Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (9 page)

The notable exception was Sir John Franklin. The year was 1845. Franklin was sixty, a robust white-haired veteran Arctic explorer, leading an expedition through the ice-floes north of Canada in search of the Northwest Passage. In July of that year, normally a hospitable month for Arctic exploration, Franklin disappeared.

Under normal circumstances, the progression of public status for a lost expedition went from ‘overdue’ to ‘missing’ to ‘presumed dead’. Memorial services were held, and statues might be erected to honour the fallen heroes. Franklin, however, was rich, with an adoring wife and Sir Roderick Murchison for a friend. Murchison leveraged his personal and political connections to continue the search after all was thought lost. ‘He never ceased to stimulate public interest in the matter by the most urgent and moving appeals,’ marvelled Indian explorer Sir Henry Rawlinson. Thanks to Murchison’s zeal and Lady Jane Franklin’s hopes, thirty-two ships took part in various searches before Franklin’s death was confirmed in 1859.

Ironically, Livingstone and Lady Jane Franklin met in late 1865, when he stopped in Bombay en route to Africa for the Source expedition. He was emblematic of exploration, she of the indefatigable search for lost explorers. A year later, Livingstone was in the process of assuming both mantles.

Young, unlike Lady Franklin, couldn’t finance a search. Based on the rigid social delineations of Victorian England, Young was considered lower class, a broad stratum including all except the wealthy. Typically, a member of the lower class would never mingle with members of the upper class. But Livingstone — also lower class — was an inspiration in that regard. He represented a newly developing middle class in England, living proof that a man could bridge the void between upper and lower class through achievement and bravado. As Young’s
ruminations about Livingstone’s alleged murder grew more intense, and as his certainty that Musa was lying became set in stone, he knew such a societal leap was the only way to prove Livingstone was alive.

On 13 March 1867, a week after
The Times
announced the murder, Young boldly composed a letter to Murchison on a small sheet of stationery.

‘Sir,’ the note began. Young’s script was taut, nervous. ‘Having seen this sad intelligence of the murder of Dr Livingstone, I beg you will pardon the liberty I take in writing to you on this subject. First, I must inform you that I served upwards of two years in the Zambezi Expedition under Dr Livingstone, being in charge of the
Pioneer
steamer under his orders, during which time I had a very good experience of Johanna men, having had twelve of them in the crew of the
Pioneer
. And Sir, I can confidently assert that, at all times, and under all circumstances, there was not the slightest dependence to be placed on them, more especially as far as the truth was concerned, added to which they were great thieves.

‘I have, therefore, great reason to hope that their story respecting the murder of the Doctor will prove a mere fabrication, more especially if they brought nothing belonging to him, for they well know the value of books or papers, etc., which the Mazitu do not.

‘I have the honour to be, Sir, your very obedient servant.’

Young signed his name and mailed the letter. The ‘E’ in his signature looked like a ‘G’ and his name would appear in
The Times
incorrectly. Regardless, the angry note launched the humble, eager gunner on the improbable odyssey that would define his life.

In writing to Murchison, Young found an unlikely ally. Not only had Murchison led efforts to find Franklin, he had sent relief money to Speke and Grant when they were overdue during their Nile journey. And like Young, Murchison doubted Livingstone’s death, even as the old Africa hands Kirk and Sir Samuel White Baker were pronouncing the explorer dead and buried.

Murchison passed Young’s letter along to
The Times
, then summoned the sailor to London. When Young boldly put forth his offer to lead a search party, Murchison was delighted. ‘Doubt’, Murchison agreed with Young, ‘was not to be endured.’

Preparations began in earnest. Even as the papers continued to run proof that Livingstone was dead — including a 6 April piece telling of a follow-up investigation by Consul Seward — Murchison’s connections and verve shot the search expedition quickly from concept to reality. By May, Young was named Commander of the Livingstone Search Expedition and received permission from the Admiralty to take leave from
Osborne
. Thanks to Murchison’s intercession and Livingstone’s fame, the government offered Young ten times the necessary funding for his far-fetched quest, and encouraged him to ‘use every available means to secure success’.

