2

DEATH ON THE CONGO

Where did the Niger go? In 1816 this was a burning question for anyone who studied the available maps of Africa. Its existence had been first noted by a group of Phoenicians who circumnavigated Africa in the sixth century BC and was confirmed a century later by a party that travelled overland from Egypt. The latter reported a red, muddy river more than a mile wide which flowed east towards the Nile. It was filled with alluvial gold and the nearest large town was a place called Timbuctoo. Such was the power of the Nile and its civilization that it was only a few centuries before an African ruler suggested that its western equivalent flowed underground to enter the Nile via some undiscovered subterranean passage. The ruler gave the river a name, ‘N'ger-ngereo’, River of Rivers, or as we know it, the Niger.

In the second century AD the geographer Ptolemy admitted that the Niger existed but found no reason to suggest it joined the Nile. A compromise was reached by the Arab historian Edusi, one thousand years later, who proposed that the Nile and the Niger both emanated from a central lake in East Africa. But this had to be set against reports in the sixteenth century from the explorer Leo Africanus who actually reached the river and told the world that it flowed westwards.

The controversy raged through the centuries, fuelled mostly by the dream of gold. In 1412 King John I of Portugal sent an expedition to West Africa which returned in fear that they might be boiled alive if they overstepped the equator – a fear that had been first put about by the Ancient Greeks. But King John's more intrepid son, Henry the Navigator, sent other crews who came back, unboiled, with news of a land which offered limitless quantities if not of gold then of slaves.

West Africa had long been targeted by Muslim slavers from the north and east. Now their European counterparts began to make their presence felt. As the slave trade settled into its grisly triangle of suffering between Europe, Africa and America, large, stone fortresses mushroomed on the West African coast, complete with dungeons and manned by whoever was willing. Massive barracoons were built to hold the human cargo; and they were built to last – they were still in use, as dwellings, in the 1950s.

But the rumours of gold did not go away. Nor were they just rumours. West Africa did contain a lot of gold. When the Emperor Mansa Musa of Mali passed through Cairo on his way to Mecca in 1324 his spending injected so much gold into the economy that Cairo's currency was depressed for years afterwards. However, although the gold mines of Ghana were being exploited by Portugal as early as the sixteenth century, there was a niggling suspicion that there was a lot more to be found somewhere else. That somewhere was Timbuctoo.

By the nineteenth century Timbuctoo had swelled in popular imagination from the dirt town it was into a seat of power and learning and thence into a grail of cupidity, whose roof tiles were even made of gold. In 1809 James G. Jackson, an English merchant in Morocco, published An Accurate and Interesting Account of Timbuctoo, the Great Emporium of Central Africa, in which the city became not just a repository of wealth but the dream of every red-blooded male adventurer. Its ruler ‘possessed an immense quantity of gold … it is said that the massive bolts in his different palaces were of pure gold, as well as the utensils of his kitchen’.1 Here, libidos raged without check. ‘The climate of Timbuctoo is much extolled as being salutary and extremely invigorating, insomuch that it is impossible for the sexes to exist without intermarriage; accordingly it is said that there is no man of the age of eighteen who has not his wives or concubines … it is even a disgrace for a man who has reached the age of puberty to be unmarried.’² And as for trade, not only were the residents noted for their elegance and suavity but the banks of the Niger – which Jackson called the Nile – ‘are as populous as those of any river in China’.³ This was the voice of prurient capitalism. It made Jackson's book a bestseller which would be reprinted twice in ten years.

Even before Jackson's book came out, however, Timbuctoo was on Sir Joseph Banks's agenda. Slavery was abolished in Britain in 1797, and though it would be eleven years before participation in the trade was outlawed (Britain made a lot of noise but did not, as has often been claimed, lead the abolition crusade^*), Banks had his eye on West Africa's wealth. He took the gold, if not Timbuctoo itself, as granted. And in his practical way he wanted to know how the gold was to be brought out of Africa. The Niger was the answer.

