Of the many technical talents in which candidates of the Royal Engineers received training, sketching and painting were perhaps the least outwardly martial. In the days before easily transportable photographic equipment, the ability to record views of new territories traversed and surveyed were critical to an officer of engineers' tasks. This little watercolour painting is a perfect example of an engineer’s artistic training put to use

 

Taken from an album that was once the property of Lieutenant William James Logan-Home, Royal Engineers, this riverine view is titled "Looking N.E. from Jammu Khata -on the Sooswa- Eastern part of Dehra Dhoon. April 1872". Although unsigned, the attribution is pretty certain given the original ownership of the album in question.

William James Logan Home, the eldest child and son of Colonel George Logan-Home, 12th Laird of Broomhouse and Anne Doran was born on 26 September 1847. He attended the Loretto School at Midlothian, Scotland and the 1927 edition of the school’s registry gives us an account of his short but very accomplished life.

Logan-Home attended Loretto from 1857 to 1862, garnering fourteen class prizes for his studies as well as three prizes for fencing. He passed third of his class into the Royal Military College at Woolwich in June 1864.

He passed 1st of his class into the Royal Engineers in December 1866. An avid sportsman, Logan-Home won several sculling prizes at the Royal Engineers Regatta of 1867. He was also an accomplished rider and polo player. Posted to India he was appointed Superintendent of Instruction in Engineering at Roorkee, holding that post from 1871 to 1875. He also served as Instructor of Signaling at Roorkee and Simla. He is also credited with the invention of an improved heliograph for cavalry.

Appointed Superintendent of Signaling and Field Telegraphs, Punjab Camp of Exercise at Attock, his only active service in the field saw him in command of sappers and miners during Duffla Expedition against the tribes of northern Assam between October 1874 and February 1875. No clasp for the India General Service Medal was authorized for this expedition. He made numerous other surveys into the Himalayas, Tibet, the Sivalik Hills, Assam, and Central India.

He succeeded to his father’s Lairdship in 1870. He died from the effects of sunstroke at Simla on 29 September 1875.