Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley & Livingstone (8 page)

The adventure to Turkey hadn’t continued on to China, as Stanley had once planned. And it hadn’t yielded any freelance writing assignments. In fact, Stanley had done no journalistic work whatsoever. But the trip — perhaps the most ludicrous and avoidable of Stanley’s list of failures — provided the forward momentum his career in journalism needed. He was chastened by his time in prison and abuse by the Turks, and had begun to examine the folly of his loose morals. Stanley had also developed two specific career goals. The first was to write for the New York
Herald
, America’s greatest newspaper. The second, inspired in part by David Livingstone, was to write adventurous stories about travels through Africa. ‘Stanley spoke to me of Dr Livingstone’s exploration in Africa,’ noted Noe. ‘He expressed a desire to go to Africa himself, and said he should aim to do so as a correspondent of the
Herald
, and thereby make a story and a sensation, and gain both fame and money.’

Stanley, however, didn’t have the journalistic credentials to get hired by the
Herald
— yet. So he took the train from New York to St Louis and secured a full-time position with the Missouri
Democrat
. His salary was fifteen dollars a week, and his first assignment was covering the Missouri State Legislature in Jefferson City.

Covering an august political body was a sharp contrast to the dungeon of Karahisar, and not normally the type of adventurous subject the burly, uncouth Stanley preferred to write about, but his work was so impressive that within just two months he was reassigned to the biggest story of his career thus far. It was March of 1867. The
Democrat
ordered Stanley to return to the West to cover the American Indian Wars. The great cavalry of the United States Army was galloping across the Kansas prairie, 1,400 men and horses and cannon strong, hell bent on evicting the Cheyenne nation once and for all from the
Great Plains. Everything about the operation was epic, from the force’s mass to the plain’s endless sweep to the undeniable truth that history was about to be written.

Stanley, much to his glee, would be the one writing it.

Meanwhile, from England, came the shocking news that Livingstone was dead.

FIVE MONTHS AFTER
Livingstone tried to calm a terrified Musa about the Mazitu, a Royal Navy gunner named E. D. Young read the 7 March 1867
Times
with shock and revulsion. It was a raw Thursday morning in Portsmouth as a numbing east north-east blow strafed the wooden decks of Queen Victoria’s new royal yacht
Osborne
. Young read that his beloved Livingstone was dead.

It was there in black and white: Livingstone was missing and presumed murdered. The story was heart-wrenching. An emotional cover letter from Sir Roderick Murchison referring to his ‘lamented friend’ in the past tense was accompanied by a missive from Zanzibar confirming that Livingstone’s entire expedition had been butchered by the Mazitu.

‘On the fifth of December nine Johanna men of the party which accompanied Dr Livingstone came to Zanzibar,’ read the letter from Vice-Consul John Kirk, ‘reporting that on the west of Nyassa, sometime between the end of July and September, they were suddenly
attacked by a band of Mazitu, and that Dr Livingstone, with half his party, were murdered. Those who returned escaped, as they say, through being behind and unseen, and they all depose to having helped bury the body of their dead leader the same evening. Although in details and other things the accounts of the various men differ, they all agree that they saw the body, and that it had one wound — that of an axe — on the back of the neck. One man saw the fatal blow given.

‘The attack was sudden, and Dr Livingstone had time to overpower those who faced him, and was struggling to reload when cut down from behind. I fear the story is true, and that we shall never know more of its details.’

There were several aspects of the tragedy that Kirk’s letter failed to mention. For instance, the poignant reaction to Livingstone’s demise from the hardened citizens of Zanzibar: a period of mourning began immediately. All international vessels in port, the various foreign consulates and even the Sultan of Zanzibar lowered their flags to half-mast.

Less poignant was Musa’s behaviour. After expressing his deep sadness about Livingstone’s death, Musa began badgering Kirk and Consul George Seward to pay the Johanna men for their time in Livingstone’s employ. They had worked six hard months for the quirky employer, he argued, breaking trail along the Rovuma River and putting themselves in harm’s way when Livingstone insisted on travelling through the Mazitu’s territory. Since Livingstone was a British consul to the tribes of Africa and had sometimes flown his consular Union Jack, Musa insisted the British Government pay them what was rightfully theirs.

