Ernest Borough Johnson, 1866-1939 Portrait of Sir Henry Alexander Wickham 1846 – 1928, Explorer and Bio-pirate

Ernest Borough Johnson, 1866-1939

Portrait of Sir Henry Alexander Wickham 1846 – 1928, Explorer and Bio-Pirate

Signed/Inscribed:

"Borough Johnson/Drawn from life/Sir Henry Wickham. Explorer and founder / of the Tea Plantations Malaya " " Lead Pencil BB"

black chalk

17 x 15 cm. (7 x 6 .in)

Sir Henry Alexander Wickham, (1846–1928), plant collector and planter, was born on 29 May 1846, the son of Henry Wickham, solicitor. His father died when he was four, and he was raised by his mother. He was talented at drawing and undertook some training as an artist.

At twenty Wickham went to Central America, where for three years he engaged in the trade in bird plumage. He returned to England, but a year later was in Colombia and Venezuela dealing in rubber. He made a journey up the Orinoco and down the Rio Negro and Amazon that ended at Santarém in Pará, where he was befriended by some English residents and American Confederate exiles. After returning to England again in 1871, on 29 May he married Violet Cave Carter, daughter of W. H. J. Carter, a Regent Street bookseller who published Wickham's account of his journey. With his wife, his mother, brother, sister, and brother-in-law he sailed out to Santarém to commence life as a sugar and tobacco planter, perhaps financed by his father-in-law.

In 1872 Wickham wrote offering his services as a collector to Sir Joseph Hooker at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. In May 1873 Hooker was approached by Clements Markham of the India Office for assistance in introducing the Pará rubber tree Hevea Brasiliensis into India, and thought of Wickham. Encouraged to obtain as many seeds as possible at £10 per 1000, Wickham seized the opportunity not only to gather but to accompany the seeds to England and escape a life that had become unsustainable. His mother and sister had died at Santarém; his plantation was a failure. In desperate straits it is likely that his and his wife's passages aboard the Amazonas were obtained on a promissory note. The seeds had been collected probably in great haste from stands near Boim on the Rio Tapajós, not far from Santarém, in April and May 1876.

To the Brazilian customs Wickham declared his baskets to contain 'exceedingly delicate botanical specimens specially designated for delivery to Her Britannic Majesty's own Royal Gardens'. Though the very size of the shipment might have caused the local Brazilian officials to pause or seek authorization, the deception was more of a precaution. No one on the Amazon at the time could have foreseen that the massive industry about them might one day be eclipsed, or that Hevea could be successfully cultivated elsewhere. There was no Brazilian regulation to prevent the export of seed. Wickham later dramatized the deed as a tale of successful smuggling, making the arrival of the Amazonas providential—it was actually on a scheduled voyage to Liverpool—and adding a threatening Brazilian gunboat. One thing is certain—that speed had been essential to success, as the oily rubber seeds have brief viability.

Wickham arrived in England with the cargo of 70,000 seeds on 14 June 1876. These were planted in specially prepared beds at Kew, and by August fewer than 4000 had germinated. He received £743 from the India Office and sought a further commission to take the plants to Ceylon. When a response was delayed he decided to take his fee and a quantity of coffee seedlings obtained at Kew and emigrate to Queensland. Acquiring land on the Herbert River north of Townsville he decided on tobacco cultivation. Dogged yet again by misfortune as well as mismanagement he was forced to abandon this venture with little more than the fare home remaining.

In 1886 Wickham returned to Central America. In British Honduras he obtained work initially as an inspector of forests before proceeding to establish a plantation on the Temash Ri