Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Patton: From India to Governor of St Helena
Robert Patton’s grave in Fareham connects the parish with one of the most remote places on earth. Born in Scotland in 1743, Patton spent much of his career in the service of the East India Company before eventually becoming Governor of St Helena, the isolated Atlantic island which would later become famous as the final home of Napoleon.
Patton had served in India and rose to the rank of lieutenant-colonel. By 1802 he was appointed Governor of St Helena, then governed by the East India Company because of the island’s strategic importance on the sea route between Britain and Asia. He remained governor until July 1807.
Running St Helena meant governing a tiny community thousands of miles from Britain while maintaining an important military and commercial station. One surviving reminder of Patton’s governorship is Patton’s Battery, constructed above West Rocks near Jamestown. He also faced the persistent problem of labour shortages on the island. Patton proposed bringing Chinese workers to St Helena; Chinese labourers began arriving a few years later and eventually became a significant part of the island’s population.
There is also a more personal mark left on the landscape. Patton had daughters who enjoyed walking around the island, and a route became known as Sisters Walk because of them. More than two centuries later, the name preserves a small piece of family life from the governor’s household.
After returning to England, Patton settled in Hampshire. He died at Wallington near Fareham on 14 January 1812, aged 68, only a fortnight after the death of his wife Constantia. Genealogical records identify both as buried at St Peter and St Paul, Fareham.
Patton therefore gives the churchyard an unexpected connection with the history of India, the East India Company and St Helena. Long before Napoleon arrived there in 1815, one of the men responsible for governing that distant Atlantic island eventually came home to Hampshire and was laid to rest here in Fareham.
