Birdie Bowers E-Book

Anne Strathie

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Henry 'Birdie' Bowers realised his life's ambition when he was selected for Captain Scott's Terra Nova expedition to the Antarctic, yet he also met his death on the journey. Born to a sea-faring father and adventurous mother on the Firth of Clyde, Bowers' boyhood obsession with travel and adventure took him round the world several times and his life appears, with hindsight, to have been a ceaseless preparation for his ultimate, Antarctic challenge. Although just 5ft 4in, he was a bundle of energy; knowledgeable, indefatigable and the ultimate team player. In Scott's words, he was 'a marvel'. This new biography, drawing on Bowers' letters, journals and previously neglected material, sheds new light on Bowers and tells the full story of the hardy naval officer who could always lift his companions' spirits.

Leseprobe

In memory of my late parents, Jack and Marion Strathie, and of my mother’s much-loved younger brother, Robert Hamilton (d. 1944), who found Birdie Bowers to be an inspirational hero in difficult times.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I warmly thank all those organisations and individuals who have provided everything from general encouragement to expert advice, without which I would not have completed this book nor found the process of so doing enlightening and enjoyable.

First and foremost, I thank the many museums, archives, libraries and organisations listed below and the individuals who work within them. They are the custodians of our shared heritage and continue to serve us all in financially constrained times and to remind us that, even in an electronic age, there is no substitute for seeing or reading the ‘real thing’. I thank them for advice, assistance and, in many cases, for permission to quote from documents in their custody or use images from their collections.

I particularly thank the Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge (SPRI), and Heather Lane, Naomi Boneham, Lucy Martin, Shirley Sawtell and Georgina Cronin for expert help and guidance, and for permission to quote from documents and to reproduce images from SPRI’s archives and Freeze-Frame collection.

I am also very grateful to Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum (Helen Brown, Ann-Rachael Harwood); Cheltenham Library (particularly the local history section); Gloucestershire Archives and University of Gloucestershire Archives (Lorna Scott). I also thank Bexley Local Studies & Archive Centre (Sue Barclay); Bute Museum ( Jean McMillan); Greenock Libraries and Museum; National Library of Scotland; National Maritime Museum; Paisley Museum (David Robertson); Plymouth Museum (Nigel Overton); Royal Geographical Society (Sarah Strong and colleagues, including for permissions); Sidmouth Library (Gill Spence and colleagues); Sidmouth Museum (Rab and Christine Barnard); The Royal Collection (Emma Stuart and colleagues); United Kingdom Antarctic Heritage Trust. I am also very grateful to museums in other countries, in particular to Canterbury Museum, Christchurch (Baden Norris, Joanna Condon, Natalie Cadenhead, Katie Wilson) for assistance and permission to quote from documents and use images from their collections. I also thank the Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington (Gillian Headifen, including for permissions); Auckland War Memorial Museum; the Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth (Erica Persak and Karyn Cameron, including for permissions); Museum of North Otago, Oamaru (Rowan Carroll and colleagues); New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust and State Library of Victoria, Melbourne (including for permissions).

My thanks also to the Authors’ Foundation, whose grant was a source of both practical support and encouragement, and to the Society of Authors (administrators of the grant scheme), their staff (in particular Sarah Baxter) and members of its Gloucestershire branch.

I thank the numerous descendants of members of Scott’s party, writers, historians, explorers and others who have offered guidance, information, practical assistance and encouragement, including but not limited to: Benedict Allen; Tom Avery; the Back family; Dr Paul Baker (former Rector, Waitaki High School for Boys, Oamaru); Dr Steven Blake, David Elder and fellow members of the Cheltenham Wilson centenary committee; Gill Blenkinsop; Clive Bradbury; Angie Butler; Peter Callaghan; Patrick Cordingley; Dr Ian Davis; Ivan Day; Julian Evans; Ben Fogle; Mike Goodearl; Meredith Hooper; Dr Max Jones; Roger Jones; Charles Lagerbom; Jo and Ian Laurie; Sue Limb; Mr and Mrs David McKelvie and Margaret Mackay; Kate Mosse; Adrian Raeside; Rod Rhys Jones and Ken Gibson (British Antarctic Monument Trust); Dr Stephen Ross and Dr Pearl Jacks; Michael Smith; Francis Spufford; Sue Stubenvoll (NZ Antarctic Society); Michael Tarver; Sara Wheeler; Isobel Williams; Dr David Wilson (to whom particular thanks) and Jake Wilson.

I also thank family and friends whose encouragement, support, proofreading and Antarctic-themed offerings have kept me going, including but not limited to: Jean Strathie; Roberta Deighton, Fiona Eyre, Jill Burrowes and families; Michael Bourne, the Nops, the Nuttalls, the Ridleys, Ali Rieple and other Cranfield friends; the Cairncrosses; Lin and Robert Coleman; Michael Drayton; Julia Fortes, Imogen Fortes and family; the Grays (New Zealand); Kate Howard; Tracey Jaggers; Alison Jolley; Pauline Lyons; Charlotte Mackintosh and family; Katherine McInnes; Esther Morgan; Neela Mann; Jan Oldfield and Nowton friends; Joanna Scott; St Andrew’s University friends; Tivoli friends; Ann Watkin and family; Graham Webster; the late Don Weekes and Maisie Weekes; Sophie Wilson. Thanks also to Rodney Russ and all on the Spirit of Enderby (Ross Sea expedition, January–February 2011); Carole Angier, Allegra Huston and all at Lumb Bank (Arvon Foundation life-writing course, September 2011); and to tutors and fellow students on Open University courses.

