Arthur Cotton

General Sir Arthur Thomas Cotton (1803 to 1899) was a British army officer and irrigation engineer who worked in the Madras Presidency of India. The tenth son of Henry Calvely Cotton, he became a cadet at the East India Company military seminary at Addiscombe at fifteen and was commissioned in the Madras Engineers in 1819. After service with the Ordnance Survey in North Wales and in the First Burmese War, he surveyed the Pamban passage and worked on the Kallanai Dam, building the Upper Dam and the Lower Anaicut Dam on the Cauvery. These led to his great projects on the Godavari and Krishna rivers, including the Dowleswaram Barrage at Rajahmundry, completed in 1852, and the Krishna aqueduct, completed in 1855. He proposed linking the major rivers of India, retired in 1877, and is still honoured in Andhra Pradesh, where the Sir Arthur Cotton Museum stands in Rajamahendravaram.