The New York Herald’s London bureau in Fleet Street was almost next door to the headquarters of the Daily Telegraph, the newspaper that had been first to break Stanley’s Livingstone scoop to British readers thanks to its agreement with James Gordon Bennett.
A few days after Livingstone’s funeral, Stanley strolled over to the Telegraph’s offices and ‘while I was discussing journalistic enterprise in general with one of the staff, the editor [Edwin Arnold] entered. We spoke of Livingstone and the unfinished task remaining behind him. In reply to an earlier remark, which I made, he asked: “Could you, and would you, complete the work? And what is there to do?” I answered: “The outlet of Lake Tanganyika is undiscovered. We know nothing scarcely of Lake Victoria; we do not even know whether it consists of one or many lakes and therefore the sources of the Nile are still unknown. Moreover, the western half of the African continent is still a white blank.”’ Arnold, who secretly admired Bennett’s bold style of journalism and aspired to replicate it in the Daily Telegraph, asked: ‘Do you think you can settle all this if we commission you?’ – which seemed unlikely as Bennett still had prior claims to Stanley’s services.
Secretly, Telegraph publisher Edward Lawson dispatched a telegram to his fellow publisher in New York: ‘Would you consider joining the Daily Telegraph in sending Stanley out to Africa, to complete the discoveries of Speke, Burton and Livingstone?’ and within twenty-four hours a one-word reply came back from Bennett: ‘Yes.’
News of the jointly funded Herald–Telegraph expedition was released simultaneously in London and New York on 17 July 1874, announcing that the proprietors had joined forces in organising
an expedition of African discovery, under the command of Mr. Henry M. Stanley. The purpose of the enterprise is to complete the work left unfinished by the lamented death of Dr. Livingstone; to solve, if possible, the remaining problems of the geography of Central Africa; and to investigate and report upon the haunts of the slave traders. Mr. Stanley will represent the interests of the two nations whose common interest in the regeneration of Africa was so well illustrated when the lost explorer was rediscovered by the energetic American correspondent . . . and it may be hoped that very important results will accrue from this undertaking to the advantage of science, humanity and civilisation.
The public was informed that Stanley would return to Africa ‘as the ambassador of two great powers, representing the journalism of England and America, and in command of an expedition more numerous and better appointed than any that has ever entered Africa’. The announcement continued that the joint venture would be an example for other nations to follow – ‘they send armies to conquer while the press sends armies of peace and light’.
During the summer of 1874 and in between making preparations for his return to Africa, Stanley found time to fall in love. American-born Alice Pike was barely seventeen years old when she met Stanley at the Langham Hotel during a visit to London with her mother, Ellen. Mrs Pike, wealthy widow of a property tycoon, was taking her three daughters – Alice, Nettie and Hessie – on a grand tour of Europe and was thrilled to hear that the famous ‘fellow-American’, Henry Morton Stanley, was staying at the same hotel. She had also heard that he was London’s most eligible bachelor.
Stanley was immediately attracted to Alice, whom he preferred out of the three daughters. At thirty-three, Stanley was nearly twice her age, but he told his journal that while Alice was ‘elegant, she wore too many diamonds’. Over dinner with Mrs Pike and her daughters, he had spoken about Africa and confessed to his journal that he found the sisters ‘very ignorant of African geography and, I fear, of everything else’. Alice’s own first impressions of Stanley, whom she called Morton, were of a man with a ‘rugged, bronzed face. . . . It was easy to see he wasn’t a man given to light laughter or things of play. . . . There was not a man nor a woman in all London who did not know of Stanley, the Stanley. His name was on every tongue; it was his name that was mentioned at dinner; everyone, everywhere heard it.’ Within days of meeting the Pikes, Stanley recorded that if Miss Alice ‘gives me encouragements, I shall fall in love with her’. He admitted that this might not be conducive to his happiness ‘for she is the very opposite of my ideal wife’.
Alice and Stanley were seen together each day, walking in the park, boating on the Serpentine, dining at fashionable restaurants, attending plays and recitals and taking out-of-town railway excursions.
The Pikes returned to London for a few days following their European tour and Stanley accompanied them to Liverpool where they would board a steamer back to New York. Miss Alice and her Morton swore undying fidelity to each other and Stanley described their parting at the foot of the gangplank as ‘tender’.
Stanley relished the challenge of returning to Africa and entered into a flurry of activity planning everything in detail, ordering equipment, guns, ammunition, ropes, saddles, medical supplies and provisions, purchasing scientific instruments and a portable boat of his own design to explore Central Africa’s lakes. The boat would be built from durable Spanish cedar in five separate sections, each of which would be 8ft long. The sections would be constructed in two halves allowing them to be carried with greater ease by porters. The finished boat would be 40ft long with a 6ft beam and 30in deep.