Kirk, the same man who had travelled as expedition botanist on Livingstone’s Zambezi journey, and Seward proceeded cautiously. It seemed strange to them that the only survivors were Johannas. Before sending the news back to London, they conducted a thorough investigation into the murder. For three long weeks Seward and Kirk cross-examined the Johannas, listening for inconsistent stories, trying to trip them on their own words.

Not a single story matched. Some Johannas said Livingstone was hunting elephants with some local villagers at dawn, others said he was simply exploring, and the death occurred at noon. Some Johannas swore they hid in the bushes during the attack, while others stated they’d been told to return to the village for supplies. Some said Livingstone shot one man, others said two. However, the stories weren’t that different from one another, either. And specific details fitted with known facts: the order and manner of a Livingstone caravan on the march (a detail Kirk knew first-hand), and that Livingstone’s route took him around Lake Nyassa’s northern shore, a path he’d announced to Seward before leaving Zanzibar.

It finally came down to motive. Why would the Johannas risk criminal penalties for desertion and insubordination in Zanzibar unless they were telling the truth? No salary was worth that risk. As Christmas 1866 drew near, Ali Musa and the Johannas were shipped home without payment. But even as the Sultan of Johanna stepped forth to demand that his subjects receive the monies due them for their invaluable service to Great Britain, Seward and Kirk came to the conclusion Livingstone was dead.

Seward, a physician from Edinburgh who had become Livingstone’s good friend during the explorer’s stay in Zanzibar, wrote to the Foreign Office with the news. He ordered Kirk to pass on the news to the Royal Geographical Society. It was the day after Christmas, 1866. Kirk wanted the news to arrive as soon as possible so he wrote two letters. One was sent via Atlantic mail ship. The other travelled by way of the Red Sea — Mauritius to Aden, up the Red Sea then across the Suez peninsula by train. Both reached the RGS two months later. ‘If this cruel intelligence should be substantiated,’ Murchison wrote to
The Times
in the letter that aroused E. D. Young’s fury on 7 March 1867, ‘the civilized world will mourn the loss of as noble and lion-hearted an explorer as ever lived.’

The people of Britain were mortified by the loss of
Livingstone, and also the manner in which he died. The savagery of the Zulus was well known. An infamous, true tale still haunted British society — that of a group of South African colonists who were killed by thick wooden stakes driven into their hearts via their rectums. Of course, in Livingstone’s case, without a body it was impossible to verify the specifics of his death, but there was little argument he was gone. Seward and Kirk’s investigation made it clear that Livingstone’s luck, after decades of wandering through Africa unscathed, had run out in spectacular fashion.

More germane to the rage E. D. Young felt as he read the news aboard
Osborne
was his personal knowledge of Musa’s character. Young, a thirty-five-year-old who held the rank of warrant officer, had served with Livingstone’s Zambezi expedition between January 1862 and March 1864. He piloted
Pioneer
, the second of three steel steamboats Livingstone used to navigate the Zambezi delta. In Young’s opinion Ali Musa and the Johannas were nothing but thieves, layabouts and liars. It was his belief that the Johannas abandoned Livingstone because the exploration had become too rugged, then concocted the story about Livingstone’s death to collect their pay.

