Down Memory Lane: Dam-builder extraordinaire helped defend Suez Canal by Bill McAllister
This year marks the centenary of Inverness’s civil engineering icon Sir Murdoch MacDonald ending his 23-year connection with the Egyptian government as an expert on major dams and irrigation projects.
He would go on to be MP for Inverness – and to persuade the secretary of state for Scotland to issue an order to protect the Loch Ness Monster!
This year is also the 155th anniversary of his birth, the son of a carter, Roderick MacDonald, Faillie, Strathnairn, and his wife Mary Mackay from Croy.
Murdoch was the seventh of nine children and was educated at Farraline Park School, then known as Dr Bell’s Institution and now the city’s library. Young MacDonald also served as a pupil-teacher for two years.
The carter’s son would, through his achievements, become widely recognised internationally. Today a bronze bust of him, exhibited at London’s Royal Academy in 1933 by local artist Gladys Barron, stands in Inverness Town House.
The Highland Railway was his career path, starting as a clerk and rising to become assistant to his mentor, chief engineer Murdoch Paterson. He was appointed resident engineer for the building of the Black Isle Railway for four years from 1890. Taking charge of new line surveys came next before he was resident engineer in doubling the main line from Blair Atholl to Dalnaspidal.
With the company’s approval, Murdoch undertook private commissions, including creating the water supply and drainage to Fortrose and Rosemarkie as well as Avoch.
But in 1898 he accepted an invitation to go to Egypt as assistant engineer to Maurice Fitzmaurice who was building the first giant Aswan Dam and by 1902 the Highlander had become the dam’s resident engineer.
After carrying out several related projects, Murdoch was appointed the Egyptian government’s director of reservoirs and took charge of the heightening of Aswan Dam, a huge exercise, completed in 1912.
The British government knighted him in 1914 and during World War I, as an acting Royal Engineers colonel, he advised on the defence of the Suez Canal and military works at Gallipolli. He was mentioned in dispatches three times and created Companion of the Order of Bath in 1917.
Egypt promoted him to under secretary of state for public works and he planned and built drainage schemes for three million acres of the country as well as designing the Sennar Dam on the Blue Nile. MacDonald created irrigation projects to convert virgin land in the Sudan for cotton growing and also worked on the design of Sudan’s Gebel Aulia Dam, which sent four billion cubic metres of water annually downstream into Egypt.
A major enhancement to Alexandria Harbour followed and the Invernessian was adviser to the minister of public works before leaving government to set up his own practice – Sir Murdoch MacDonald and Partners. He won the contract for the second heightening of the Aswan Dam, while also advising on drainage and land reclamation ventures in Greece and Portugal.
He became Liberal MP for Inverness in 1922 then joined the more conservative National Liberals in 1931 and he won the 1945 election, at the age of 78, he was Britain’s oldest MP.
MacDonald was, fittingly, twice awarded the Institution of Civil Engineers’ Thomas Telford Medal and became its president in 1932. He was also president of the Gaelic Society of Inverness two years later.
After World War II he again visited Egypt and went on to design four new barrages and storage reservoirs on the Nile.
Latterly, MacDonald worked on hydro schemes for the new North of Scotland Hydro Electric Board. He retired as an MP at the 1950 General Election, aged 83.
He died in April 1957, while his company was designing the new Ness Bridge, opened in 1961. Sir Murdoch MacDonald and Partners went on to merge in 1989, creating the Mott MacDonald Group, now operating in 50 countries – not a bad effort for a boy who went to school at Farraline Park!
And Nessie? In the 1930s, big game hunters placed a bounty on the Monster’s head while London’s Natural History Museum was keen on its carcase. There was outrage that the creature’s last resting place could be outwith Scotland.
In Parliament, MacDonald assured the Scottish secretary: “It is no myth. Evidence of its presence can be taken as undoubted.” Protection was agreed.
Another success in the water for the dam-builder extraordinaire!
• Sponsored by Ness Castle Lodges.