Old Photograph Royal Marine Hotel Nairn Scotland

Old photograph of the Royal Marine Hotel in Nairn, Moray, Scotland. Lieutenant Colonel James Augustus Grant was born on 11 April 1827 in Nairn, where his father was the parish minister, and educated at Nairn Academy, Aberdeen Grammar School and Marischal College, Aberdeen. In 1846 he joined the Indian army. He saw active service in the Sikh War and served throughout the Indian Mutiny of 1857, and was wounded in the operations for the relief of Lucknow. He returned to England in 1858, and in 1860 joined John Hanning Speke in the memorable expedition which solved the problem of the Nile sources. The expedition left Zanzibar in October 1860 and reached Gondokoro, where the travellers were again in touch with what they regarded as civilization, in February 1863. Speke was the leader, but Grant carried out several investigations independently and made valuable botanical collections. He married in 1865 and settled down at Nairn, where he died in 1892. He was buried in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral in London, England. Grant's gazelle, one of the largest and handsomest of that family in Africa, was named in his honour.



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