Thank you also to staff at The History Press, in particular Lindsey Smith, Hazel Kayes and Abbie Wood, and to Simon Hamlet who gave me the opportunity to write this book.

CONTENTS

Title

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Maps

Introduction

Prologue

1.Family Roots

2.Learning the Ropes

3.Sailing the Seven Seas

4.Entering New Worlds

5.In Captain Bowers’ Footsteps

6.Scotland, Dangerous Waters and a Beautiful Island

7.Uncertain Times and a New Beginning

8.Heading South

9.To the Point of Departure

10.Down to the Ice

11.The Depot Journey

12.Deepest Winter

13.Getting Ready

14.Across the Barrier to the Beardmore

15.To the Pole

16.The Long Haul Back

17.Breaking the Silence

Epilogue

Appendices

A: Expedition Personnel

B: Glossary

C: Notes on Measurements

Notes and Sources

Selected Bibliography

Plates

Copyright

MAPS

1.The Irrawaddy, Burma (now Myanmar)

2.Antarctica, showing surrounding countries

3.McMurdo Sound, showing the scene of the pony ‘disaster’ on the depot journey, April 1911

4.Ross Island, showing the track of the Cape Crozier journey, June–August 1911

5.McMurdo Sound, showing Cape Evans and the Ferrar Glacier

6.Southern journey from Cape Evans to the foot of the Beardmore Glacier

7.Route to the South Pole (on plateau), January 1912

8.Scott and Amundsen’s routes to and from the South Pole

9.Journey of the search party, October–November 1912

INTRODUCTION

A few years ago I found in a cupboard a well-thumbed copy of ‘Birdie’ Bowers of the Antarctic, a biography by the Reverend George Seaver, published in 1938.

Although I live in Cheltenham, home town of Edward Wilson, who famously died with Captain Scott on their return march from the South Pole in March 1912, I was not familiar with the story of Henry ‘Birdie’ Bowers who, aged 28, also succumbed to cold, hunger and thirst in the same blizzard-bound tent. My interest in Bowers was further aroused when I realised that my copy of Seaver’s biography had been given by my mother as a Christmas present to her younger brother a few years before his death (at the same age as Bowers) in the Second World War, and when I read, in a letter of sympathy from a friend of my uncle, that the two men had regarded Bowers as an inspirational hero.

In his journal Scott described Bowers as a marvel, someone who, despite the hardships of the return journey from the Pole, remained resolutely cheerful and full of hope. Others on the expedition saw Bowers as a straightforward, tirelessly energetic young man who was eager to play his part in every aspect of the expedition. In the Antarctic Bowers was clearly in his element but my research revealed a somewhat more complex figure. Bowers was born in Scotland in 1883 to an adventurous sea captain and a considerably younger missionary teacher (who, I discovered to my surprise, had been born and raised in Cheltenham), from whom he inherited a form of Christianity rooted in a nineteenth-century schism in the Anglican Church. A traveller by upbringing and instinct, Bowers worked on a famous sailing ship which plied the trade routes between Britain and Australia, saw New York’s Statue of Liberty (only twenty years after its installation) and, as an officer in the Royal Indian Marine, served the still-great British Empire in India and the Middle and Far East. While in some ways Bowers was Victorian by upbringing and inclination, by the time he left for Antarctica he was almost ecumenical in religious outlook, was an enthusiastic photographer, had walked on the seabed in a diving suit, read H.G. Wells’ futuristic fiction and dined in London’s brand-new Strand Palace Hotel.

In 2011 I was fortunate enough to travel to Cape Evans and visit the hut that sheltered Scott’s men from the icy winds and blizzards of the Antarctic winter. From there Bowers wrote (as he had done throughout his travels) to his mother and sisters regularly, lyrically and enthusiastically, describing his sometimes hair-raising adventures, the stunning scenery and the wildlife which was, for him, a constant source of interest and wonder. In telling Bowers’ story I have tried to convey his sense of adventure and wonder at the mysteries of the universe rather than indulge in analysis informed by twenty-first-century hindsight. I have called places by the names with which he was familiar and used the measurements of weight, temperature and distance he recorded in his numerous journals and notebooks. I have also, when quoting him, retained (with minimal exceptions required for clarity) his sometimes erratic punctuation and spelling. During his short life Henry Bowers was, largely thanks to his prominent nose, given many nicknames; I have referred to him as ‘Henry’ (as his family always called him) until he leaves for Antarctica and ‘Birdie’ during the Terra Nova expedition.

Although I have not been to the South Pole, I have travelled far in Britain and beyond in the course of my research for this book. All along the way, both at home and abroad, I have been fortunate to receive expert assistance, guidance, kindness, generosity and friendship from many people and organisations. I thank them all and acknowledge that any errors, omissions or oversights are my own.

I hope that readers enjoy learning about the short but adventurous life of Henry Bowers as much as I have enjoyed researching and writing about it.

Anne Strathie, Cheltenham

PROLOGUE

London, May 1910

Lieutenant Henry R. Bowers of the Royal Indian Marine had just signed on as a junior officer on Captain Robert Scott’s second Antarctic expedition.1

This promised to be the greatest adventure of his life and he was keen to make a good impression on Scott and his second in command, Lieutenant ‘Teddy’ Evans. Henry knew he had been lucky, and the only one to be chosen without an interview from among 8,000 candidates. He was aware, however, that many of his shipmates were veterans of earlier Polar expeditions or Royal Navy officers and might wonder if a stocky, 5ft 4in junior RIM officer would be up to the job. But Henry had loved snow, ice and cold weather since he was a toddler in Scotland and had, at the age of 7, written to someone he mistakenly believed lived in Wilkes Land, one of the few charted areas of Antarctica:

Dear Eskimo,

Please write and tell me about your land. I want to go there some day.