Edwin Arnold recommended the services of a custom boat builder from Teddington called James Arthur Messenger, whose Water Lane premises stood on a 2-mile open stretch of the Thames where Queen Victoria’s royal barge was stored. Messenger was a champion sculler who had been appointed the Queen’s barge master in 1862. He employed thirty men in Teddington to build boats and was thrilled to receive a letter from Stanley asking if he could come and discuss a most unusual boat-building project.
Over lunch at the Angler’s Hotel next to the Teddington boatyard, Stanley laid his own sketch plans before Messenger. Although the boat was long, it had to be light and durable in order to be carried overland. And it had to be built quickly and shipped out to Zanzibar in time for the expedition’s departure date in November. Messenger assured Stanley that the boat would be built, tested and shipped by the agreed date. It was named the Lady Alice in honour of Alice Pike.
Stanley began recruiting a small number of English personnel prepared to travel into the unknown with no guarantee of returning. Once announcements about the expedition became public, Stanley received 1,200 letters from all kinds of people begging to travel to Africa with the famous Henry Morton Stanley. He rejected them all.
While staying at the Langham Hotel, Stanley had become friendly with its young desk clerk, Frederick Barker ‘who, smitten with a desire to go to Africa, was not to be dissuaded by reports of its unhealthy climate, its dangerous fevers, or the uncompromising views of exploring life given to him’. Despite having no experience of foreign travel, Barker’s mother gave her son permission to join the expedition as its accountant, keeping careful check on expenditure.
Edwin Arnold suggested the expedition should include ‘one or more young English boatmen of good character’ whose navigation skills would be useful when taking the Lady Alice upriver. Arnold took Stanley to Kent, where he moored his private yacht on the River Medway for weekend sailing. At Lower Upnor, they met a fisherman called Henry Pocock
who had fine stalwart sons, who bore the reputation of being honest and trustworthy. Two of these young men volunteered at once. Both Mr. Arnold and myself warned the Pocock family repeatedly that Africa had a cruel character, that the sudden change from the daily comforts of English life and the rigorous one of an explorer would try the most perfect constitution; would most likely be fatal to the uninitiated and unacclimatised. But I permitted myself to be overborne by the eager courage and devotion of these adventurous lads, and Francis ‘Frank’ John Pocock and Edward ‘Ted’ Pocock, two very likely-looking young men, were accordingly engaged as my assistants.
Henry Pocock urged his sons to stick by their new employer in Africa ‘through thick and thin’ – advice that they were to follow to the full measure.
Before departing for Africa, Stanley made a quick Atlantic crossing to New York to brief Bennett on his proposed journey – and to propose marriage to Alice Pike. She accepted at once, although her mother insisted the wedding must wait for Stanley’s safe return from Africa. Alice gave Stanley a carte-de-visite photograph of herself to carry on his travels. They promised to write to each other, both realising the difficulties of maintaining regular correspondence while Stanley was deep in Africa’s interior. However, they agreed that their letters could always be read on returning to Zanzibar or forwarded to him with messengers.
In London Stanley was given ‘a magnificent prize mastiff called “Caster”’ by Baroness Burdett-Coutts, the English philanthropist and socialite. He later bought three more dogs, a retriever, a bulldog and a bull terrier, from Battersea Dogs’ Home, called respectively Nero, Bull and Jack by the Pocock brothers. An English officer gave Stanley a second mastiff known as ‘Captain’.
On 15 August 1874, ‘having shipped the Europeans, boats, dogs and general property of the expedition’ to Zanzibar, Stanley left England for Africa ‘to begin my explorations’. At the same time, he also fulfilled his wish to take Kalulu home to Africa.
Stanley returned to Zanzibar on 21 September 1874, twenty-eight months after he had previously left the island following the Livingstone assignment. He found suitable accommodation for himself, Kalulu, the Englishmen, dogs and tons of equipment at the home of Augustus Sparhawk, an American trader based in Zanzibar.
Little had changed apart from the market where Stanley had once witnessed slaves being sold. He noted: ‘Happily, there is no such market now, Zanzibar’s slave trade having been abolished by the Sultan Barghash bin Sayid’, following gentle coercion by the British government responding to Livingstone’s influence and anti-slavery articles by the New York Herald. It was later discovered that Sultan Barghash continued to trade in slaves in secret and was himself one of the main beneficiaries of the traffic.
