Gosaba

Gosaba is a village in Gosaba CD Block in Canning subdivision of South 24 Parganas district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the last inhabited area before the deep forests of the Sundarbans start. It has a police station, a community development block, and an assembly constituency. The area symbolises man’s struggle against nature and predators.HistorySir Daniel Mackinnon Hamilton, a Scotsman, had travelled to Kolkata to work for MacKinnon & McKenzie, a company with which he had family connections. The company sold tickets for the P&O shipping line, then one of the largest in the world. Hamilton became head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in British India. Another man may have taken his money and gone away but Hamilton set his eyes on the deltaic islands in south Bengal. In 1903, he bought 10000acre of the tide country from the government – it included such islands as Gosaba, Rangabelia, and Satjelia. His efforts at developing these places brought in other people into these islands. They were people who dared not only to struggle against nature but also the predators that lived there – tigers, crocodiles, sharks and lizards. They killed so many people that Hamilton gave rewards to people who killed them.