Your friend Henry.

Henry’s letter remained unanswered but his passion for the mysterious icy continent developed. As a cadet on HMS Worcester he listened intently as Sir Clements Markham of the Royal Geographical Society talked about polar regions; as a young mariner, he followed newspaper reports of Scott and Shackleton’s Antarctic expeditions and read the explorers’ own accounts of their travails and triumphs. When, following several months of correspondence, a cable arrived in India offering Henry a place on Scott’s British Antarctic expedition, he dropped everything and returned to London. Henry was dreading saying farewell to his mother and sisters but believed this expedition was a God-sent opportunity, and his destiny.

Henry’s first duties in his new role were to help sort and stow the crates, cases and bundles which lined the quayside at West India Docks. He worked with a will until, as he strode across the deck of the ship one day, he failed to notice a carelessly unfastened hatch door. Caught unawares, he found himself flying through the air, plunging deep into the main hold until his descent was eventually broken by an unforgiving heap of pig-iron. He got to his feet, satisfied himself that nothing was broken, scrambled out of the hold and resumed his work. Later that day, Lieutenant Teddy Evans was heard to declare that Henry was a ‘silly ass’ for falling into the hold, but admitted to being impressed by his powers of recovery. Captain Scott also reportedly had his doubts about the wisdom of this particular appointment. Henry knew, however, that as soon as the Terra Nova set sail he would be able to show them what he was made of.

Notes and Sources

1Details of events (e.g. the fall into the hold) not recorded by HRB are from diaries and other writings by members of Scott’s team (as listed in Selected Bibliography).

1

FAMILYROOTS

When 7-year-old Henry Bowers wrote to his ‘friend’ in Wilkes Land, Antarctica, he was living in London with his widowed mother, former missionary teacher Emily Bowers, and his elder sisters, Mary and Edith. His father, Captain Alexander Bowers, had died some three years previously in Burma where he had worked as a master mariner for many years.

Henry was born in Greenock, a major centre of shipbuilding, trade and sugar-refining,1 which lay about 20 miles down the Firth of Clyde from Glasgow, the British Empire’s second city. His father, son of a Greenock shipwright (also Alexander), was born there in 1827 but had left home at the age of 13 to work on the eastern trade routes of the British Empire. He rose swiftly to the rank of captain, steered the Geelong2 to victory in the China to London tea-clipper race (thus winning a substantial cash prize) and reached a new high navigation point for British ships on the Yangtse Kiang. The Captain’s ships largely carried cargo but, as a staunch Christian, he regularly offered free passage to missionaries travelling along Britain’s trade routes. In 1857, during the Indian Mutiny, his ship was also used as a government troopship. By 1864, Captain Bowers’ reputation was such that the Glasgow-based British India Steam Navigation Company (known as BI) offered him command of a brand-new ship, the Madras; his first duty was to return to the Firth of Clyde to supervise his vessel’s construction.

The Captain returned to his family home at Rue-End Street in the centre of Greenock, where his parents still lived. Since he had left home one of his younger twin sisters, Jane, had married a shipmaster, William Allan, and given birth to a son (also William) at the Cape of Good Hope; following William Allan’s death she had married another shipmaster, James Smith.3 Jane’s twin sister Mary was still unmarried. The now-prosperous Captain decided to buy a larger home for himself and his extended family, and settled on a ten-roomed villa (yet to be built) at Battery Point, which lay a mile or so from the centre of Greenock and offered extensive views over the Firth of Clyde. The Captain christened his new home West Bank, although locals jokingly referred to it as Bowers’ Folly due to its remote location and grand scale compared to the family’s more modest abode in Rue-End Street.

Before West Bank was ready for occupation the Captain and the Madras left Greenock. During her maiden voyage she encountered a violent storm in the Bay of Bengal and was swept onto an uncharted reef.4 No lives were lost but cargo had to be jettisoned, and while passengers praised the Captain’s ‘decisive and energetic’ actions, his employers tried to demote him to a less responsible post. The Captain, indignant at the slur on his good name, tendered his resignation. The following year, 1866, he heard that his father had died in Greenock, leaving him as head of the family. By then he had found work, thanks to Todd, Findlay & Company, a Glasgow-based shipping company, as head of Rangoon’s Dalla dockyard, headquarters of the expanding Irrawaddy Flotilla Company (in which Todd, Findlay & Co. was a shareholder).5

The Captain, by now also a Freemason and member of the Royal Naval Reserve, soon became an integral part of Rangoon’s business community. He was asked to join a British expedition up the Irrawaddy, the aim of which was to establish the feasibility of reopening a long-dormant trade route between Burma and neighbouring China.6 The expedition party led by Captain Edward Sladen, British Resident in Mandalay, numbered over a hundred, including representatives of the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company and other businesses, an eminent naturalist, interpreters, servants, an armed escort, and elephants loaded with British-made goods and gifts for local rulers and potential trading partners.