On 8 June 1799 Banks wrote a letter to a parliamentary friend suggesting an effort be made to seize control of the area.

Please recommend to the Cabinet:

As the trade with the Negroes for manufactured goods is already firmly established and as Gold, the main investment, is found abundantly in all the torrents which fall into the [Niger], I confess I feel strongly impressed with the hope of success, should the project be fairly tried … science has never yet been applied to the search for gold carried down by torrents …

Should the undertaking be fully resolved upon, the first step of the British Government must be to secure to the British throne, either by conquest or by treaty, the whole of the Coast of Africa from Arguin to Sierra Leone; or at least to procure the cession of the River Senegal, as the river will always afford an easy passage to any rival nation who means to molest the Countries on the banks of the [Niger].

Should the experiment be made, I have very little doubt that in a very few years a trading company might be established under the immediate control of the Government who would take upon themselves the whole expense of the measure, would govern the Negroes far more mildly and make them far more happy than they are now under the tyranny of their arbitrary princes, would become popular at home by converting them to the Christian religion, by inculcating in their rough minds the mild morality which is engrafted in the tenets of our faith, and by effecting the greatest practicable diminution of the Slavery of Mankind, upon the principles of natural justice and commercial benefit.4

Banks's proposal, which was not acted upon, sums up very accurately Britain's relationship with Africa in the century to come.

Already, as President of the African Association, Banks had authorized a number of expeditions to the Niger. There was the American John Ledyard, the Irishman Daniel Houghton and the ‘Moor’ Ben Ali. The first two died in the attempt without getting anywhere and the last vanished in London without even bothering to try. Then came Mungo Park, an intrepid Scot who was to become a legend in the annals of exploration. He went out twice, in 1795 and then again in 1805. His first journey was under the auspices of the African Association and was funded accordingly: he was given two days’ provisions. He did, however, reach the Niger after many vicissitudes and was rewarded by the sight of the river ‘glittering to the morning sun, as broad as the Thames at Westminster, and flowing slowly to the eastward’.⁵ His second was sponsored by the government – to the tune of £60,000 – and saw him leading a band of forty-four British redcoats to find the rest of the river. One by one the soldiers died. By the time Park reached the Niger at the town of Bussa only five of his original contingent were alive. Then, on some undetermined date in 1805, he was attacked on the river and the entire expedition was wiped out. As soon as the disaster became common knowledge, Park was revered as a hero. Where was his journal? Where were his effects? What had he discovered? And where did the Niger go?

This was the state of things when Barrow entered the fray in 1816. By now the idea of colonizing Africa had been put on hold. The Napoleonic Wars had seen to that. But still the question remained: where did the Niger go?

Speculation was rife. Some had it going westward to connect with the Rivers Gambia or Senegal. Others said it disappeared into a massive swamp called Wangara. Still others insisted that it joined the Nile. Park himself – who died trying to find out – had been of the opinion that it flowed into the Congo. And a number of fence-sitters decided it went nowhere, but simply evaporated under the blazing African sun. There were a few who got it right, but in Barrow's view, ‘The hypothesis of Mr. Reichard, a German geographer of some eminence, which makes the Niger pour its waters into the Gulf of Benin, is entitled to very little attention.’6 Barrow was a Congo man. And so it was that Captain James Kingston Tuckey left Britain in 1816 to explore the Congo.

James Kingston Tuckey is a man about whom little is known. He had conducted the first survey of Sydney Harbour, had subsequently been captured by the French and during his imprisonment in Verdun had written four weighty volumes on maritime geography. He had followed Captain Matthew Flinders in the first-ever circumnavigation of Australia – and like him had been stranded and captured. Physically, he was serviceable rather than fit. ‘His health appeared delicate,’ Barrow wrote, ‘he was, however, so confident that his constitution would improve by the voyage, and in a warm climate … that the Lords of the Admiralty conferred on him the appointment.’⁷ A capable and competent officer, no doubt, but hardly the stuff of legend. One wonders why Barrow chose him. He may have had surveying experience but so had many others. Indeed, Barrow could have called upon Captain Francis Beaufort who had just returned from a surveying expedition to the eastern Mediterranean.

