Taffnet - H M Stanley

Stanley

Sir Henry Morton (1841-1904),
Anglo-American journalist and explorer; one of the leading figures in the exploration and colonization of Africa.

Originally named John Rowlands, Stanley was born on January 28, 1841, at Denbigh, Wales. At the age of 18 he sailed as a cabin boy to New Orleans, Louisiana, where he gained employment under an American merchant named Henry Morton Stanley, whose name he adopted. During the American Civil War he served in the Confederate army and in 1862 was captured at the Battle of Shiloh. He transferred to the federal service but was discharged, ostensibly because of ill health. In 1867 he became a special correspondent for the New York Herald, and in that capacity in 1868 he accompanied the British punitive expedition led by the British army officer Robert Cornelis Napier against the Ethiopian king Theodore II and was the first to relay the news of the fall of Magdala, then the capital of Ethiopia.

Search For Livingstone

In 1869 the American newspaper publisher James Gordon Bennett of the Herald dispatched Stanley to find the Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone from whom little had been heard while he was searching for the source of the Nile. After being delayed by other assignments, Stanley reached the island of Zanzibar off the eastern coast of Africa on January 6, 1871. He crossed over to the mainland and left for the interior on March 21, with about 2000 men. On November 10 he met the ailing Livingstone at Ujiji, a town on Lake Tanganyika, and is said to have greeted him with the famous remark, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"
After nursing Livingstone back to health, Stanley and he explored the northern end of Lake Tanganyika. Stanley returned to Europe in 1872, and the following year was sent by the Herald to West Africa to report on the British campaign against the Ashanti of what is now Ghana.

Further Explorations

The New York Herald and London Daily Telegraph shared the cost of Stanley's next expedition, planned to continue the work of Livingstone, who had died in 1873. In November 1874 Stanley left Zanzibar for the interior, accompanied by 359 persons. He visited King Mutesa of Buganda and then circumnavigated Lake Victoria, becoming involved in several skirmishes with the inhabitants of the lakeshore. He then went south, circumnavigated Lake Tanganyika, and headed west to the Lualaba River, a headstream of the Congo River. In a great journey of discovery, Stanley navigated down the Lualaba and Congo rivers as far as Livingstone Falls, which he named. He then continued overland for a short distance to the Atlantic Ocean, which he reached in August 1877. About half of his party had died during the arduous trip.

Stanley returned to London in January 1878. The following year, under the sponsorship of Leopold II, king of the Belgians, he returned to the Congo on another expedition, which lasted for five years. During this period he constructed a road from the lower Congo to Stanley Pool (now called Malebo Pool) and laid the foundations for the establishment of the Independent State of the Congo.

In January 1887, Stanley was placed at the head of an expedition to assist the German explorer Mehmed Emin Pasha, governor of the Equatorial Province of the Egyptian Sudan, who was surrounded by rebellious Mahdist forces. In 1888 Stanley reached Emin Pasha who refused to return to Egypt. During this expedition, Stanley discovered the Ruwenzori Range, the so-called Mountains of the Moon, and found that the Semliki River linked Lake Albert to Lake Edward. In 1889, Stanley finally succeeded in bringing Emin Pasha back to the coast.

Last Years

In 1890 Stanley married Dorothy Tennant, who later edited his autobiography (1909). He had been naturalized a U.S. citizen in 1885, but in 1892 again became a British subject. From 1895 to 1900 he sat in Parliament as the Liberal Unionist member for North Lambeth. Stanley's last visit to Africa was in 1897, and in 1899 he was knighted. He died in London on May 10, 1904. Among his books are How I Found Livingstone (1872), Through the Dark Continent (2 vol., 1878), and In Darkest Africa (2 vol., 1890).

"Stanley, Sir Henry Morton,"
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Compton’s Encyclopedia has the following entry:-

STANLEY, Henry Morton (1841-1904).

The first European to explore the Congo River from Central Africa to the Atlantic Ocean was Henry Morton Stanley. He traveled the great river for 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Nyangwe, in what is now Zaire, to its mouth. When he embarked on his long journey he had no way of knowing what river it was or where it would lead him. The Scottish missionary and explorer David Livingstone had discovered the stream near its headwaters. Livingstone had noted that the river flowed northward and had hoped that it might be the Nile. But as Stanley journeyed downstream the river turned westward. He decided, as Livingstone himself had suspected, that it might be the Congo, whose mouth on the west coast was already known.

Stanley was born in Denbighshire, Wales, on Jan. 28, 1841. His parents were not married, and he was given his father's name, John Rowlands. After a youth of extreme poverty, he ran away to sea. He landed in New Orleans, La., where he was adopted by a merchant named Henry Morton Stanley, whose name he took. He fought with the Confederate Army in the American Civil War, was for a time in the United States Navy, and later became a newspaper correspondent for James Gordon Bennett's New York Herald. In this capacity he traveled in Asia Minor and accompanied an expedition under General Winfield Scott Hancock against the Indians in the American West, a British expedition against the emperor of Abyssinia, and still a third, also British, to Ashanti on Africa's west coast.

Stanley's interest in equatorial Africa had been first aroused when he took another assignment from the Herald. "Go find Livingstone," said James Gordon Bennett, Jr. The great missionary-explorer Livingstone had at that time been out of touch in the interior of Africa for five years. Almost everyone thought him dead. Stanley set out from Zanzibar for the interior on March 21, 1871. When he actually encountered the missionary, all Stanley found to say was, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?"

After Livingstone's death, in 1873, Stanley vowed to finish the exploration. He made the complete crossing of the equatorial belt of Africa from east to west, opening up this vast region to the world. The expedition, which took three years (1874-77), cost the lives of many of his party, including all three of the Europeans who had accompanied him. The results of this expedition were enormous, for it led to the formation of the Congo Free State (now Zaire) and the exploitation of the region. Within a few years the nations of Western Europe were competing with each other to found African colonies.

After Stanley had established navigation on the Congo he made an expedition to rescue Mehmed Emin Pasha, a German agent of the Egyptian government who was cut off in equatorial Africa by a native uprising. With Emin Pasha, Stanley arrived at Zanzibar, the point of departure for his earlier expeditions, in December 1889.

This expedition ended Stanley's active career in Africa. His later years were spent in England, where he again became a British subject, was elected to Parliament, and was made a knight. He died in London on May 10, 1904, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Among the books he wrote, narrating his adventurous life, are

'How I Found Livingstone' (1872);
'Through the Dark Continent' (1878);
'In Darkest Africa' (1890);
'My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia' (1895);
'Through South Africa' (1898);
and 'Autobiography' (edited by his wife, 1909).