Before leaving Mandalay Captain Sladen obtained the King of Burma’s formal approval for the expedition to enter the politically unstable border area of Upper Burma.7 The party sailed over 300 miles up the increasingly narrow Irrawaddy to Bhamo, the last major trading post on the river; then, with the consent of local rulers, it travelled through the jungle to the frontier city known to the Burmese as Momein and to the Chinese as Tengyueh-chow. Tribesmen who had seen few Europeans before greeted them with random volleys of gunfire and invited them to join in trance-inducing and other mysterious ceremonies. When they finally reached the border country, which lay at an altitude of 6,000ft, they found fruit, vegetables and other produce growing in abundance. For six weeks they explored routes, showed their wares and promoted the benefits of trade with the British Empire. Captain Bowers recorded every detail of their journey and the countryside through which they passed; he noted that some of the native sheep resembled Scottish sheep and that some gently sloping valleys had an English character. He praised the Burmese for their industriousness, the Chinese for their aptitude for manufacture, and the Shans for their cleanliness, smart attire, and neat homes and gardens. He recorded details of places of worship and schools, and, having approvingly noted similarities between Buddhism and Christianity, came to the conclusion that British missionaries should not seek to impose Christianity on Buddhists who preferred to follow their own faith.

Following a somewhat hazardous return journey to Bhamo (during which several local guides and interpreters deserted the party), the Captain returned to Rangoon and produced a 200-page formal report on the expedition. He admitted that the British did not have a spotless record in the region – partly due to the introduction of opium – but decided that the King of Burma seemed less interested in his people’s well-being than in amassing riches, indulging himself and keeping his people in thrall by propagating superstitions. The Captain made a strong case for investment in the railway lines, roads and bridges that would be required to support the reopening of the trade route to China, a development which would both serve Britain’s commercial interests and provide a counter-balance to the growing influence in the region of the French, Americans and Russians.

Although his involvement in the expedition further enhanced the Captain’s reputation, he received no remuneration for his participation for almost two years, during which time a fire at his house in Rangoon destroyed much of his personal property, including his precious bagpipes and Scottish books.8 But there was considerable interest in the expedition in Britain and Captains Sladen and Bowers received invitations to speak about their findings in both England and Scotland. Captain Bowers visited his Scottish home for the first time for many years; by now, West Bank, with its high-ceilinged rooms, fine plasterwork and stained glass, was home to his 70-year-old widowed mother, his sisters Mary and Jane, and the latter’s son Willie and second husband James Smith.9

During his visit home, the Captain addressed Glasgow’s Chamber of Commerce and the Greenock Philosophical Society. He was also elected, on 27 November 1871, as a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of the 50ft-long chart he had made of the 1,000-mile Irrawaddy.10 With his family continuing to expand ( Jane was pregnant again and Mary was now engaged to Henry Robertson, a produce broker from Dundee11), the 44-year-old Captain needed more work. Through his connections he obtained an appointment as a ship’s master with Patrick Henderson & Company (another Glasgow-based shareholder in the Irrawaddy Flotilla Company), which was expanding its cargo services between Glasgow and Burma. As part of his contract the Captain was required to invest in the British & Burmese Steam Navigation Company, a new company established by Henderson’s to finance the construction of his ship, the Ananda, an arrangement which kept the Captain’s financial interests aligned with those of his new employers.12

The Captain bade his family farewell and set sail for the East. Following early success with the Ananda’s new service, Henderson’s commissioned two more ships – the Shuay de Gon and the Peah Pekhat – which would be owned by another new company, the Burmah Steamship Co., in which the Captain was also required to purchase shares. The Captain’s three-vessel fleet offered modestly priced passenger, goods and mail services between Singapore and Penang, and to more remote areas including Perak, Penang’s southern neighbour which had recently been annexed by the Indian Office.13 Although much of his money was now tied up in the ships he commanded, the entrepreneurial Captain took the opportunity of buying some potentially lucrative timber rights in Perak.14

The rotund, jovial Captain, now entering his fifties, was prosperous, well-regarded within the local commercial community and had a wide social circle, including those with whom he worshipped at church on Sundays.15 He had never married, however, so his friends were pleased when he began spending time in the company of Miss Emily Webb, a teacher at an Anglican mission school, who had recently arrived in Penang from Sidmouth in Devon.

Emily Webb was born in early 1847 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire.16 Her father, Frederick Webb, had as a young man moved from Stroud, a centre of the Cotswolds wool industry, to Cheltenham where he worked initially as a journeyman tailor.17 At that time Cheltenham was a thriving, expanding town with health-giving springs (given the royal seal of approval by George III in 1788), a mild climate, a wide range of ‘entertainments’ and good transport links to London. These features combined to make it attractive to visitors and new residents, including growing numbers of civil servants and military personnel retiring from work in India and other parts of the British Empire.18

By 1851, 30-year-old Frederick Webb had his own tailor’s business at 3 St George’s Terrace, where he lived with his London-born wife Mary Ann, 3-year-old Emily, her younger sister (also Mary Ann) and two lodgers.19 The Webbs were regular church-goers and their minister was the Reverend Francis Close, a famously fiery preacher from the Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church and founder of several educational establishments in Cheltenham.20 Close had come to Cheltenham in 1824 at the behest of Charles Simeon, a leading Evangelical preacher, co-founder of the Church Missionary Society, advisor to the East India Company on recruitment of missionaries and founder of a trust which acquired church ‘livings’ (including Cheltenham) with a view to appointing Evangelical rather than ‘high church’ vicars.21 In his sermons Close railed against the evils of horse racing and other ‘entertainments’ and against the Church of Rome which, in his eyes, threatened the very existence of the Evangelical wing of the Anglican Church.22 When Close left Cheltenham in 1856 to become Dean of Carlisle, Frederick Webb joined hundreds of parishioners in signing a farewell scroll of thanks in recognition of all he had done for them and their town.23