Beaufort, an exceptionally capable officer, is perhaps best known today for his invention of the Beaufort Scale to classify wind strength. In naval circles, though, he is famous for being one of the best hydro-graphers in history. His charts of Turkey, which he had just completed in 1816, were still the most definitive 160 years later. His journal of the survey was described by Barrow as ‘superior to any of its kind in whatever language’8 and the Second Secretary took pride in announcing that he, personally, had selected Beaufort ‘out of the whole Mediterranean fleet’⁹ for the task. Why, then, was he not selected for the Congo expedition? The answer was that Beaufort had fallen foul of First Secretary Croker. And for once in his life, Croker was not to blame. It started with a disagreement about his pay for the expedition. Beaufort believed, wrongly, that other officers had received some £2,000 more than he. Croker was conciliatory. Beaufort was petulant. The closer Croker came to middle ground the further Beaufort retreated. Finally, he refused to accept any pay at all. Amazingly, given his disposition and his opinion that surveying was a waste of time, Croker offered Beaufort in 1816 the job of surveying the coast of Ireland. Beaufort, partly from pique and partly for professional reasons, demurred.

For all that Barrow was Croker's friend, he knew that one went only so far with such a man. Beaufort had gone further. Therefore, he was not perhaps the most suitable candidate. There was one other reason, perhaps, for choosing Tuckey. He had sailed with Flinders. Although no qualification on its own, in Barrow's mind it may have been a necessary link with Banks's glory days of exploration.

The expedition was a mish-mash of surreal romanticism, high hopes and much ignorance. There was the place itself – ‘almost a blank on our charts’,¹⁰ as Barrow enthused. Then there was the calibre of the explorers – the Royal Navy was, without any doubt, the most practised and most professional entity on the globe; its men were ideally placed to conduct such a venture. ‘I am willing to put my trust in the professional and practical skill of the seamen who are to be entrusted with the charge of it,’11 wrote Banks. And finally there was the territory, prey to every disease from river-blindness and malaria to bilharzia and dengue fever. Of this, nothing was said.

Banks, who had initially given the expedition his blessing, was one of the few people to realize the potential for disaster. The firmer Barrow's plans became the more Banks distanced himself from them. He wished to have nothing more to do with the project, he told Barrow, and limited his responsibility to finding a naturalist for the expedition. Barrow scoffed at his fears. Banks retorted, irritated at his protégé's inexperience. ‘My Dear Sir, When I was 25 years old …’¹² began his lengthy, slightly condescending reply. But Barrow was not to be thwarted and Banks finally gave in.

In a burst of unlikely enthusiasm for new technology, the Admiralty decided that Tuckey's expedition should travel in a steam-powered vessel. Traditionally hide-bound, the navy had never commissioned a steam vessel before. But in this instance there were good reasons for doing so. Steam-boats had a shallower draught than sail, they were not dependent on fair winds, and were thus perfectly suited to river navigation – as had already been proved in America. Despite Barrow's objections an order was placed with Messrs Boulton and Watt for a thirty-ton twenty-horsepower engine which, with its accompanying paddles, was to be installed in a small, 100-ton sloop called the Congo. The total cost came to £1,700 and included the services of two ‘engine men’.

The Congo splashed into the water at Deptford on 11 January 1816 and was immediately subject to criticism. The chief ‘engine man’, a Scot by the name of Murdoch, pointed out that the Congo’s draught was too deep for the paddles to operate. Ballast was duly removed to lift it out of the water. But even then the Congo could only make three knots as opposed to the eight achieved by American steamers. Nobody liked it, not Murdoch, not Tuckey and not even the engine's manufacturer, James Watt Jnr, who agreed that the Congo was quite unseaworthy. Even a scientific enthusiast such as Rear-Admiral Sir Home Popham, who had been responsible for such innovations as the Congreve rocket and the torpedo, conceded that the ship ‘is very crank and I do not, by a more intimate acquaintance, improve my opinion of her’.13

Barrow, on hearing these verdicts, was delighted. Dismissing out of hand ‘a shoal of projectors, every one ready with his infallible remedy’,¹⁴ he wrote sternly to his superiors that steam power was ‘useless and pernicious’¹⁵ for the task in hand, that he had always said so, that he had been constantly overruled, and now that he had been proved right would the Admiralty please remove the engine -Plymouth dock was in need of just such a device for pumping water -and refit the Congo with sails.

