Alexander Meadows Rendel

Who was Alexander Meadows Rendel?

Sir Alexander Meadows Rendel was an English civil engineer.

Rendel was born in Plymouth. He was the eldest son of the engineer James Meadows Rendel and his wife Catherine Harris. Three of his brothers were civil engineers: George Wightwick Rendel, Stuart Rendel, 1st Baron Rendel, and Hamilton Owen Rendel.

He was educated at The King's School Canterbury and Trinity College, Cambridge.

Rendel was the engineer of the London Dock Company in 1856, and was responsible for the Shadwell Basin, the Connaught Tunnel and the Royal Albert Dock in London, the Albert and Edinburgh Docks in Leith, Workington Dock and Harbour. In 1857-1858 he visited India, and was consulting engineer to the India Office, the East India Railway and other Indian railways, and was a member of the Commission to determine narrow gauge for Indian Railways, in 1870. He designed the Lansdowne Bridge Rohri at Sukkur over the Indus River, which when it was completed in 1889 was the largest cantilever bridge in the world. The climax of his bridge-building career was considered to be the Howrah or Jubilee Bridge allowing trains to cross the Hooghly River near Calcutta; this was opened by the Viceroy on 21st February 1887