Young wasn’t lavish with the money, but he didn’t hesitate to spend it on the one vital aspect of his plan: a steel river boat.
Search
wasn’t much to look at, just an open boat thirty feet long and eight feet wide. But she was modelled after a craft named
Lady Nyassa
, designed by Livingstone, and was ideal for the Zambezi and Shire. There was a mast to hoist a sail and oar locks for paddling when the wind was dead. She drew just eighteen inches of water. And while the thirty-eight pieces of elastic steel
Search
was constructed from would be blazing hot to the touch under the African sun, she could also be completely disassembled. Porters could carry her up and around the journey’s pivotal portage past a thirty-five-mile-long series of waterfalls and rapids on the Shire. Those cataracts, which Livingstone had named Murchison Falls, were the major obstacle between the Zambezi and Lake Nyassa.

As commander, Young also had carte blanche for personnel selection. He invited three trusted friends to join his grand quest. It was a brilliant idea, ensuring that camaraderie wouldn’t be forced and Young’s authority wouldn’t be threatened by a power-hungry outsider. There was John Reid, who’d been ship’s carpenter on
Pioneer
;
Henry Faulkner, a former army officer with the 17th Lancers; and Patrick Buckley, a shipmate from
Gorgon
. Their expedition would be an adventure in the finest sense, just a few friends sallying into the wilds, attempting a goal beyond the ken of ordinary men.

As the departure date drew near, the expedition became a symbol of hope to England. Four brave men setting out to find Livingstone didn’t guarantee anything, but it implied he just might be alive. This was important. When the nation was demoralized by the slaughter of her young men in the Crimean War between 1854 and 1856, it was Livingstone’s walk across Africa that made her stand tall again. And when England was devastated by the news that Indian nationals had slaughtered innocent British men, women and children in the Punjab in 1857, it was Livingstone’s triumphs that provided a diversion. And again, when social division and widespread unemployment during the 1850s sparked unrest and sapped British morale, it was Livingstone who stepped forth as their lion. He was more than just an explorer, he was a symbol of the potential greatness lying within each man, but tapped only by those willing to push beyond the limits of comfort and fear. In a smaller manner, Young had become such a source of hope.

There was, however, a double edge to the hope. A considerable sum of money had been spent to outfit the expedition. Expectations were getting so high that people were losing sight of the hard fact that locating Livingstone would be a miracle (as Murchison noted, ‘the scheme would be stigmatized as the Livingstone Utopian Search’). He was a lone man in the middle of a vast continent. It had been a year since he’d even been seen alive, and stories of his demise seemed disturbingly plausible. If the rumour was false, a year would have also offered ample opportunity for Livingstone to put a few thousand miles between himself and civilization. So if Young was sincere about finding Livingstone, that might mean abandoning
Search
and beginning an overland expedition — a task for which he wasn’t prepared.

On 10 June 1867, Young and his expedition sailed from Portsmouth aboard the mail ship
Celt
. By July, just four short months since his letter to Murchison, Young’s expedition had travelled to Africa, launched
Search
and prepared to sail up the Zambezi delta. If all went well, he and the men had arranged to be picked up at the delta’s mouth by a British warship on 2 December for the cruise home.

The journey up the Zambezi was like a homecoming for Young. The fourth largest river in Africa, the Zambezi also ranks as one of the largest in the world. The delta at its mouth is fifty miles wide, and the river itself is almost two miles across where it empties into the Indian Ocean. Livingstone had travelled almost every inch of the mighty river. The low-lying areas along its lush green banks were a breeding ground for malarial mosquitoes, tse-tse flies, spiders, scorpions and smallpox. Mary, Livingstone’s wife, was buried along those banks, in the village of Shupange, after she died in April 1862. Young was at the funeral, and would stop to tend her grave on his quest to find her husband.