His advice was taken, to the relief of everybody save Rear-Admiral Popham who argued that ‘no alteration will make her good for anything’.¹⁶ And so the Royal Navy's first experiment with steam power came to an inglorious end.

It had been an expensive experiment, but there were still more expenses to be borne. The Congo had to be altered for sail instead of steam, and kitted out with guns, provisions and all the usual trinketry for distributing to the ‘natives’: beads, knives, mirrors, twenty-four silk umbrellas and twenty ‘plated pint tankards, fashionable’.¹⁶ (Tawdry as they were, the gifts alone cost £1,386.) A support ship – a 350-ton whaler called the Dorothea – had to be hired and manned. And scientists had to be enrolled.

The remodelling of the Congo proved surprisingly successful. Despite Popham's comments on what was, as Barrow admitted, a ship whose shape ‘pretty nearly resembles that of a horse-trough’,¹⁸ it sailed well and when the trials were over Tuckey ‘had no hesitation in saying, that she was, in every respect, fit for the business’.¹⁹ To make the Congo yet more fit it was equipped with double-boats – light rowing boats which, when joined by a canvas-roofed platform, could hold twenty to thirty men and three months’ supplies, and could pass over any shallows that might obstruct the mother-ship.

The scientists, however, were something of a Hobson's Choice. They comprised Professor Christian Smith, a Norwegian botanist; a Mr Cranch, an ex-bootmaker in the pay of the British Museum, who came aboard as ‘Collector of Objects of Natural History’; Mr Tudor, a young and enthusiastic ‘Comparative Anatomist’; and one Mr Galwey, ‘Volunteer’, who had no qualifications other than he had been born in Tuckey's home town and was a very persistent friend. There was also Mr Lockhart, a diligent gardener from Kew about whom little, unfortunately, is known because Barrow did not consider him a gentleman.

James Kingston Tuckey (actually his middle name was Hingston rather than Kingston, but it seems churlish to rectify a spelling mistake that has survived for so long) was a tall, stooping Irishman aged thirty who hailed from Mallow, in Cork. He had had a ghastly war, spending nine years as a captive in France during which time he had married a fellow prisoner, one Miss Stuart, and had produced a number of children. In 1814, as the British pressed in, he had been force-marched away from the front line, during which time he lost his youngest son, and on rescue and repatriation his seven-year-old daughter had died in excruciating pain when her clothes caught fire. These experiences, combined with long service in India and the Middle East during which he had contracted a liver disease, had reduced him to premature old age. His hair had mostly gone, and what remained was grey. His face was fixed in an expression of pensive despair. But he retained a dry and ironic humour that sustained him through life's hardships.

Tuckey's orders were simple: to explore the Congo as far upstream as he could. Barrow added a lengthy memorandum containing his views of African geography; he hoped, optimistically, that not only would the ‘main trunk’20 of the Congo be connected to the Niger but that ‘a very considerable branch’²¹ of it would lead to South Africa, thereby providing ‘corroboration of the existence of some easy water communication’²² through the continent. Another branch of it might also lead to the south-west, he counselled. And there was undoubtedly a third branch fed by a lake called Aquelunda as well as a fourth which went east. Any of these branches might also be a trunk, in which case Tuckey was to prosecute its course with vigour. By the time Barrow finished, he had conjured up an aquatic growth which spread its tendrils to every point of the compass and occupied most of Africa. It takes two or three readings of this confusing document, thirteen pages long, to divine that Tuckey was, basically, being told to do as he thought fit.

