Birdie Bowers: Captain Scott's Marvel

by Anne Strathie

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780752478715
Publisher:	The History Press
Publication date:	11/30/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	160
File size:	6 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Anne Strathie is an acclaimed polar historian and biographer. She has written three biographies of members of Captain Scott's 'Terra Nova' Antarctic expedition, all published by The History Press.

Read an Excerpt

Birdie Bowers

Captain Scott's Marvel

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By Anne Strathie

The History Press

Copyright © 2012 Anne Strathie
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7524-7871-5

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CHAPTER 1

Family Roots

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, 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 Geelong 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. 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. 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).

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. 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. 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. 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.

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. With his family continuing to expand (Jane was pregnant again and Mary was now engaged to Henry Robertson, a produce broker from Dundee), 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

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Emily Webb was born in early 1847 in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

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. 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'. 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.

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. 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'. 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.

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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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. 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.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Birdie Bowers by Anne Strathie. Copyright © 2012 Anne Strathie. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

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,

Editorial Reviews

"If you like tales of adventure and exploration, Birdie Bowers is the book for you." —The Historical Novels Review

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