The world's my oyster

On the 150th anniversary of the death of British explorer David Livingstone, Ben Lerwill asks why intrepid British men and women have long been–and still are–fond of venturing to the farthest corners of the globe

- Ben Lerwill

IN the early 1820s, a 10-year-old boy was put to work in a cotton mill on the banks of the River Clyde. He was tasked with tying together threads of broken yarn on a factory floor that thundered with the din of spinning machines. It was the sort of tough, monotonous environment that gets young minds dreaming of escape, which might help to explain why the boy would go on to become one of Britain’s best-known overseas explorers.

It’s now 150 years since David Livingstone died—on May 1, 1873—near the headwaters of the Congo. His earlier disappearance and his meeting with reporter Henry Morton Stanley (‘Dr Livingstone, I presume?’) have been documented untold times. He is remembered these days as a single-minded missionary, but equally as someone with the gumption to journey into far-flung territory simply because it was there. He became the first European to make an authenticated crossing of the African continent. Bet that surprised them back at the mill.