Tuckey's private opinion was that the Niger and the Congo were separate rivers. In Barrow's eyes this rated as much attention as the ridiculous notion that the Niger flowed into the Gulf of Benin. But just in case, if by some unforeseen circumstance Tuckey was unable to penetrate the Congo, he was to have a look around the Gulf if only to dispel the myth put about by ‘continental geographers’,23 as Barrow disparagingly called them.

Barrow waxed eloquent on Tuckey's subsidiary duties. As he journeyed up the river he was to collect information on everything he encountered: the state of the weather; the lie of the land; the look, the depth and the taste of the water; he was to bring back samples of birds, fish, trees, animals and fossils; he was to take mineral samples – ‘The size of a common watch is sufficiently large for each specimen; shape is of little consequence; that of a cube split in two is perhaps the most convenient’²⁴ – and he was to look out for wood that could be used as fuel or for making ships; he was to compile vocabularies of every dialect, to note the presence of Muslim traders, to record indigenous religions, to ascertain whether the locals had a written history and to investigate the ‘genius and disposition of the people, as to talent, mental and bodily energy, habits of industry or idleness, love, hatred, hospitality etc.’²⁵ On top of this he was given a list of questions to which the African Association would be obliged if he could provide answers. Envisaging an equatorial equivalent of France or England they wanted to know the precise nature of the Congo nation. What were its boundaries? How was it administered? Did it have a monarch? Was his power absolute? Or did it have a Civil Code? If so, how was it administered?

The little 100-ton Congo, which contained barely enough space for its fifty-six crew and supplies, became on paper a veritable factoryship of research. It was granted the unheard-of quota of four carpenters – two were usually sufficient for a ship three times the size – whose days were to be spent constructing cases to hold the scientists’ specimens. Where these cases were to be stored, like much else, was not precisely specified.

The Congo’s departure from Deptford on 26 February 1816 was less than optimistic. Professor Smith recorded dismally that ‘people who were nearly strangers to me, here bade me farewell with tears in their eyes, and looks that expressed their doubt of seeing me any more’.26 Mr Cranch, the genial cobbler-made-good, was burdened by a ‘presentiment that he should never return, and … the expectation of such an event became weaker and weaker as his country faded from view’.²⁷ Tuckey himself was already sick from impending liver failure, though denying this to the surgeon.

A few days later the Congo passed Plymouth and Tuckey took the opportunity to send a letter informing Barrow that ‘the scientific gentlemen were all horribly seasick’.²⁸ This done, he sailed sardonically for one of the most fever-ridden rivers in the world. At the mouth of the Congo he sent the Dorothea home and readied himself for the voyage to come. He looked through Barrow's memorandum once again. ‘That a river of such magnitude,’ wrote the Second Secretary, ‘should not be known with any degree of certainty beyond 200 miles from its mouth, is incompatible with the present advanced state of geographical science, and little creditable to those Europeans who, for three centuries nearly, have occupied various parts of the coast near to which it empties itself into the sea.’²⁹

With this admonishment in mind, Tuckey entered the River Congo. Initially it was like a nursery vision of Africa – crystal-clear water above a smooth, red clay bed; smoke rising from happy villages; parrots flying in streams at dawn and dusk across the mangrove swamps to feed off the cornfields on the opposite bank; comfortable temperatures which never rose above 76 °F; and, to provide the necessary touch of mystery, a huge, natural pillar of stone near the river's mouth surrounded by whirlpools and carved with innumerable symbols, which was a fetish of Seembi, the river's protective deity. As they sailed upriver, however, the reality became apparent. Down-at-heel despots wearing cheap tiaras, cast-off uniforms, beadle's cloaks, and displaying horrible skin conditions, came aboard to demand gifts and rum – one man stayed five days to make sure the cask was empty. Poverty was endemic, as was warfare. Poisoning was so commonplace that every man of importance employed a food-taster – not that there was much food to be tasted in most places. Once having purchased a sheep and skinned it for dinner, Tuckey was horrified to find a man chewing its hide, wool and all, that had been roasted to lukewarm on a fire. Even where the land was capable of producing food, agriculture was pursued in a half-hearted, apathetic fashion, cattle being left to roam indiscriminately, never milked and often slaughtered in calf.

