Sir Henry Morton Stanley
Sir Henry Morton Stanley, (1841-1904). British explorer, born John Rowlands in Wales. He sailed as a cabin boy to the US, where he met a cotton merchant called Henry Morton Stanley and took his name. After fighting on both sides in the American Civil War he became a journalist for the New York Herald (1867). He was sent to Central Africa to trace the explorer Livingstone, who had been missing for two years. Stanley is reputed to have greeted the explorer with the words “Dr Livingstone, I presume” (1871). The first European to trace the mouth of the Congo, Stanley helped found the Congo Free State (1879) in 1887 he relieved the Pasha in Sudan during the Mandist revolt. He served as an MP (1895-1900) and wrote several books, including In Darkest Africa (1890).
“It was his luck to do considerable things exactly at the time when exploration had become scientific, but had not ceased to be picturesque. A generation before, there was glamour, but little good business in the conquest of the wild…A generation later the glamour had largely departed, though the business was very good business indeed. But in the high and palmy days of Stanley, the explorer had the best of both worlds. He was admired as a disinterested knight errant, and rewarded handsomely for not being one. E. T. Raymond on Sir Henry Morton Stanley, in Portraits of the Nineties”
