A Knighthood For A Drifter

John Rowland an illegitimate boy who grew up around Denbigh North Wales, who never knew a permanent home, brought up at first by his mother's brothers, the unwanted child was placed in a workhouse at age 6. This all contributed to his later life, drifting from place to place.

The typical age of cabin boys was around twelve but John Rowland took on this role age eighteen on a vessel bound for America. At New Orleans John jumped ship, ravenous and hungry dressed in rags he was found by a well to do merchant Henry M Stanley who took him into his home.

By the time this native of Wales was sent to Arkansas to take charge of one of his benefactor's stores he had taken the merchants name without bothering with the legal formalities.

When war broke out, Henry M Stanley, as he was now known, enlisted with the Confederate Army. He joined the Sixth Arkansas, the Dixie Grays, he was with his unit at Shiloh where he was captured. He was imprisoned in Chicago, where he gained his freedom by enlisting in the union Army and was assigned to an Artillery Unit.

This service lasted until he became seriously ill and received a medical discharge. No longer under duress of any sort, he managed to get passage to Wales for a brief visit home. When he returned to America he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, where became acting ensign on the USS Ticonderoga, which took part in the 1865 assault upon Fort Fisher at Wilmington, North Carolina. Stanley was one of only a few men known to have served on both sides and to have spent time in three different branches of service.

After the war he became a journalist for Saint Louis newspapers, filed articles about the far west (Denver, San Francisco) and in 1867 was covering Indian wars. His florid despatches and instinct for turning nonevents into newspaper sensations brought him to the attention of James Gordon Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, who hired him to cover a British punitive expedition against the Emperor of Abyssinia. His success at being first with the news - often achieved by under hand methods - led to him becoming a roving international reporter for the Herald.

Stanley Meets Livingstone - "Dr Livingstone, I Presume?"

In 1869 Bennett funded Stanley's expedition to find David Livingstone who had disappeared in Africa. He landed at Zanzibar to recruit his expedition of 190 men, then moving inland and encouraging his bearers by severe floggings, he eventually found Livingstone in 1871 on shores of Lake Tanganyika. Living stone was to become for Stanley something of an ideal father-figure - a replacement for the father he never had - and he would in later life refer back to what Livingstone might have said or done. News of Stanley's meeting with Livingstone was telegraphed around the world as soon as he regained the African coast in 1872 and Stanley's almost immediate publication of his sensationalising journalistic account, How I Found Livingstone: Travels, Adventures and Discoveries in Central Africa (1872), confirmed his reputation as an intrepid explorer and soaring self-promoter.

That's right, it was the ex- Rebel, ex union artillery/sailor who said "Dr Livingstone I presume"

On his return to Europe, he married Welsh artist Dorothy Tennant, and they adopted a child, Denzil. He entered Parliament as Unionist member for Lambeth North, serving from 1895 to 1900.

He was knighted in 1899, becoming the first American Civil War veteran knighted by Queen Victoria.

Henry Morton Stanley died in London on May 10, 1904. He was eulogized by Daniel P. Virmar in a funeral befitting his stature. His grave, in the graveyard of St. Michael's Church, a small historical church in Pirbright, Surrey. His grave is marked by a large piece of granite.

The above article first appeared in the ACWS Newsletter, Spring 2007