Emily Webb attended Holy Trinity School for Girls, which lay a short walk from her home and adjacent to the eponymous church where Francis Close had begun his Cheltenham career.24 By 1861, the Webbs had moved to a new, larger terraced house in nearby St George’s Place, which had ample room for Frederick, Mary Ann, Emily and her two surviving younger siblings, Elizabeth and William (her sister Mary Ann had died young), a tailor’s apprentice and three lodgers, two of whom were seamstresses.25 While Emily’s father might have wanted her to work in his workshop, he allowed her to continue her education at Holy Trinity School where she rose to become a ‘pupil-teacher’.26 After a few years in that role she took a Queen’s scholarship examination and, with the aid of a first-class scholarship, enrolled as a student at Cheltenham’s pioneering teacher training college, founded some twenty years previously by Francis Close. There, she and other young women took classes in a separate building from their male counterparts and followed a syllabus which placed more emphasis on religious and scriptural education than on school management, mathematics and sciences that featured in the men’s syllabus.27

In December 1867, at the age of 20, Emily Webb received her diploma and accepted a post as a teacher in a church school in Sidmouth, a small seaside town in Devon. There, as in Cheltenham, she found fine Regency buildings, and a thriving Evangelical congregation based at All Saints’ church, of which the vicar, Heneage Gibbes, had Cheltenham connections.28 The progress report sent to Emily’s teacher training supervisors confirmed she was well qualified, controlled her classes well and had raised the standard of sewing lessons at the school.

Emily was taken under the wing of the Radfords, a leading Sidmouth family who were involved in the governance of her school. In 1871 she acquired a handsome leather-bound copy of The Universe, or the infinitely great and the infinitely little, which laid out before her ‘the whole panorama of nature’.29 Meanwhile, her family continued to live and work in St George’s Place, Cheltenham, where her siblings Elizabeth and William were now working in their father’s line of trade.30

By July 1874 Emily, at the age of 27, was head of Sidmouth’s parish school and ready for a new challenge. Her next move was to a mission school in the Malay States of ‘Further India’. She carried with her an inscribed gold watch acknowledging her services to children’s education in Sidmouth and the best wishes of the Radfords and other friends and colleagues.31

In her new home, over 6,000 miles from Cheltenham, Emily met Captain Alexander Bowers.

On 19 July 1877, in St Andrew’s Cathedral, Singapore, Alexander Bowers and Emily Webb became man and wife.32 Despite their age difference, the couple had much in common. They shared innate intelligence, a sense of independence and adventure, a deep faith, and a dislike of religious pomp and ritual. Following his marriage, Captain Bowers continued to operate his fleet of ships and keep a weather eye on his timber and other investments. Emily accompanied him on several of his longer voyages, including to Perak where, in October 1878, she became involved in a cause célèbre of the Malay Peninsula. Captain Lloyd, an Indian government official, was hacked to death by a local gang following a disagreement with his staff over wages and an unfortunate misunderstanding regarding local social customs.33 Mrs Lloyd was severely injured and, with the couple’s still-sleeping children, narrowly escaped being burned alive when the fleeing gang set fire to their house. Captain Bowers’ steamer, the Peah Pekhat, was summoned to assist; floor timbers from the Bowers’ Perak house were used to make a coffin for Captain Lloyd and, while the Captain ferried government officials and policemen from Penang to Perak, Emily helped look after the Lloyds’ frightened children.

In early 1879 Emily gave birth to a baby girl whom she and the Captain named Mary, after Emily’s mother and the Captain’s sister. By now the Captain’s shipping business was suffering from a decline in world trade, increased competition and depressed cargo rates. To make matters worse, the Ananda was involved in an accident, and although the Captain had not been at the wheel at the time, his seaman’s certificate was suspended for three months. Following an appeal the certificate was soon reinstated but with losses on the fleet mounting, the Captain’s business partners summoned him to Scotland for a face-to-face meeting.34

Soon after he returned from what proved to be a tempestuous meeting, Emily gave birth to the couple’s second daughter, Edith. When Emily wrote to her mother-in-law in Greenock – by now over 80 and in failing health – telling her about the baby, she hinted that the Captain’s business was experiencing difficulties. Margaret Bowers responded immediately with assurances that she would not breathe a word about the Captain’s problems and remained proud of her son’s achievements and grateful for his generosity to his extended family.35 The Captain’s business partners were less sympathetic, however, and ordered all his three ships to be returned to Scotland to be sold. The Captain protested that a forced sale outside the fleet’s sphere of operation would result in losses for them all, but his words fell on deaf ears. When he returned to Scotland, he took with him Emily and the two small daughters his family had not yet met.

