1765 to 1790, when they altered very much, having become both shallow and narrow, and decreased in depth from 5 and 6 fathoms to 3 and 3, so that nothing larger than pilot vessels could lie there. At the same period, the tail of the Jellingham, which had previously extended down considerably below Kedgeree Point, was much washed away,— so much so, that the pilot schooners could cross it at half flood abreast of Kedgeree, where it had been formerly dry. In 1794, however, reasonably good anchorage could be found above the Point; and in 1836 it was a fine roadstead with abundance of water.’ John Cleveley was a marine artist who worked for Joseph Banks and Captain Cook. He used sketches done by others instead of travelling to the east himself.

After seven months at sea, with glimpses of South Africa, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Madras, one can imagine Claudius Buchanan's thoughts as the Busbridge moored in Kedgeree Roads and he saw Bengal for the first time. This was where he was to encounter Indian civilisation, the Hooghly River and the British Raj.