Charles Alexander Bruce

Charles Alexander Bruce (11 January 1793 – 23 April 1871) In 1809 he was a midshipman on the Indiaman Windham, sailing from England to India. The vessel was captured by French forces, twice, in the Indian Ocean, and he was taken to Mauritius. There he was imprisoned on a ship, until the British invasion of 1810. He served as an officer on a British troopship in the invasion of Java. In India, he worked initially as an officer of the Bombay Marine. Bruce's brother Robert brought to notice the indigenous Assamese tea plant in 1823 and told Charles of its existence.

In 1824, Bruce served in the First Anglo-Burmese War, during which he was posted to Sadiya and made commander of a division of gunboats.

In 1835, Bruce was charged by the British East India Company to start tea plantations, and in 1836 resigned his commission with the gunboat flotilla when he was appointed as the superintendent of the Assam tea plantations.