By the time the Captain and his family reached Greenock, his 82-year-old mother had died.36 His ships were sold at a loss, virtually eliminating his capital at a time when he had a young family, his sister Jane – now widowed for a second time – and her two younger children to provide for. Despite his business setbacks, Alexander Bowers’ reputation remained high in Scotland and he received several offers of local employment, but his heart was in the East where he felt he had unfinished business. He entered into an agreement with his erstwhile employers BI, who agreed to build a new ship for him to operate on their behalf in the Mergui archipelago off the coast of lower Burma. The Captain had no capital to invest but BI obtained a government grant; the Mergui, of which the Captain would supervise the construction, would be BI’s smallest seagoing vessel, nimble enough for island-hopping but sufficiently large to carry cargo and about a hundred passengers. Emily and her girls soon settled in at West Bank where Emily quickly made a circle of friends, including her neighbour Bithiah Paul, a near-contemporary with small children whose husband was a Greenock sugar-refiner.37

On 29 July 1883 in West Bank, Emily gave birth to a baby boy. As Alexander, the traditional Bowers family name for boys, had already been given to Jane’s second son, the couple decided to name their baby in honour of his Aunt Mary’s husband, who had helped the family during recent difficult times. The Captain and Emily had their son baptised at nearby St John’s Episcopal Church, where he was christened Henry Robertson Bowers.38

Notes and Sources

1Abram Lyle (1820–91) was one of Greenock’s most prosperous sugar-refiners; in 1883, the year of HRB’s birth, one of Lyle’s refineries launched their Golden Syrup (which was later used on the Terra Nova expedition).

2The Geelong, owned by John Willes & Co., was a sister ship of the Cutty Sark.

3It is not known if Jane’s first husband died at sea or at home; William sometimes stayed with his grandparents (e.g. 1861 census day) when his mother travelled.

4TheStraits Times (27 October 1875).

5Burma (now Myanmar) was eventually completely annexed by Britain following a series of Anglo-Burmese wars; it and adjoining territories (including Malaya/Malaysia and Singapore) were collectively referred to as ‘Further India’. The Irrawaddy Flotilla Company (headquartered in Rangoon/Yangon and in which Todd, Finlay & Co. and other Scottish shipping companies were shareholders) had recently obtained a contract to transport British troops and government officials on the Irrawaddy.

6Information from Captain Bowers’ ‘Report on the Practicality of Re-opening the Trade Route between Burma and Western China’ (copy in National Library of Scotland), Irrawaddy Flotilla and material in the Royal Geographical Society and SPRI archives (including SPRI/MS1505/4).

7The Burma-China border area was controlled by Panthays, a Chinese-Muslim minority. Upper Burma was not yet part of the British Empire.

8From a list of goods destroyed in the fire of 6 March 1870 (SPRI/MS1505/4/3/5).

9Census of 2 April 1871 (when Captain Bowers was at home in Greenock).

10The Captain was nominated for a Fellowship by a fellow Scot, immediate past-president Sir Roderick Murchison (patron of missionary-explorer David Livingstone). Clements Markham, a veteran of the Royal Navy and the India Office, was then RGS secretary.

11Mary Bowers married Henry Robertson in Greenock on 14 November 1871.

12In a series of complex financial operations the new company raised funds from investors (including Henderson’s) with which it purchased Henderson’s Burmese fleet; Henderson’s was then appointed Managing Agents of the fleet.

13TheStraits Times (May 1876).

14Perak became part of ‘Further India’ following a civil war between its Malay and Chinese inhabitants; the annexation was never ratified by the British government, which refused to intervene when the British Resident, Mr Birch, was murdered while attempting to collect taxes from local residents.

15Penang Gazette (SPRI/MS1505/4/4/1), in which a friend describes the Captain as having been previously ‘fat and jovial’.

16George Seaver does not mention Emily Bowers’ Cheltenham upbringing in ‘Birdie’ Bowers of the Antarctic; given that HRB’s sisters knew he had already written books on Edward Wilson from Cheltenham, this suggests they knew little of Emily’s life in Cheltenham. When May filled in Emily’s death certificate in 1928, she did not fill in Emily’s father’s first name or profession. Information on Emily Webb’s family and early life is therefore from census, public or local archival sources.

17According to the 1841 census he first lived in Leckhampton (near Cheltenham) with his maternal grandmother Hannah Jelliman.

18Between 1800 and 1840 Cheltenham’s population grew from c. 3,000 to over 30,000; travelling times from London fell from several days to around ten hours (Cheltenham’s first railway station opened in 1840). Cheltenham’s arms (granted 1877) include books (learning), pigeons (identified mineral springs by pecking salts from the ground) and a tree (parks, tree-lined street); its motto is Salubritas et Eruditio – health and learning. For more on Cheltenham, see books by Steven Blake and Anthea Jones’ Cheltenham, a New History.

191851 census.

20The influence of Francis Close (born Bath, 1797) on religious thought in Cheltenham in the 1840s was such that Alfred Lord Tennyson (who regularly visited the town) described Close as ‘the Pope of Cheltenham’. See also Robert Trafford’s The Rev. Francis Close and the Foundation of the Training Institution at Cheltenham 1845–78 (Cheltenham: Park Published Papers).

21The Evangelical movement in Britain began in the 1730s. Evangelicals (who unlike Methodists or Baptists remained within the Anglican Church) became associated with the missionary movement and social reform; they emphasised the importance of personal conversion and Bible learning, and their services included more hymns than did ‘high’ Anglican services.

22Evangelical Anglicans felt threatened by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 and the subsequent establishment of the Oxford or Tractarian movement. One of the latter’s leaders, Rev. (later Cardinal) Francis Newman, suggested that the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches should reunite into an overall Catholic Church which, to Evangelicals such as Close, ignored the Reformation. Close preached famously anti-Catholic sermons, including on 5 November each year, the anniversary of the 1605 Gunpowder Plot against England’s new Protestant monarch.

23The scroll, dated 3 December 1856, is in Gloucestershire Archives, Gloucester.

24Information from Trinity School’s official log (Gloucestershire Archives); the 1851 census shows Emily, aged 3, as a ‘scholar’ suggesting she was receiving lessons at the nearby infants’ school (founded by Close) or at home from Ann Bushell, a teacher lodging with the Webbs.