Young was a thin, impulsive man. As a boy he had voluntarily joined the Royal Navy, a career infamous for its brutality, sodomy and squalid living conditions. Most men didn’t volunteer for such a life. Rather, they were coerced into service by groups of sailors roaming seaside towns, plying young men with drink, hitting them over the head or just clapping them in irons, then carrying them onto a ship. Young, however, enjoyed navy life. During his twenty years of service he worked his way up through the ranks to become a gunner and warrant officer. It was while serving as gunner on
Gorgon
, a supply ship plying the Mozambique Channel, that he first met Livingstone in 1860. Young admired the explorer so greatly he resigned his hard-won commission in 1862 to serve on board
Pioneer
. Initially, Livingstone had doubts about the sailor’s character, suspicious that Young’s overzealous work
ethic was an attempt to coerce him into paying extra wages. But over time Young earned Livingstone’s trust and became a mainstay of the Zambezi expedition. ‘The
Pioneer
,’ Livingstone wrote in his journal on 16 June 1863, as he struck out for an overland segment of his exploration, ‘was left in charge of our active and most trustworthy gunner, Mr Edward Young, RN.’

The time with Livingstone was a boon to Young’s naval career, which he resumed upon returning to England. The plush billet as
Osborne
’s gunner was tangible evidence — the position was almost honorary, for armament on
Osborne
was negligible. He’d been there two years. His Africa tan had been replaced by the ruddy pallor synonymous with life in windblown Portsmouth. Her Majesty’s yacht was a far cry from life aboard
Pioneer
, where uniforms were washed in muddy water, food was whatever could be fished from the river or purchased from waterfront tribes, and ‘the reed fringe of the river, weariness and the monotonous hum of the mosquito’ passed for ambience.

Though the temperature in Portsmouth reached no more than thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit the day Young read of Livingstone’s alleged murder, every other facet of serving aboard
Osborne
was quite comfortable. The ship docked silently, with all commands unspoken. The decks were always polished. Young was immaculately dressed every day, tucking his uniform jumper smartly into his starched trousers. He ate hot food at regular hours and quaffed a daily rum ration. Busy, blustery, nautical Portsmouth, the home of the Royal Navy, with its sailors’ pubs and ‘gunny bunny’ gunners’ groupies, was just a train ride from a good social weekend in London. There was even an offbeat charm to life aboard
Osborne
, one found nowhere else in the Royal Navy: it was no secret that
Osborne
had a preponderance of homosexual sailors — nicknamed the ‘screaming queens’ by other members of the Royal Navy. A regular highlight of shipboard life was the ‘Sods Opera’, cabarets performed by the queens in full drag. Their performances were lively and
polished, and a sight seen nowhere else on the high seas.

Young, however, was willing to give up the luxury, prestige and high-jinks for the sake of an outlandish scheme gathering momentum in the back of his mind: the gunner wanted to go to Africa and lead a search and rescue expedition to find Livingstone. Young’s plan focused on following aquatic paths to the interior. A small group of dedicated searchers and a sturdy boat was all he would need. ‘To take a large force of men into the country, even a boat’s crew from a man o’ war, much less a gunboat, was out of the question,’ he later noted.

Young planned to follow the Zambezi inland from the coast, having learned that massive river well in his years piloting for Livingstone. He was familiar with its eddies and sandbars, side channels, cataracts, gusting easterly winds and the inevitable late afternoon downpours. The Zambezi was far wider and more easily navigable than the swampy, crocodile-infested Rovuma Livingstone had followed inland to start his Source expedition, with more villages along the shore where Young could trade for food. From the Zambezi he would make a right turn into the narrower Shire, which he would follow upriver until entering Lake Nyassa, through its southern egress. Upon reaching Lake Nyassa Young planned to travel from village to village around the shoreline, questioning tribes about a white man who might have passed through. He would learn for certain whether the explorer was dead or alive. Young needed to know the truth. He could not stomach the maudlin limbo of doubt.

One major obstacle, among others, stood in Young’s way: the very notion of a search for a lost explorer was outrageous. When they went missing, they stayed missing. With one notable exception, British exploration had been this way for centuries. In the earliest days of exploration, when travelling over a hill from one valley into another was an act of daring, finding a lost explorer wasn’t difficult. But once explorers began trekking thousands of miles from home, or sailing hundreds of miles over the horizon just to find the earth’s limit, rescue was not an
option. Searching for overdue explorers would represent a physical hardship akin to exploration itself; the sheer breadth of the globe and slow pace of communications would render the task like finding a needle in a haystack.