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2. Alexander Blakely 1827 - 1868 Manufacturer of Ordnance
Alexander Blakely was born in Sligo, Ireland on January 7, 1827; the son of the Very Reverend Theophilus Alexander and his second wife, Mary William Blakely. His father, of English descent, was a minister in the Anglican Church, eventually becoming Dean of Down. He was nominally Theophilus Alexander Blakely but preferred his second name, rarely using his first and signing with just his initials. Blakely had two sisters, Mary Stewart Blakely and Isabella Chalmers Blakely; the odd female given-names were a family trait. After education at the Royal Military College, Woolwich, on June 14, 1844, at the unusually young age of 17 Alexander Blakely was commissioned from Gentleman Cadet to Second Lieutenant in the Royal Regiment of Artillery; on April 2, 1846 he became First Lieutenant, and on April 1, 1852 he achieved the rank of Second Captain of Artillery, he was known universally as Captain Blakely for the rest of his life. He retired on half-pay on August 18, 1852. During the Crimean War in July 1855 he took the temporary rank of Major and Assistant Quartermaster General in the Irregular Cavalry of General Robert Vivian’s 22,000 strong “Turkish Contingent”, a mercenary corps organised by the British Army. He served as such until December 23, 1855. Blakely finally left the service on May 10, 1861, by selling-out his commission. On March 12, 1855 Captain Blakely had appeared as an independent witness before the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry into the Condition of the Army at Sebastopol. He was one of the few junior officers to be invited to appear: he reported bluntly that during his visit in the last fortnight of December the British soldiers “were very wretchedly clothed, very ragged and looked half starved. They complained that they did not get their rations and had no rum at all”. His observations were reported nationally in the newspapers. On December 31, 1856, when aged 30, Alexander Theophilus Blakely, Esq., Captain, half-pay, Royal Artillery, married Harriette Catherine Tonge, widow of Captain John Henry Tonge, 16th Lancers, of Alveston, Gloucestershire, the only child of the late John Maugham Connell, of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. Blakely and his new wife moved from his single gentleman’s lodgings in Little Ryder Street, St James’s, London to a small rented house at 34 Montpelier Square, Brompton, West London, which was his family home for the best part of his short life. They had no children.
He was an inveterate traveller; he served the Royal Artillery at Plymouth between 1844 and 1846, on the Ionian Islands, in the Mediterranean, from 1846 until 1849, and then on the fortress peninsular of Gibraltar between 1846 and 1852, where he retired on half-pay after his health failed. After wintering in Italy to recuperate in 1852 he visited Constantinople, Turkey; in 1854 he was in the Crimea. In the Spring of 1859 he was in Spain and Italy; in March 1862 he was in Hamburg, before going on to Vienna and Constantinople again; in the summer of 1863 he was in Paris, in the winter of 1864 in Russia. In the war between France and Austria in northern Italy in May 1859 Blakely was with the Austrians providing reports for The Times newspaper. He also spent much time in Ireland during the 1860s, where he held a property called ‘Clermont’ at Ballykeel, Hollywood, County Down. Even at the age of eighteen when replacing the old 18 and 24 pounders that defended Plymouth harbour with 32 pounder cannon he was proposing to the Master General of Ordnance in London, a much larger gun than that have ever been considered before. He, as a mere Second Lieutenant, was ignored. Later, when visiting Constantinople in 1853, Blakely proposed to the Ottoman authorities an original scheme for the the defence of the Dardanelles against Russian incursion - it involved floating batteries and twenty cannon each firing a projectile of an unprecedented 300 pounds weight. The heaviest shot in the Royal Navy then was 68 pounds.
Blakely was one of the first to apply theoretical science to the manufacture of ordnance, and went on to obtain several patents for inventions relating to cannon. In this occupation he came up against the interests of the industrialists William Armstrong and Joseph Whitworth, who both sought to acquire manufacturing contracts for cannon from the government. Always something of a controversialist, he engaged in vigorous debates with these giants of industry and with scientific competitors such as his fellow countryman, Robert Mallet, creator of the great 36 inch calibre mortar of 1856. Blakely, after his initial military service, undertook a long period of scientific research and calculation on which he founded original principles of ordnance. He became skilled in manipulating the London press into giving his ideas coverage. He used the learned societies to give prominence and veracity to his principles of ordnance, and cultivated many scientific allies, as well as being fearless, but reasoned, when challenged by his peers. His first break came from the support of William Needham of the Butterley Company, a huge concern that owned coal pits and ironworks, who was clearly looking for government gun contracts. The Butterley works made his first test pieces.
