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“Dr
Livingstone, I presume” … Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Sir
Henry Morton Stanley’s early life appears to have been a mix of
poverty, adventure and make-believe. Stanley was actually born John
Rowlands in the Welsh county town of Denbigh in 1841. His teenage
mother Elisabeth Parry registered the birth of "John Rowlands,
Bastard", at St. Hilary's Church.
Shortly
after his birth, Elisabeth abandoned the care of her son to his
grandfather, but unfortunately he died just a few years later and so
at the tender age of six, John Rowlands Jnr. was despatched to the
workhouse at nearby St. Asaph. It was also around this time that
John Rowlands Snr. is said to have died whilst working the fields;
he was seventy-five.
Any
parent left alive may have been just a little concerned at the
reports of the day concerning the St. Asaph Workhouse, where
according to one 1847 source, male adults "took part in every
possible vice". Apparently untroubled by such unsavoury goings-on,
John Rowlands Jnr. appears to have received a sound education in the
workhouse, developing into an avid reader.
At
seventeen, John signed up as a cabin boy onboard an American
freighter and jumped ship shortly after it docked at New Orleans.
There he invented a new identity for himself. Henry Stanley was a
wealthy local cotton merchant and John took his name claiming to be
his adopted son, although it is unlikely that the two ever met.
Under
his new name, Stanley joined the Confederate Army following the
outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 and fought at the battle
of Shiloh. After being captured he quickly changed sides and
enlisted in the Union Army. Perhaps preferring a life at sea he
appears to have deserted the Union Army and joined the federal navy
serving as a clerk onboard the frigate Minnesota, before he
eventually jumped that ship as well.
In the
years that followed, Stanley toured the America Wild West, working
as a free-lance journalist, covering the many battles and skirmishes
with the Native American Indians. He also went to Turkey and Asia
Minor as a newspaper correspondent reporting on Lord Napier’s
British military foray into Abyssinia.
Although Stanley had become a special correspondent for the New York
Herald some years earlier, it was not until October 1869 that
Stanley received his orders from the then editor of the paper, James
Gordon Bennett, to ‘Find Livingstone’. Nothing had been heard of the
great Scottish missionary-explorer for almost a year, when he was
reported to be somewhere near Lake Tanganyika.
Setting
off on his quest, Stanley first dropped by Egypt to report on the
opening of the Suez Canal. Travelling through Palestine, Turkey and
India he eventually arrived on the east coast of Africa near
Zanzibar. In March 1871, decked out in dazzling white flannels and
mounted atop a thoroughbred stallion Stanley set out on his 700 mile
overland trek. A small army of guards and bearers brought up the
rear.
Henry
Morton Stanley: Stanley (top, inset), Stanley & Emin (L), Stanley and Livingstone (R)
The
trials associated with African travel soon became obvious as only
days into the adventure Stanley’s stallion died, the result of a
tsetse fly bite. Vital supplies were lost as native bearers deserted
the expedition and for those that stayed, a host of exotic diseases
took a heavy toll. Tribes of warring natives showered the unwelcome
visitors with spears and poisoned arrows. One set of flesh-hungry
warriors even pursued the expedition shouting “niama, niama”
(meat, meat), a tasty dish apparently when boiled and served with
rice!
Stanley’s
expedition travelled 700 miles in 236 days before finally locating
an ailing David Livingstone on the island of Ujiji near Lake
Tanganyika on 10th November 1871. On first meeting his hero
Livingstone, Stanley apparently tried to hide his enthusiasm by
uttering his now famous, aloof greeting: "Doctor Livingstone, I
presume".
Together Livingstone and Stanley explored the northern end of Lake
Tangayika but Livingstone, who had been travelling extensively
throughout Africa since 1840, was now suffering the ill-effects.
Livingstone eventually died in 1873 on the shores of Lake Bagweulu.
His body was shipped back to England and buried in Westminster Abbey
- Stanley was one of the pall-bearers.
Livingstone
and Stanley going from Ujiji to Rusizi River
Stanley
decided to continue Livingstone's research on the Congo and Nile
river systems and started his second African expedition in 1874. He
journeyed into central Africa circumnavigating Victoria Nyanza,
proving it to be the second-largest freshwater lake in the world,
and discovered the Shimeeyu River. After sailing down the
Livingstone (Congo) River, he reached the Atlantic Ocean on 12th
August 1877. Stanley's three white travelling companions, Frederick
Barker, Francis and Edward Pocock, along with expedition’s dogs from
Battersea Dogs’ Home, all died during the gruelling 7,000-mile long
trek.
It was following this expedition that King
Leopold II of Belgium employed Stanley to "prove that the Congo
basin was rich enough to repay exploitation". Stanley returned to
the area establishing the trading stations that would ultimately
lead to the founding of the Congo Free State in 1885. Leopold’s
exploitation of the country's natural resources was dubbed "the
rubber atrocities" by the international community of the time.
It was Stanley’s third and last great African
adventure of 1887-89 that was the subject of much controversy, when
one member of the expedition bought an 11-year-old native girl for
the price of a few handkerchiefs. James Jameson, the heir to an
Irish whiskey empire, gifted the girl to a tribe of local cannibals
so he could watch her being dismembered, cooked and eaten, while he
recorded the events in his sketch book. Stanley was sickened and
furious when he eventually found out what had happened, by which
time Jameson had already died of fever. He said of Jameson that he
may not have been “originally wicked”, Africa and its horrors had
dehumanised him.
By 1890 Stanley had settled in England, although
he did spend months in both the United States and Australia on
lecture tours. Following his knighthood in 1899, Stanley sat as a
Unionist MP for Lambeth from 1895 to 1900. He died in London on 10th
May 1904.
Stanley
was considered the most effective explorer of his day, and it was he
who undoubtedly paved the way for colonial rule throughout the areas
he explored and charted. Stanley's publications include his diary,
How I found Livingstone, and his account of his journey to
the sources of the Nile, Through the Dark Continent (1878).
In Darkest Africa (1890) is the story of Stanley's 1887-89
expedition.
©HUK
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