Chatley

History

Herbert Chatley was born on the 17 May 1885 in London, the son of Herbert Chatley and Annie Elizabeth Chatley (née Fry). He was educated at Cambridge House Grammar School, North London, and the Northern Polytechnic of London University. After a short period as a pupil engineer, he obtained an appointment in the Borough Engineer's Department at Fulham. From 1906 until 1908 he was a lecturer in civil engineering at the Municipal College, Portsmouth, during which time he wrote “The Problem Of Flight: A Text-Book Of Aerial Engineering”.

In 1909 he became Professor of Civil Engineering at Tongshan Engineering College, North China, a post which he held until 1915, and during this period wrote prodigiously on the subject of aeronautics (see https://econterms.net/aero/Herbert_Chatley). In August 1909, he wrote from China to The Aero magazine, describing his experiments with a glider.

From 1915 to 1916 Dr Chatley served with the Nanking-Hunan Railway as a District Engineer. In 1916 he joined the Whangpoo Conservancy Board, Shanghai, as Assistant Engineer, undertaking important dredging works and making valuable studies of the mud and silt in the Whangpoo and Yangtze estuaries. His work included supervising the construction of locally built dredging plant. He became Engineer-in-Chief in 1928, retiring from that position in 1937, when he returned to London to practise as a consultant.

On retiring from China Dr Chatley was awarded the Chinese Order of the Brilliant Jade in recognition of his services. In 1940 he joined the Department of the Civil Engineer to the Admiralty as Superintending Civil Engineer, in which capacity he was closely concerned with the Mulberry Harbour scheme. For his work while with the Admiralty the French Government made him an officer of the Legion of Honour. He left the Admiralty service in 1946 and resumed consulting practice.

Dr Chatley was elected an Associate Member of the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1920, and became a full member in 1928; he was also a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers of Ireland, an associate fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and an associate of the Institute of Physics. He was an active member of the Junior Institution of Engineers, of which he was chairman in 1939-40. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 1950.

Herbert Chatley, D.Sc. (Eng.), died on 17 January 1955 in Bath, Somerset.

Company References

1. https://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1956MNRAS.116..144.
2. https://www.icevirtuallibrary.com/doi/pdf/10.1680/iicep.1955.11414

Project Data

Production Details and Type Description

Total Chatley Production1 ?