From his unique scientific base Blakely was able to acquire and then capitalise early orders from Giuseppe Garibaldi in Sardinia, Francisco Bolognesi in Peru and Edward Anderson of the Confederate States during 1860 and 1861 into credit at a London bank or at Fawcett Preston, the Liverpool ironworks, to get the first production orders completed. Although, in 1898 Blakely’s widow stated that she had contributed £9,000 towards her husband’s early experiments. 
One of these four gentlemen is Alexander Blakely! From a photograph taken in 1865 at the Blakely Ordnance Company’s East Greenwich works By the 1860s he was a respected expert on ordnance and was called to speak to the relevant committees of the British Parliament. Blakely was also a contributor and speaker to the learned societies of the period in his role as engineer and artillerist. He also took on the industrial interest by forming his own joint stock company to make cannon. His profession from then, he stated, was “Manufacturer of Ordnance”. Although most noted for his loyalty to the cause of the Confederate States of America, for whom he provided nearly a hundred guns, Blakely’s ordnance, advice and licences for manufacture were sought by Chili, China, Denmark, Italy, Morocco, Peru, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and, interestingly, the United States. Blakely was a Member of the Royal Society of London, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Irish Academy, an Honorary Member of the Society of Engineers, the “Smeatonians”, and was a Founding Fellow of the Anthropological Society of London. He was also a vigorous contributor to the debates of the Royal United Service Institution, the military “think-tank” of the day. Socially, he was also a member of the Army & Navy Club, and of the Royal Victoria Yacht Club. He owned at least two yachts. Sir Richard Burton, the famous explorer and writer, became a friend of Blakely’s in the early 1860s. They plotted together to provide ordnance for Francesco II, King of the Two Sicilies, in May 1860 when southern Italy was invaded by the revolutionary, Garibaldi, another customer of Blakely’s!
For a few years he was a wealthy man. In 1866 he moved from Montpelier Square to the much grander No 1 Park Lane, overlooking Marble Arch, Hyde Park, in London. His immediate neighbour was the Dowager Duchess of Somerset. The new house had formerly been the town residence of Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, Bt, MP. In the summer of 1865 he bought the 300 ton steam yacht Ceres of Charles Kuhn Prioleau, the English partner in Fraser, Trenholm & Company, treasury agents to the Confederate States. Mrs Harriette Blakely became a patroness of charities, including one to assist members of the ballet in time of sickness and distress. Blakely was by no means a snob; he supported with funds, along with his peers Edward Reed, the naval architect, and Henry Maudslay, the engine builder, the London Association of Foreman Engineers, in its scientific and benevolent work. In addition to his ordnance interests, when the Atlantic Telegraph cable, between Ireland and Newfoundland, was being manufactured Blakely made a mathematical investigation into its characteristics. He proposed in August 1857, that to reduce the waste of cable payed out in slack, that the speed of laying be increased and the specific gravity of the cable be reduced. He patented a process in that year to control the velocity of cable sinking in the ocean. In the General Election of 1865 Captain Blakely stood as a candidate in the Liberal interest for the Tavistock constituency in Devon, where he was developing an iron works. The two winners, also Liberals, took 330 and 179 votes, Blakely, the fifth and last, had just eight votes. He does not appear to have canvassed personally.
During 1865 and 1866 Blakely maintained an adulterous relationship with Mrs Harriet Dering, which was exposed in her divorce proceedings in June 1867. This, and the failure of his ordnance company in 1866, completely ruined his reputation in England. He fled the country and was declared an “Outlaw” to be arrested on sight for failing to appear before the courts of justice on July 27, 1867. He was to flee to the only place that would welcome him, the source of his first success in gunmaking, where his cannon had just seen off an invading fleet, where he was regarded almost as a hero. In his moment of distress, Blakely left his creditors and the moralists behind him in Europe and, by way of Panama, made for Peru.
Captain Alexander Blakely RA died at Chorrillos in distant Peru of yellow fever on May 4, 1868, age 41. He is buried alongside Mrs Dering in the Cementaría Británico de Bellavista, at Callao. He left no will; the only persons entitled to his personal property and effects being Harriette Catherine Blakely, his widow, Mary William Blakely, his mother, Isabella Chalmers Blakely, his sister, and Mary Stewart Spankie, his other sister. Isabella was never to wed; Mary had married Robert Spankie, a government lawyer in India.
Despite his adultery, thirty years after his death, in 1898 his widow began a campaign to recognise Blakely’s contribution to artillery. 
The grave of Mary William Blakely “Mother of Captain Blakely, Royal Artillery, Original Inventor of Improvements in Cannon and the Greatest Artillerist of the Age. Born January 7, 1827 Died May 4, 1868”
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