Augustus Frederick Lindley

In 1859, Lindley was a young Royal Navy officer stationed in Hong Kong,[2] where he became betrothed to Marie, the daughter of the Portuguese consul at Macau.

In 1860 he resigned his commission, taking a job as the executive officer of a trading steamer smuggling specie to the Taiping reform movement in Shanghai.

He accepted a commission from Taiping general Li Xiucheng, and helped train their soldiers in British Army techniques, while Marie became a sniper.

In 1868, Lindley, with Roger Pocklington, the American brothers Will and Tom Ashwell, and Louis de Glon of Switzerland, landed at Durban to undertake a gold-hunting expedition in the Transvaal.

The Ashwells and de Glon took up farming in Natal; Will was later an associate of Cecil Rhodes in the consolidation of the Kimberly diamond mines.