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"'''THE UNITED SERVICE CLUB'''
Was formerly styled the Bengal Military Club, the members of which were limited to the I.C.S. and military services. As time, however, moved on and things changed they found that this particular form of exclusiveness was rather an expensive luxury, and very wisely threw open wide the heavenly portals and admitted within their celestial and sacred precincts members of other government services, save and except those of the Bengal pilots. Why the club ever made this invidious distinction, of course I cannot say, but at a later period, recognising possibly the injustice of their action, they rescinded their prohibition, and now the pilots sit in the seats of the mighty amongst the members of the other services. "
== History of the Bengal Pilot Service ==
Brice and Labey [4] give a date of 1651 for the foundation of the service, but according to James Prinsep's Chronological Tables [3], the service dates back to 1669:
<blockquote>
This year also were received orders from home, to institute a pilot establishment at Hoogly, to build a pinnace to be manned with intelligent seamen from the Indiamen, to take charge of the shipping up and down. Thus originated the Bengal Pilot Service.
</blockquote>
The Bengal Pilot Service was abolished on the 15th May, 1948. [4]
The following comprises extracts from my unpublished manuscript of records for Genealogists interested in India
# On The Hooghly. Malcolm H Beattie, Philip Allan & Co. Ltd. (1935)
# Prinsep, James (1836). Useful Tables, Forming an Appendix to The Journal Of The Asiatic Society. Part the Second. Chronological and Genealogical Tables, page 160.
# Labey, Capt G.T. and Brice, Capt R.K.H. (1970), ''The Bengal Pilot Service''. (National Maritime Museum Ref: THS/12/1-9)