The expedition members bartered for cloth, beads, coils of brass wire and tools in the bazaars and sent it back to Sparhawk’s house to be rolled into bales, poured into sacks and packed. They then began enlisting over three hundred men for the expedition. Stanley had been told the best men for the job were the Wagwana, the name given to sons of former slaves who had bought their freedom or inherited it on the death of their masters. Wagwana had been successfully used by Burton, Speke and Grant and were from the same group from which Stanley had sent men to Livingstone on his return to Zanzibar.
Word quickly spread that Stanley was hiring able-bodied men willing to carry a load. Hundreds asked to be considered – ‘almost all the cripples, the palsied, the consumptive and the superannuated . . . all the roughs, rowdies, and ruffians of the island’ were rejected. Twenty men who had remained loyal to Stanley on the 1872 Livingstone expedition were re-hired. Over two hundred more were recruited (plus another hundred on the mainland) and Stanley admitted that ‘many were engaged of whose character I had not the least conception until, months afterwards, I learned from their quarrels in the camp how I had been misled by the clever rogues’. Each man was paid between $2 and $10 per month plus rations depending on their strength and intelligence and enlisted for up to two years. On signing, each adult received a $20 dollar advance – or four months pay – and each junior member of the party $10. Advance ration money was also paid to each man and the Daily Telegraph was sent a bill for £1,300 to cover early expenses.
Stanley drew up an expedition charter, which was read out to each man in his native language. It stated that they would be treated with kindness and patience. In the event of sickness, they would be given medicine and if unable to proceed, they would not be abandoned but conveyed ‘to such places as should be considered safe for their persons and their freedom’. Those remaining behind would be given cloth or beads ‘to pay the native practitioner for his professional attendance and for the support of the patient’. Stanley also agreed ‘to act like a father and mother’ to them and resist all violence ‘by savage natives and roving and lawless bandits’. In return, Wagwana promised to undertake duties like men, to honour and respect instructions, be good and faithful servants – and never to desert.
Stanley recruited ‘a native detective’ called Kacheche, whose job it was, with assistants, to track deserters and bring them back to camp. The ‘detectives’ would often travel a day’s journey behind the rest of the expedition and receive instructions via a messenger when anyone absconded. They would be ordered to watch for him along the path and at local villages in the expectation of capture.
In the middle of this activity, the steamer arrived carrying the sections of Stanley’s exploring boat Lady Alice. Anxious to ensure that the pieces could be carried easily, he had each weighed ‘and great was my vexation and astonishment when I discovered that four of the sections weighed 280 lbs each and that one weighed 310 lbs. She was, it is true, a marvel of workmanship . . . but in her present condition her carriage through the jungles would necessitate a pioneer force a 100 strong to clear the impediments and obstacles on the road’. A ship’s carpenter was recruited who, with the aid of the Pocock brothers, cut each subsection in half, producing pieces that could be carried along narrow paths of the interior with greater ease.
The entire cargo weighed over 8 tons, divided as nearly as possible between the 300 men into 60lb loads. Their departure, on 17 November 1874, was timed to coincide with the ending of Ramadan and Stanley was relying on the men’s goodwill to turn up and be ready on that day. True to their promise, 224 of them were sitting on the quayside ready for work at sunrise.
Expedition members and their goods were loaded on board Arab dhows that would transport them across the channel to Bagamoyo. As fast as each dhow was reported filled, off it went in a westward direction ‘and into the arms of fortune . . . as we glide away through the dying light towards the dark continent’.
Stanley recruited extra men at Bagamoyo from among those recently arrived at the coastal town with incoming caravans from the interior. On the morning of 17 November 1874, Ted Pocock sounded a bugle to wake the expedition and signal that they would shortly be on their way. Stanley noted that the ‘boat carriers are Herculean in figure and strength, for they are practised bearers of loads . . . and will carry sections of the first European-made boat that ever floated on Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika and the extreme sources of the Nile. To each section of the boat there are four men, to relieve one another in couples. They get higher pay than even the chiefs . . . and besides receiving double rations, have the privilege of taking their wives and children along with them.’ Six asses were also taken along – one each for Stanley and the Englishmen and two for the sick. Three net hammocks would also support anyone injuring themselves or falling ill, with six men acting as a walking ambulance party.
At 9 a.m., 356 souls headed out of town, 4 native chiefs in front followed by 12 guides clad in red robes and carrying wire coils, then a long line of 270 men carrying cloth, wire, beads and sections of the Lady Alice, followed by 36 women and children of the chiefs. Towards the rear rode the Englishmen on their asses followed by their gun bearers – including Kalulu, now happily back in his old job – and 16 chiefs acting as a rearguard. The procession stretched for over half a mile from end to end. The heat was intense, reaching 140 degrees and seemed to burn through the Englishmen’s sun helmets. Even the Wagwana appeared to be suffering. Before the day was out, the mastiff ‘Castor’ would be dead from heat exhaustion and the other dogs showing signs that they were also in distress.