The cause of this economic ruin was slavery, which had been practised so relentlessly over the last 300 years that it was now a fact of life. Few people dared venture a day's walk from their village lest they be kidnapped by marauding gangs. Being sold as a slave had even entered the penal code as punishment for adultery with a chief's wife. Warfare was conducted for no other purpose than the capture of slaves. Human beings had become the region's major product, the sole currency with which chieftains could buy the shoddy wonders of European civilization. The price of a man was fixed with all the exactitude of foreign exchange. The rate, in Tuckey's time, was two muskets, two casks of gunpowder, fifty-two yards of cloth, one fancy sash, two jars of brandy, five knives, five strings of beads, one razor, one looking-glass, one cap, one iron bar, one pair of ‘scizzars’ and a padlock. Now and then Tuckey caught glimpses of the trade. Hardbitten slavers carrying British and American crews and sailing under Spanish or Portuguese colours flitted by night past the Congo, sending an occasional cannon-ball its way, as they went about the business of lifting what Tuckey estimated to be 2,000 slaves per year from the Congo River – a relatively modest haul compared to other areas.

Tuckey took a lop-sided glee at the disappointment of his men who had left England with the prospect of ‘melting under an equinoctial sun in the lightest cloathing’30 and disporting freely with ‘the sable Venuses which they were to find on the banks of the Congo’.³¹ This ravaged paradise offered no such solaces.

On 2 August they reached Embomma, the river's major port. From here it was only eighteen days’ sailing until they came to what they had been warned were impassable and torrential cataracts called Yellala. When they reached Yellala, they were pleasantly surprised. It was ‘not a second Niagara’, wrote Tuckey, ‘which the description of the natives, and their horror of it had given us reason to expect [but] a comparative brook bubbling over its stony bed’.32 But the cataract was enough to stop the Congo. Here Tuckey had to leave ship and travel overland, taking with him a few seamen, all the scientists and a group of locally hired Africans to act as porters and guides. Everything went wrong from this point.

Tuckey's nemesis was a particularly unpleasant strain of yellow fever, transmitted by mosquito, which manifested itself initially with a chill and a fierce headache. The sufferer's eyes became pearly and his tongue turned white. Lassitude and tremors followed, and the salivary ducts dried. The tongue went from yellow to brown, being finally coated with a black crust. The skin became jaundiced and, more often than not, the patient was in extreme pain. There was no cure. Death came within three and twenty days.

The first to fall ill was young Mr Tudor, whose eyes pearled over on 17 August, three days before the march began. Unaware of the nature of the disease that Tudor harboured – the others complained only of blisters and fatigue – Tuckey continued wryly on, dragging his stretcher-bound invalid up hills that needed ‘fly's legs’³³ and over passes that were ‘absolutely impassable to anything other than a goat’.³⁴ The country became rougher and food scarcer. Their interpreter, a freed slave who had been brought over from London, vanished quietly on 22 August, exchanging his given name Simmons for the one he had been born with, Prince Schi. Essential cooking equipment was ‘dropped’ by weary porters and tumbled downhill into the river. Meanwhile, the fever took its steady toll.

One by one the scientists fell ill and were sent back to the Congo to their inevitable fate. Tudor died on 29 August, Mr Cranch on 4 September and Galwey, the ‘Volunteer’, on 9 September. As the casualties mounted, Tuckey had no option but to retreat. The march back was a nightmare. Their African guides fled into the bush; supplies dwindled and were stolen. The remaining porters demanded ever more money to continue and left in droves when Tuckey could not supply it. As Tuckey struggled back to the ship his journal deteriorated into brief, tantalizing snapshots: ‘Horrible face with leprosy …’;35 ‘Size of their canoes …’;³⁶ ‘Natives extremely abstemious …’;³⁷ ‘Terrible march; worse to us than the retreat from Moscow …’³⁸

