Alexander Sanderson
SANDERSON, Alexander, Major, DSO MC Bar MiD Royal Australian Engineer (1881-1971)
Alexander Sanderson was born on 3rd December 1881 in Otago, New Zealand to William James Alexander Sanderson and Augusta (née Henderson). Alexander attended Perth High School.
Aged 16, he joined the Western Australian Public Works Department as a cadet engineer under the direction of engineer-in-chief C. Y. O’Connor working on the Goldfields Pipeline. Sanderson supervised the construction of a quarry at Darlington and a temporary railway to transport granite blocks from there to the moles protecting the entrance to Fremantle Harbour, another of O’Connor’s major projects. He went on to work on the railway from Southern Cross to Coolgardie. O’Connor also assigned Alexander to analyse water leakage data, working at a desk in O’Connor’s room and liaising with London-based engineering consultants. They worked closely together until O’Connor took his own life in March 1902. Alexander produced sewerage surveys of Claremont and Perth.
Sanderson continued his education at the Kalgoorlie School of Mines, He worked as a metallurgist at the Golden Horseshoe and Sons of Gwalia mines under Herbert C. Hoover the future US President, as a mining engineer and eventually a mine manager. He moved to Kalgoorlie to take up a position as Underground Manager on the Oroya Brown Hill mine.
He worked with John Monash to set up a construction company. Monash would later rise to the rank of General as Commander, Australian Infantry Forces.
Later he learned how to manage camels and led a surveying party through the Ashburton district in the north of Western Australia mapping artesian wells. He helped survey the Kimberley coast on the government boat, seeking a site for a deep water port to export frozen meat, subsequently built at Wyndham. He organised a horse expedition and surveyed inland routes from Derby and nearby mission stations, including around the Lennard and Charnley rivers. He saw the opportunities that would come with raising cattle and mapped out a million acre cattle grazing property at the head of the King Edward and Carson Rivers and another at Lissadell station on the Ord River but abandoned these to enlist in the AIF following the outbreak of the 1914-1918 War.
Sanderson joined the Australian Mining Corps as a Technical Expert with the rank of Lieutenant. Defence Minister Pearce charged him with organising all the technical equipment needed to fight an underground war in Europe. He set sail for France on The Ulysses troopship when it struck a rock as it was leaving Fremantle harbour. Sanderson himself inspected the damage underwater and supervised the repair of the ship with 250 tons of concrete.
During the First World War Sanderson joined the 3rd Australian Tunnelling Company as a Tunnelling Engineer and rose to the rank of Major and Officer Commanding. On 19 July 1916 at the Battle of Fromelles, Captain Sanderson went forward under enemy fire to repair damaged charges laid to blow a communication trench, an action for which he was awarded his first Military Cross. His second MC was won after a successful night raid on enemy trenches to destroy mine shaft entrances.
1919-23 After wartime service, Sanderson took up a position in India as ACRE Allahabad Brigade Area, engaged on the design construction of Ordnance Factory buildings, roads, bridges, electric lighting, water supplies, sewerage works, aerodromes etc.
1923-27 Sanderson designed and built the first reinforced concrete bridge in India at Dum Dum, Culcutta. (A skew 3-hinged arch-ribbed bridge of 120 feet span between abutment hinges, with a 60 foot wide roadway.)
1927-30 He took up a post as Executive Engineer Punjab Water Department engaged on the design and construction of the Mandi Hydro-Electric Project for the Ganges River. (£5m project)
Returning to Britain during the Great Depression, he patented new designs and set up a company constructing reinforced concrete piping. Following the outbreak of the 1939-1945 War, Sanderson was in charge of repairing bomb damage to the London Underground and was a consultant engineer, reinforcing the Cabinet War Rooms in Whitehall.
In 1942 at the height of the Second World War, Sanderson proposed 1942 ‘Secret’ plans for Tilt-Engine aircraft and a VTOL ’drone’. The original ideas emerged during the Blitz as ideas for heavy aircraft to take bombs to Berlin. The original design drawings are held by the Science Museum in London. (copyright Robin Sanderson)
His idea re-emerged decades later in the form of the Boeing Osprey V-22 aircraft first demonstrated in 1989. In 2021, V-22 Ospreys were still in use in the USA.
Alexander died on August 9, 1971 at Beckenham in Kent,aged 89.
He was in his 20s when the Wright brothers flew and lived to see Neil Armstrong land on the moon.
He was born into a family of engineers. Alexander Sanderson’s great grandfather, Henry Sanderson (1798 -1849), was a railway surveyor working with Robert Stephenson and Thomas Telford, who surveyed turnpike roads, the Selby to York Railway and the London to Brighton line. In 1847 Henry proposed a detailed scheme for the renovation of the the crumbling Victorian sewers of London. (This was 12 years before Bazelgette’s famous plan was accepted.) Henry’s book London Sewers Scheme is kept in the circular Oxford Radcliffe Camera Library. Henry’s son Charles worked with Brunel on the Great Western Railway and is quoted extensively in The Institution of Civil Engineers records. Another great uncle, also Henry Sanderson, surveyed the river for the colony in Brisbane, Queensland in the 1850s. Major Alexander’s own grandfather, of the same first name, was an engineer on Portland Harbour and died surveying the Great Indian Peninsular Railway out of Bombay.
References:
Battye Library, interview with Alexander Sanderson 1967 with M. Lukis.
Website www.tunnellers.net
Robin Sanderson, Personal Communication (Robin Sanderson, grandson of Alexander, provided the information and photographs for this biopgraphy. Photographs are reproduced here with his permission. He is a graduate of London, Exeter and Brunel University and taught Design Technology in English Secondary Schools and at Reynella East High School in Adelaide S.A. He has a patent on a plastic medalholder www.medalholder.com.)
Major Alexander Sanderson’s eldest son Lt-Col John B. Sanderson is the subject of Robin (‘Myles’) Sanderson’s 2019 biography: “Secret Service in the Cold War.” publ. Frontline Books with Pen & Sword Books.
Robin Sanderson’s biography of his grandfather Major Sanderson “Tunnelling Commander on the Western Front.” is due for publication within two years by Frontline Books.
Compiled by James Trevelyan July 2022.