The Pocock brothers travelled ahead with the boat carriers so they could quickly assemble the craft on the banks of the first major hurdle, the Kingani River. Stanley’s journal records that the Lady Alice ‘did admirable service in the ferriage . . . the entire expedition crossed the river in her within two hours’. However, within a week of their having set out, by 23 November, porters were suffering from sore shoulders, blistered feet, sickness, lung disease, spitting up blood and generally complaining. Stanley noted: ‘White men behave very well.’ On 28 November, the mastiff ‘Captain’ died.
The journey continued through ‘lion country’ full of game. Stanley shot a zebra for a group of Wagwana asking for a change in their diet ‘much against my wish, for I think zebras were created for better purpose than to be eaten’. By mid-December, desertions were frequent. At first detective Kacheche and his gang of assistants had been following a day’s journey behind, resulting in the capture of sixteen men. The Wagwana soon became wise to this and later deserters struck out in other directions to avoid detection. Stanley ordered detectives to go into the bush before dawn and hide until the expedition had begun the day’s march. This measure deterred many from escaping but nevertheless during the first five weeks of the march over fifty men absconded, taking their advance pay and weapons with them.
The rainy season began in earnest on 23 December. Both Ted and Frank Pocock fell ill with fever. On 25 December, Stanley told his journal: ‘A more cheerless Christmas was seldom passed by me, and I venture to say that none of the other European members of the expedition ever experienced such a dull, gloomy misery . . . besides, our men suffered from sore famine – as two yards of cloth purchased here only as much as a palm’s breadth of cloth would have procured elsewhere’. On the same day Stanley wrote to Alice:
I am in a centre-pole tent, seven by eight. As it rained all day yesterday, the tent was set over wet ground, which, by the passing in and out of the servants, was soon trampled into a thick pasty mud bearing traces of toes, heels, shoe nails and dog’s paws. The tent corners hang down limp and languid, and there is such an air of forlornness and misery about that it increases my own misery. . . . Outside, the people obviously have a fellow feeling, for they appear to me like beings with strong suicidal intentions or perhaps they mean to lie still, inert until death relieves them . . . I have not had a piece of meat for ten days. My food is boiled rice, tea and coffee, and soon I shall be reduced to eating native porridge, like my own people. I weighed 180 lbs when I left Zanzibar, but under this diet I have been reduced to 134 lbs within 38 days. The young Englishmen are in the same impoverished condition of body, and unless we reach some more flourishing country . . . we must soon become mere skeletons. . . . Besides the terribly wet weather and the scarcity of food from which we suffer, we are compelled to undergo the tedious and wearisome task of haggling with extortionate chiefs over the amount of blackmail which they demand, and which we must pay. . . . Another of my dogs, ‘Nero’ the retriever, is dead. Alas! All [the dogs] will die.
As they trudged through the rain, Stanley spent time ‘from morning until night’ taking solar observations, making ethnological notes, negotiating with local chiefs seeking payment for permission to pass through their land and tending to the sick. He noted: ‘In addition to all this strain on my own physical powers, I was myself frequently sick from fever and wasted from lack of proper, nourishing food; and if the chief of an expedition be thus distressed, it may readily be believed that the poor fellows depending on him suffer also.’
The path climbed to 4,000ft as ‘the floodgates of heaven’ opened, drenching the camp and men. When Stanley awoke in his tent, he discovered ‘that my bed was an island in a shallow river, which, if it increased in depth and current, would assuredly carry me off . . . but the most comical sight was presented by “Jack” and “Bull” perched back to back on top of an ammunition box, butting each other rearward, and snarling and growling for that scant portion of comfort’.
With lives hanging in the balance and no sign of game in the area, Stanley decided to dispatch forty trustworthy men ahead in the hope of finding friendly tribes prepared to trade for food. They were instructed to buy what they could and hurry back with supplies. Meanwhile, Wagwana roamed the forest searching for edible roots or berries – anything to stem the bitter pangs of hunger. ‘Some found a putrid elephant, on which they gorged themselves, and were punished with nausea and sickness.’ The supplies produced sufficient oatmeal to provide each member of the party with two cupfuls of gruel, brewed in a ‘Torquay dress trunk’ emptied of its contents and filled with 25 gallons of water, 10lb of oatmeal and four tins of ‘Revalenta Arabica’. Those sent to buy food returned next day with ‘a supply of millet seed just sufficient to give all hands a small meal’.