25Per the 1861 census, the Webbs lived at 29 St George’s Place (now part of Jenner Walk).

26Under the pupil-teacher system, established some twenty years previously, outstanding pupils in senior classes helped to instruct younger pupils, maintain classroom discipline and act as escort on ‘outings’ (which in Emily’s case included viewing a ‘Panorama’ in Pittville Pump Room and attending the ‘lying in state’ of a recently deceased associate of the school). School and pupil-teacher were both remunerated and pupil-teachers were encouraged to continue to teacher training college.

27Information from Charles More’s Training of teachers, 1847–1947 (Gloucestershire Archives) and from Emily Webb’s college attendance records (University of Gloucestershire Archives).

28Sidmouth was popular with summer visitors, particularly following the cessation of the ‘Grand Tour’ due to wars with France. In 1852 printmaker George Rowe (1796–1864) moved from Devon to Cheltenham, where he continued to sell prints of his Forty-eight views of cottages and scenery at Sidmouth, Devon. Heneage Gibbes’ father was Sir George Smith-Gibbes, an Evangelical preacher and one-time Cheltenham resident.

29Pouchet, the author, was a French natural historian who believed in ‘spontaneous creation’ rather than evolution; his comprehensive and lavishly illustrated book (which predated Darwin’s Origin of the Species) had been translated into English.

30Per 1871 and 1881 census information, Emily’s brother William became a tailor and her sister Elizabeth a milliner; no references to correspondence with or visits to or from the Webbs have been found in Emily’s letters.

31Sidmouth Herald (29 September 1934), Sidmouth Museum.

32Extract of marriage register (SPRI/MS1505/4/3/6).

33The murder is mentioned in The Straits Times (7 November 1878), The Chersonese with the gilding off by Emily Innes (an eyewitness, pub. 1885) and in Isabella Bird’s The Golden Chersonese and the way thither (pub. 1883). ‘Chersonese’ means peninsula.

34Penang Gazette (11 June 1879) and TheStraits Times (19 June 1879).

35Letters from Margaret Bowers, 10 and 11 August 1880 (SPRI/MS1505/8/1 and /2).

36According to her death certificate, Margaret Bowers died from ‘ill health and natural decay’.

37Information on Bithiah Paul and William Boag Paul is from census/public information and George Seaver, ‘Birdie’ Bowers of the Antarctic, London: John Murray, 1938 (hereafter Seaver).

38Greenock Telegraph and Clyde Shipping Gazette (22 February 1913); the church had long-standing connections with the East India Company (two ministers became EIC padres).

2

LEARNINGTHEROPES

An early studio photograph of Henry Bowers shows a sturdy toddler clad in elaborate Victorian childhood finery.

During his first two winters in Greenock, when snowdrifts blanketed the West Bank garden, Henry enjoyed romping and rolling with his father, who would regularly return from early morning walks armed with snowballs with which to pelt any members of his family who still lingered in bed.1 Before Henry was 2 years old, the Captain returned to the East with his new ship. Under his contract with BI, the Captain received 20 per cent of the Mergui’s net earnings, from which he could draw 250 rupees a month, half of which was paid directly to Emily in Scotland. While this represented something of a reduction from his previous remuneration, the Captain was sure his new services would prosper and that Mergui, with its bountiful natural resources, would soon attract new settlers – and potential customers. The first leg of the Mergui’s maiden voyage passed without incident, but when she left the shelter of the Horn of Africa she hit one of the worst cyclones the Captain had ever experienced. As hurricane-force gusts and huge waves battered his ship, his crew lashed him to the wheel, from where he fought to save his ship, the lives of those aboard, his cargo and his livelihood. The Mergui eventually arrived safely at her destination, but repair work delayed the launch of the new services; when they did start, the Captain found his competitors prepared to harry his ship and block her passage in and out of harbours and between islands.

The Captain’s heart, already weakened from years of hard work, began to fail.2 In February 1887 he cabled Emily in Greenock asking her to come to Mergui. By March he was so ill that he was taken to hospital in Penang; he returned to Mergui but, according to an old friend, the once-stout Captain was now ‘a small man’. By this time Emily had left Mary and Edith (now known as May and Edie) in Greenock and, with Henry in tow, was on a ship heading eastwards. Henry, a chatty toddler, soon became the ship’s general mascot and firm friends with a tall Anglican bishop, with whom he would promenade around the deck. Henry also enjoyed spotting different types of seabirds but was petrified by the huge, hairy spiders which scuttled out from cabin corners in an unpredictable and, to his eyes, extremely threatening manner.

When the ship docked in Calcutta Emily received the news that her husband had died on 12 April 1887. When she arrived in Burma, she received a warm welcome and much sympathy. She heard that her husband had died peacefully at home after prayers had been said for him, and that many friends and colleagues had come to pay their last respects. Members of the Captain’s close circle, in particular the Aldridges and the Foucars (who had children of an age with Emily’s own), were anxious to do everything possible for Emily and her three children.3 Emily, having already seen how tropical sunshine, mosquito bites and spiders affected Henry, declined invitations to set up home in Burma; she knew, however, that the bulk of the Captain’s capital had been wiped out by his recent business ventures and that her alternatives were limited. It was the Foucars, wealthy friends with Burmese and London timber interests, who came up with a solution: they would pay the rental for a house in London where Emily could live with her three children and look after those of the Foucar children who were of an age to benefit from an English education.