For Young and his mates, the romance of their journey was soon replaced by the realities of life on a dangerous body of water. There were mosquitoes to infuriate them all day and night. The foetid banks stank of rot and vegetation. The current was sometimes languid, sometimes swirling. When Young made the lazy right turn from the Zambezi into the narrower, serpentine Shire, the complexion of their journey changed, too. The Shire was a river of contrasts — miles of impassable rapids and miles of equally daunting marsh, choked with tall grasses. So many elephants wallowed in the shallows of the marsh that Livingstone had once, because firewood was scarce in the great Shire marsh, ordered the men to pluck elephant bones from the river and burn them as fuel in his ship’s boiler. More ominously, the Shire was so thick with crocodiles that Livingstone’s men during the Zambezi expedition called it ‘a river of death’.

Young and his companions pushed up the Shire,
reaching Murchison Falls on 19 August. There, they spent five days taking
Search
apart. Those were nervous times for Young. Not only would the loss or damage of a single piece of
Search
render the boat useless, but also reports from local villagers confirmed that the Mazitu lurked somewhere nearby. Time hadn’t made them any more docile. Young quickly hired 240 men from the Makololo tribe to carry the pieces of
Search
up the falls. The journey took four and a half days and there were no signs that the Mazitu had followed.

Clues about Livingstone’s fate began to emerge as the expedition neared Lake Nyassa. Twelve months before, a white man stopped at the village of Maponda for a few days’ rest. Members of the Makololo tribe hadn’t heard about a white man being ambushed, and laughed out loud at the notion that such a thing could happen without word getting around, for the bush telegraph was too effective.

On Lake Nyassa, more telling clues. In one small village, Young purchased English-made tokens a white man had traded with the people — a knife, a razor, a spoon, a length of frayed calico, a book of English Common Prayer. All appeared to be Livingstone’s, but there was no sign of him and no one knew which way he’d gone.

On 14 September
Search
was caught in a gale and sought refuge in a small village on the shore. As the men stepped from the boat, they were reminded again that the Mazitu were close. The huts were all empty, there was no wood smoke from cooking fires, and there were no shouts of children playing. ‘Skeletons’, Young wrote, ‘now met our eyes in great numbers.’ The few villagers still alive knew of a white man, but said he was long dead. Young and the men rested until the wind died, then fled the ghost town to continue their detective work elsewhere.

Five days later
Search
steered towards the large village whose chief’s name was Marenga. As the boat prepared to dock, Young and the men were originally mistaken for Portuguese slavers. Warriors lined the beach with guns
aimed at
Search
, hoping to drive the boat away. But when Young cried out that they were Englishmen, the guns were lowered and the expedition was welcomed warmly. Chief Marenga rushed forward to greet the boat. Shaking Young’s hand enthusiastically, he asked, ‘Where have you come from and where is your brother that was here last year?’

When Young eagerly told Marenga of his search for the missing explorer, he was regaled with stories of Livingstone’s visit. ‘He said he had come there from Maponda,’ Young wrote, ‘had stopped there two days. He was very kind.’

Search
sailed on, combing the southernmost shores of Nyassa for clues. What became clear to Young was that Livingstone had travelled along these same shores to elude the Mazitu. He had not travelled north around the lake as originally planned — and as Musa had sworn. Clearly, Livingstone didn’t die like Musa said, because he’d never travelled anywhere near the scene of his alleged death. Weighing that logic, Young was sure Livingstone lived.

Now Young was faced with a dilemma. Clause Nine of his orders from the Royal Geographical Society gave him the option of pressing forward to make contact with Livingstone or turning around once he had verified the explorer was alive.

Young turned around. He had Livingstone’s personal effects to show the RGS and first-person testimony from locals that Livingstone was living. Moreover, Young was a creature of his training — after a lifetime spent on the water, the career sailor was incapable of tracking Livingstone over land. The mission, as far as Young was concerned, was accomplished. The journey home began.

By 2 October Young was disassembling
Search
for the portage back down the cataracts. By 2 December he and his men rendezvoused with HMS
Raccoon
at the mouth of the Zambezi. By 17 December they were in Cape Town. On 19 December they boarded
Celt
once again for the cruise to London. And on 27 January 1868, just ten months after the fit of pique prompting the impossible adventure, E. D. Young’s official expedition report was
read at a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society. ‘I have the honour to be, Sir, your very obedient servant,’ it concluded.