By 16 January 1875, the party had arrived in the district of Suna where Stanley recorded that of the 347 who had left Bagamoyo, 89 had deserted, 20 had died and 8 had been left behind in villages after falling ill – leaving 230 expedition members capable of continuing. With one-third of his workforce gone and 7,000 miles still to cover, Stanley reduced the amount of baggage carried by the men, discarding and burning everything superfluous. Personal items, luxuries, books, cloth, beads, wire, extra tents were sacrificed.
On the same date Stanley recorded: ‘Ted Pocock has been seriously ill since we arrived here, whether it is smallpox, typhus or African fever that he is suffering from I know not. He has been wandering in his head for the last two days, but I hope sincerely that he will recover, as he has been very useful to the expedition. He is a young man of such cheerful disposition that his loss would be seriously felt.’ Next day Stanley noticed hundreds of red pimples with white tops scattered over Ted’s chest and arms – smallpox pustules.
Ted Pocock died the same day. Stanley’s journal describes him as ‘a gentle, amiable creature, of medium stature, shy blue eyes and light coloured, silky hair. He was excessively fond of his brother, and did his duty in my employ well and efficiently and was always civil. His brother Frank possesses these virtues perhaps in greater degree than Ted, but it would have been difficult to elect two better young men for the expedition than Francis and Edward Pocock.’ Ted was buried under an acacia tree, marked with a cross. Standing over the grave, Stanley said: ‘May he rest in peace in this grave, having lived to drink of the extreme southern sources of the Nile.’ Fred Barker was also ‘feeling feeble’ at the service and Stanley confessed, ‘I have a fever, but I performed the burial service over my departed companion.’
In a letter to Ted’s father in England, sent by a messenger who was also carrying a newspaper dispatch from the shores of Lake Victoria Nyanza, Stanley wrote: ‘Poor Ted deserved a better fate than dying in Africa, but it was impossible that he could have died easier. I wish that my end might be as peaceful and painless as his. . . . Be consoled, for Frank still lives, and from present appearance is likely to come home to you with honour and glory such as he and you may well be proud of.’ Henry Pocock did not receive Stanley’s letter until October, ten months after his son’s death.
Conditions improved. There had been skirmishes with savage tribesmen along the way, but Stanley’s hunger-driven men had won the day and cattle and contents of villages were eagerly seized by the party. Many were killed on the journey and others wounded, further reducing the expedition’s size and increasing the number of injured or of those suffering from dysentery, rheumatism, asthma, skin diseases, malaria and typhoid. At the end of January 1875 they passed through villages willing to trade and Stanley was able to record that ‘the voice of the gaunt monster – hunger – was finally hushed’. Fresh porters were hired to replace those too weak to proceed.
On 27 February, the 104th day of the march, the expedition was ascending a long gradual slope with Frank Pocock at its head. At the brow of the hill, Stanley noticed Frank madly waving his hat in the air and then running towards the rest of the expedition ‘his face beaming with joy as he shouted enthusiastically, “I have seen the lake, sir, and it is grand.”’ They had arrived at Lake Victoria Nyanza, sixteen years and seven months after Speke had first set eyes on the water in an attempt to prove – misguidedly – that it was the Nile’s source.
A camp was built to house the expedition for several weeks while Stanley went exploring in the Lady Alice. Before bolting the sections together and equipping the boat for a long voyage, Stanley wrote a letter to Alice and articles for his newspapers. He had already dispatched five pieces from Zanzibar and another during the early part of the march relating the expedition’s progress to date. The latest dispatch would contain the story of their journey through the rain, their hunger, tribal battles, Ted Pocock’s death, desertions, sicknesses, privations and their struggle to the shores of Victoria Nyanza. It would take seven months for the article to travel along the path and by ship to Aden, from where it was telegraphed to both newspapers, appearing in print on 11 October 1875.
On 8 March 1875, the Lady Alice was ready to explore the lake and with Frank Pocock and Fred Barker remaining, Stanley called for volunteers to crew her. No one came forward, claiming they knew nothing of life on the water, secretly afraid the boat might send them to a watery grave. Stanley ordered one of his men to appoint a crew of ten strong Wagwana. The boat was launched with plenty of supplies and goods for trading. They explored rivers, islands, coves, encountered friendly tribes willing to trade and hostile groups who threw spears at them, forbidding them to land. On 28 March they encountered thirteen native canoes conveying lake pirates over the water. Stanley hoped to engage them in conversation but they surrounded the Lady Alice and attempted to board her. Stanley and his crew managed to beat them off and an elephant rifle was used to kill four raiders. There were further adventures in store for the Lady Alice and her crew across the water.