When Tuckey finally reached the Congo on 16 September his diary became even more elliptic: ‘Terrible report of the state on board: coffins …’³⁹ Yellow fever had struck the Congo too. Professor Smith went on the 22nd, and Mr Eyre the purser – ‘a young man of a corpulent and bloated habit’⁴⁰ – followed him eight days later. By the beginning of October Tuckey and his second-in-command, Lt. Hawkey, were the only officers left alive. Hawkey was shuddering and sweating, already in the second stages of the disease, and Tuckey too was sick – though not from yellow fever but from malaria, which had begun to attack his ailing liver. Tuckey succumbed on 4 October. Lt. Hawkey lived two days longer before he, too, died.

By now everyone was ill. Only Lockhart, the Kew gardener, seemed untouched by disease. The survivors buried their dead at Embomma and fled swiftly under the command of Mr Fitzmaurice the mate. They arrived back in England, drastically diminished, bringing with them Lockhart's seeds and sprouts, neatly wrapped in muslin bags, Smith's cuttings – which Lockhart had packed – and a writhing mass of insect life that had once been the natural history specimens collected by Cranch and Tudor.

Tuckey had sailed 200 miles up the Congo and had penetrated only a few miles further on foot. His discoveries, as summarized depressingly by the Naval Chronicle, were that the river had too many rapids and the natives possessed a cruel and listless nature. Nothing could have been a greater failure.

In hindsight, given the ignorance of tropical conditions and the lack of even the most basic medicines, such an outcome was inevitable. Yet to Barrow the fatality was ‘almost inexplicable’.⁴¹ He had had every hope of success yet, he wrote in bewilderment, ‘never were the results of an expedition more melancholy and disastrous’.42 He wrote up Tuckey's journal as optimistically as he could and shelved it. Its last, wistful entry of 18 September read:

Flocks of flamingoes going to the south denote the approach of rains.⁴³

Barrow was disheartened, but soon a new goal beckoned – the North-West Passage. For centuries, ever since it had become a seafaring power, Britain had been searching for the ‘vent’ – to use an Elizabethan term – that linked the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. It lay, according to theory, to the north of the Americas, and if only it could be found, Europe – by which was meant Britain – could reach the treasures of Asia without having to undergo the long and stormy passages via the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. It was a navigator's Eldorado and the map was littered with the names of those who had tried and failed to find it: Frobisher, Hudson, Baffin, Cabot, Foxe and others. Of all these, William Baffin had been the most successful, charting in 1616 the bay to the west of Greenland which still bears his name. But over the years, as ship after ship disappeared into the Arctic, most of them never to return, people grew weary of the Passage. All that had been discovered was a labyrinth of islands and ice-choked channels. It was a useless business; so useless that by 1815 most of the early mapping had been forgotten, with the exception of that great fur depot, Hudson Bay. Baffin Bay, charted so carefully, had dwindled to a chimera which in most eyes – those of Barrow included – did not exist. Even as late as 1824 it did not appear in the Encyclopedia Britannica, to which Barrow contributed on all matters pertaining to the Arctic.

But by 1817, prospects were different. Britain now had stronger ships, more professional seamen and, thanks to the Industrial Revolution, a great deal of money to spend. So much money, in fact, that despite popular disinterest the Board of Longitude was willing to open its purse to whoever made major inroads into the North-West Passage. There was £5,000 for the first ship to reach 110° west, twice that for 130° west, £15,000 for 150° west and £20,000 – about a million pounds today – for reaching the Pacific.

‘To what purpose …?’ The phrase rang as splendidly in 1817 as it had done a year before. Barrow decided to tip his cap at the North-West Passage. And as if by magic, it opened before him.

* Slave-trading was banned first by Denmark in 1802, by Britain and America in 1808, by Sweden in 1813, by the Netherlands a year later, by France in 1818 and by Spain in 1820 followed by Portugal in 1836. But under-the-counter trading to the Americas went on well into the 1850s.