The principal designer for the ring of twenty-two forts that form the nineteenth-century defensive ring of Plymouth, Stonehouse and Devonport, Edmund Ducane began his military career after passing the examination for entrance to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich. After graduating in 1848 he received a commission as second lieutenant in the Royal Engineers. In 1850 he was appointed assistant superintendent of the foreign side of the Great Exhibition of 1851.
A request from the Comptroller General of Convicts in Western Australia in 1851 for Royal Engineers to do plans for prison buildings saw the arrival in December that years of Lieutenants DuCane and Wray with a party of 65 Sappers and Miners. Following an expedition to the Champion Bay area with the Governor in January 1852 DuCane was appointed in charge of the Eastern Districts, York and Toodyay and took up residence at Guildford. “Royal Engineer” by Alexandra Hasluck, published in 1973 by Angus and Robertson, details the work he undertook in the position, his work as a noted artist and his further career on his return to England in February 1856 with his wife Mary Dorothea, nee Molloy who he had married in July 1855'
[Source: State LIbrary of Western Australia]
