Ann Cargill

Some divas are lucky enough to suddenly return from death and oblivion to reclaim their fame. Ann Cargill (1760-1784), who had briefly become the toast of Calcutta when she performed operatic parts and earned “the astonishing sum of 12,000 rupees” on her benefit night, was one such. This singing sensation of London’s Covent Garden and Haymarket theatres tempted fate from childhood.

Now Ann Cargill is grabbing headlines once again, after divers have claimed that they have identified the wreck of the ship in which she was returning to London from Bombay near the Isles of Scilly, more than 200 years ago.

Ann started singing on stage at 11 and as she graduated to more meaty roles, a star was born. But at age 15 she ran away with a playwright, and her father got a court order to confine her at home. Her fans forced her father to allow her to appear as Polly in John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

After she had become Mrs Cargill, she returned cross-dressed to the London stage as Macheath in the same play. When she was drawing a phenomenal salary of £10 a week, the prima donna fell for Captain John Haldane of the British East India Company stationed in Calcutta. True to his reputation as the unluckiest commander, his new ship was destroyed in a fire after the lovers arrived in Bombay. But she was a great success both in Bombay and Calcutta, and admirers showered her with gifts.

Calcutta was no stranger to theatre and opera. Dwarkanath Tagore had entertained the Miss Edens to a Western music concert at his Dum Dum villa.

HE Busteed in his Echoes from Old Calcutta, had documented the performance of the whole of Handel’s Messiah, and Stendahl wrote about Rossini’s La Cenerentola being produced here in 1814. The theatre was the city’s craze, and Esther Leach, the Queen of the Indian stage, had died in a fire onstage on November 2, 1843.

Ann Cargill’s fate, too, was tragic. She had to leave “the pure shores of India” on The Nancy along with her £200,000 fortune. Haldane took command of the ship but as she was almost in sight of home, the ship sank with all those aboard.