Sir Robert Townsend Farquhar, 1st Baronet (1776 – 16 March 1830) was an influential British merchant of the early nineteenth century who served as a colonial governor and Member of Parliament.
[2] Farquhar rose rapidly in the company and by the late 1790s was the commercial resident in Amboyna, a former Dutch colony seized during the French Revolutionary Wars.
[5] During his time at Amboyna, Farquhar earned the Governor of Madras' displeasure by exceeding his brief in initiating a successful attack on the Dutch settlement of Ternate after the outbreak of the Napoleonic Wars.
Almost immediately upon assuming his new role, Farquhar began submitting a great many schemes for the improvement of the island, to his East India Company superiors in Bengal, which some have said, were near-impossible.
These included turning Pulau Jerejak into a dock for building and refitting ships, buying a great deal of timber from Siam for that purpose; and a highly involved, complex and detailed plan to supply George Town with water from the waterfall gardens using a long brick channel, employing a hundred convicts to cut the canal, construct the aqueduct, lay earthenware pipes through the streets and tin pipes to conduct water to houses.
[9][10] Farquhar worked out and submitted a long report ending with an estimate of $648,000 profit against an initial expenditure of $28,000, derived from taxing the public and shipping representatives for the use of the water, and from a 'money-exchange' revenue farm, at $4,000 a year.
His plan to bring good, clean water into town was approved but the Board of Directors cautioned that the aqueduct would be better if made of clay to avoid disorganising the entire system in the event a brick or two became dislodged.
The idea of taxing the company's own ships, it was felt, was unusual and it was noted that these had always enjoyed free water in the past, and instructed this to be removed from the revenue estimates.
Buoyed by this and other indicators of prosperity he provided to them, the Court of Directors in London decided to promote Penang to become India's 4th Presidency (after Bengal, Madras and Bombay).
[5] In July 1810, Farquhar was ordered to accompany the fleet under Commodore Josias Rowley that was to invade the French colony of Île Bonaparte, known today as Réunion.
He was depicted by Patrick O'Brian in the Mauritius Command as a competent political man, working well with the British military (army and navy) as well as with the local people being taken over by Britain.