Tea Advisor
Aspects of Tea Production
A letter from Bombay to Calcutta took about twenty-six days. In 1820 a direct dark runner service from Bombay to Calcutta via Nagpur was introduced. During the 1840s some stages of this route were converted to carriage by horses, and in the 1860s to rail. The telegraph service from Bombay to Calcutta was inaugurated in 1860. Dark runners, however, were the main service on many routes, and were not finally phased out until the second half of the twentieth century. In the early days of the Assam tea estates, relays of postal runners would take the mail up to the Assam border at Dhubri. From there the post went up to Brahmaputra River by two-man canoe, the crew changing every fifteen miles or so, to upper Assam. As early as 1840, a letter from the Assam Company at Nazira reached Calcutta in only eleven days.
From Calcutta, mail would normally take five months to get to Britain. However, if money were no object, it could be carried in relays by the postal men who ran the 1,356-mile cross-country journey to Bombay. It was then taken by ship to Suez, overland to Cairo, by steamer to Alexandria, by ship to Marseilles, and by horse to the English Channel and Britain. This journey could be done in about two months.
In the very early days of Assam plantations the journey from Calcutta to Assam was by 'country boat'. These small boats, perhaps forty feet long, could if the wind was right, occasionally sail up the rivers. Normally between, however, five or more men would drag the boats up stream.
The boats went north from Calcutta up the Bhagirathi River to the River Ganges at Pabna. They went east, downstream on the Ganges until they reached the Brahmuputra River, and went north again upstream to Gauhati in Assam. Progress would depend on the amount of wtater in the rivers and the strength of the currents. The 500-mile journey often took over three months. The upper stretches of the Bramuputra River within Assam were difficult to navigate, and the onward journey from Gauhati to Saikowa might take another two months.
The East Indian Company was quick to introduce steamers into India. A government steamer service was inaugurated on the Ganges in 1834, from Calcutta to Allahabad. Soon afterwards an irregular service was operating from Calcutta to Gauhati in Assam. These steamers were too large to go up the Bhagirathi River, so they would go downstream from Calcutta to the Bay of Bengal, and then negotiate a way through the Sundarbans, the mouths of the Ganges. As these waterways were constantly shifting, this required a great expertise. The steamers cut the journey time to Assam to mere three or four weeks.
The steamer service was, however, infrequent and unreliable. Much traffic continued to use country boats. The Assam Company pit its own steamer into service in 1842, but it was not designed for the difficult conditions on the Bramaputra and was withdrawn. Twenty years later, in 1862, the India General Steam Navigation Company finally a regular Calcutta to Assam service, sailing right up to Dibrugarh in Upper Assam. Shallow draught paddle steamers were used, which also had sails. They towed wide barges, known as 'flats', which were dropped off as the steamers went up the Bramaputra, and later collected, loaded the tea for the return journey to Calcutta.
Tea | By Roy Moxham
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