On the long voyage back to Britain, Emily read obituaries and letters of sympathy praising the Captain’s intrepid spirit, his vision for Mergui and Burma, his generosity and his good humour. In Greenock she mourned with her husband’s family and read tributes to an esteemed, albeit often-absent, member of the town’s shipping and trading community.

After a short stay at West Bank, Emily, May, Edie and Henry travelled to London, where they initially stayed in Brockley with Ferdinand Foucar’s brother Alexander.4 While there, Emily learned that her husband had left her £408 11s 2d in his will; she was not penniless, but it was only her arrangement with the Foucars that enabled her and her family to move into a sizeable house in Sidcup, along with the young Foucars. Henry, two years younger than Louis, the youngest Foucar, was very much the family ‘pet’, but Emily (despite being devoted to her only son) refused to spoil him and made him carry the family purse on shopping expeditions so he could learn the value of money.5 Emily ran a Christian household: everyone sang Moody and Sankey6 hymns round the breakfast table and the children all learned to read their Bibles, say their prayers, and be wary of ‘high’ Anglicans or Roman Catholics whose views differed from those of the Evangelical Anglican Bowers or the Huguenot Protestant Foucars.

Henry spent his childhood in London and the surrounding area. West Bank in Greenock had been sold and his Aunts Mary and Jane (and Jane’s children) now lived in Fife at the home of Henry Robertson. Emily’s elderly parents lived 100 miles away in Cheltenham.7 But Henry’s horizons soon expanded when, at a geography lesson at his first school – Miss Lonsdale’s Seminary8 – he learned about Wilkes Land in Antarctica and wrote his succinct but purposeful letter expressing a wish to visit there sometime in the future. Henry’s schooling continued at Sidcup College. He was small for his age and, thanks to his now prominent nose, was soon nicknamed Polly (the parrot).9 He preferred butterfly-collecting to classroom work or sports and spent hours roaming around fields with a friend, armed with the paraphernalia of the serious collector. In an effort to convert others to his hobby he organised a ‘society’ with a self-penned magazine which was transcribed by his long-suffering sisters. He persevered with his schoolwork, however, and won a form prize, and his headmaster commented on his report that whatever Henry decided to do he would do well. Before leaving Sidcup Henry confided to a friend (but not to Emily) that he wanted to become a mariner like his father.

After Emily, her children and charges moved to Streatham, Henry attended Streatham High School for Boys where, according to his reports, he was a conscientious scholar with a genuine interest in learning. He learned shorthand, received a prize for Euclid and, despite his short legs, won a quarter-mile race and a coveted place in the school’s cricket eleven.10 Now known as Beakie, he learned to be teased and to tease others, including his sister May (now a trainee teacher); he wrote her a letter addressed to ‘My dearest Duchy Darling Cherub May’, which was liberally scattered with deliberate spelling mistakes, crossings out and slang references to an intra-family loan of ‘10 bob’, which he warned her not to lend to ‘every young calf who is wanting chink’.11 Although Henry was doing well at school, when Emily found a picture of a sailing ship pinned to his bedroom wall she bowed to the inevitable, presented him with her precious copy of The Universe and submitted an application for him to join the Thames Nautical Training College.12

On 16 September 1897, 14-year-old Henry Bowers boarded the training ship HMS Worcester, a retired battleship moored at Greenhithe on the Thames.13 After a brief period as Gilly-loo-lah Bird, he became known as Kinky-boke, a slang reference to his ‘bent nose’. In the classroom he filled exercise books with copious notes on navigational theory and nautical astronomy, and on general subjects such as grammar, French, religion and geography.14 The latter subject included lessons on ‘Peoples of the world’, during which he copied down notes on his own race:

Aryans or Indo-European people (c.650 million of the world’s estimated population of 1,500 million): Increasing ever in civilization, in intilectual [sic] power from age to age this race has become the dominant one in the world … supplanting many inferior races and re-peopling wide areas like America and Australia. The chief characteristics of this family are – white skin, oval face, arched nose, high forhead [sic] and the teeth in the upper jaw perpendicular to those in the lower jaw.

He also learned that Christianity, ‘the religion of Jesus Christ’, was practised by ‘almost all the Aryan races’ and had 450 million adherents (including ‘converts’) who outnumbered Buddhists, Hindus, Mohammedans and ‘Heathens, etc.’ He learned that an empire was ‘a collection of states … all subject of one sovereign who is called an Emperor’ and that colonies were ‘territories in foreign lands, either directly dependent or subordinate to a parent state’. The pages of his atlas showed him that Britain’s Empire, coloured pink for easy identification, included Canada, India, Further India, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and numerous smaller outposts.

In order to remember everything he wanted to tell his mother and sisters about, Henry began keeping his first journal:

Sang ‘Hearts of Oak’ at new cadets’ singing … Took the Theory Prize – Story of our Planet – and Scripture Prize – Life of John Davis.15 … Pillow-fight – splendid fun – got one or two nasty ones. … Carruthers and I explored the Fore Peak, also the Tank-room. Climbed through a small hole in the bulk-head: got right aft under Mr. Golding’s store-room. Hid a candle and matches down there, went often. Tried to enter Magazine – could not. Found two 28 lb shot, brought them out at the end of term and put them in our chests. Made up our minds if possible to break into Magazine next term. I bring lantern, Carruthers brings tools.

In the event, the planned break-in was thwarted, but sporting activities kept him busy: ‘Went in for Paper-chases – grand sport. Ran with Carruthers – couldn’t keep up with him after a bit – kept running and got into an awful state … Thought I should have dropped several times – was almost too giddy to stand when I stopped.’