Big Game Hunter and Friend of the "taxidermy" Ward Family
Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-1893), traveller and sportsman, was born on 8 June 1921 in London. He was educated at a private school at Rottingdean, at the College School, Gloucester, and privately at Tottenham, before completing his studies at Frankfurt in 1841. Baker visited Ceylon in 1846 and 1848, and established an English colony at Newera Eliya. He superintended the building of a railway connecting the Danube with the Black Sea in 1859, and travelled in Asia Minor, 1860-1861. In December 1862 Baker embarked on a journey up the Nile. He reached Mbakovia in March 1864, and named the lake there Albert Nyanza. He was knighted in 1866, and that year published an account of his African expedition. He travelled with the Prince of Wales to Egypt and the Nile in 1869, and was appointed Governor-General of the Equatorial Nile basin for four years. Sir Samuel White Baker (1821-93) wrote a number of popular travel and geographical works. His father was a successful West Indies merchant and his brothers were in their own right also successful men.
In 1843 he married Henrietta Martin. In 1846, as quite a young man he founded an agricultural settlement in Ceylon. He introduced English migrants and imported prize breeds of cattle to the island. It appears that his younger brother Valentine (Pasha) accompanied him and studied in ceylon. He wrote and published two notable books during this period, The rifle and the hound in Ceylon 1853 and Eight years wandering in Ceylon 1855. This is also the year that Henrietta died.
After a journey to Constantinople and the Crimea in 1856, he supervised the construction of a railway connecting the Danube with the Black Sea. In 1861 he married his second wife, Florence von Sass, from Hungary. In 1861 he began a tour of Africa, like others of the time, keen to find the source of the Nile. In the first two years of this journey he taught himself Arabic. He met with the explorers Speke and Grant, and with their advice and assistance, went on to be the first man to see and name Lake Albert . This bought him great fame and honour. In 1866 he was knighted. At this time he published a number of books on his travels, the Nile and Lake Albert.
In 1869 on behalf of the Khedive Ismail of Egypt, he commanded an expedition to the equatorial regions of the Nile, aimed at supppressing the slave trade there and to open the way for commerce and agriculture. The story of this expedition is recorded in his work Ismailia (1874). He remained Governor General of this territory ( Equatoria)for four years. On all his African expeditions and explorations, he was accompanied by his second wife. He also chased big game and published Wild Beasts and their ways 1890. He died on 30 December 1893 at Sandford Orleigh, near Newton Abbot.
For more information then please visit.www.HISTORICAL-TAXIDERMY.CO.UK
