Lt. Charles William Wilson, Royal Engineers

Born March 14, 1836 at Liverpool, Wilson was educated at Cheltenham and Bonn University, with expertise in modern languages. In 1855, he received a direct commission in the Royal Engineers after placing 2nd of 46 candidates on a competitive examination. After training at Chatham, his first engineering assignment was improvement of the defences of Gosport.

In February 1858, Wilson was appointed secretary of the British Boundary Commission, sent to locate the border between British Columbia and the United States in accordance with the Oregon Treaty of 1846. He was formally in charge of records and accounts for the Commission. However, Wilson took a lively interest in the landscape, the native peoples and the social life of the new colony. He produced an engaging daily journal, intended for the entertainment of his sister Fanny and since published.

His biographer aptly described the young Wilson as an “academic dilettante in red tunic and epaulets”. On his return to England in 1865, he addressed the Royal Ethnographical Society on the Indian tribes of B.C. He would go on to write several books as well as articles for the Encyclopaedia Brittanica, and received honorary degrees from Dublin and Edinburgh universities, as well a silver medal from the Royal Society of Arts and a knighthood (KCB) from the Queen.

In later years, Wilson would survey Jerusalem and the Sinai and assist in the ordnance survey of Great Britain. He served as British Commissioner to the Serbian boundary survey and as military consul in Turkey and Egypt. He fought in the Sudan campaign of 1885, enduring a share of the blame for the Army’s failure to rescue Gen. Gordon at Khartoum. He retired a Major-General, and died in 1905.

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