1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Hartley, Sir Charles Augustus

HARTLEY, SIR CHARLES AUGUSTUS (1825–  ), English engineer, was born in 1825 at Heworth, Durham. Like most engineers of his generation he was engaged in railway work in the early part of his career, but subsequently he devoted himself to hydraulic engineering and the improvement of estuaries and harbours for the purposes of navigation. He was employed in connexion with some of the largest and most important waterways of the world. After serving in the Crimea as a captain of engineers in the Anglo-Turkish contingent, he was in 1856 appointed engineer-in-chief for the works carried out by the European Commission of the Danube for improving the navigation at the mouths of that river, and that position he retained till 1872, when he became consulting engineer to the Commission (see Danube). In 1875 he was one of the committee appointed by the authority of the U.S.A. Congress to report on the works necessary to form and maintain a deep channel through the south pass of the Mississippi delta; and in 1884 the British government nominated him a member of the international technical commission for widening the Suez Canal. In addition he was consulted by the British and other governments in connexion with many other river and harbour works, including the improvement of the navigation of the Scheldt, Hugli, Don and Dnieper, and of the ports of Odessa, Trieste, Kustendjie, Burgas, Varna and Durban. He was knighted in 1862, and became K.C.M.G. in 1884.