The Thief at the End of the World

by Joe Jackson

The next morning the ship lifted anchor and headed upriver for Manaus, scheduled to load a hold full of rubber for transport back to Liverpool. “I then thought no more about the episode in rumination on any conceivable means of effecting my purpose with regard to getting out a stock of the Pará rubber tree,” Henry continued. It was an “unlooked-for” and pleasant diversion, nothing more.

  But then, he said, “occurred one of those chances, such as a man has to take at top-tide or lose for ever”:The startling news came down the river, that our fine ship, the “Amazonas,” had been abandoned, and left on the captain’s hands, after having been stripped by the two gentlemen supercargoes (our late hospitable entertainers!), and that without so much as a stick of cargo for return voyage to Liverpool. I determined to plunge for it. It seemed to present an occasion either “to make my spoon or to spoil the horn.” It was true that I had no cash on hand out there, and to realize on an incipient plantation, in such a place and situation, quite out of question. The seed was even then beginning to ripen on the trees in the Monte alto—the high forest. I knew that Captain Murray must be in a fix, so I wrote to him, boldly chartering the ship on behalf of the Government of India; and I appointed to meet him at the junction of the Tapajos and Amazon rivers by a certain date.

  Henry redoubled his efforts, again crossing the Tapajós, climbing the path behind Boim into the high forest, trudging the seeds back down. “There was no time to lose,” he repeated like a mantra. He must have been a pain to live with, though Violet keeps mum.

  Captain Murray was also a pain, or as Henry said, “crabbed.” In Manaus, his supercargoes had stripped the vessel, absconding with the incoming cargo. Instead of selling the cargo to buy a full hold of fresh-season rubber, they sold it off and vanished, and Murray waited on the Rio Negro until he finally grasped what had happened. He sent his ship’s officers into Manaus to search for the men, but they’d disappeared into the jungle. As he lifted anchor, he realized how completely he’d been duped; the Inman Lines might fire him for the debacle.

  According to environmental historian Warren Dean, it was unnecessary for Henry to wait for an infrequent steamer like the Amazonas, since by the mid-1870s Santarém was visited every ten days by steamers from an English company and almost daily by steamboats owned by importers and local shippers. There was also a steam launch in Santarém owned by a Swiss resident who hired it out for the Pará run. But this is based on a misreading of Wickham’s motives and fears. If Henry was so worried about word of the seeds leaking out, Santarém—with its state officials and businessmen—would be the last place from which to ship them. Oceangoing ships already anchored in the mouth-bay of the Tapajós to trade at Boim. Henry, though vague in his account of the details, planned to meet the Amazonas within sight of the two rivers, not in sight of so public a place as Santarém.

  There may have been real reason for such subterfuge, other than Henry’s paranoia and love of intrigue. Two articles written by International Society of Planters’ associate W. A. Wilken in 1940 and 1967 claimed that Wickham had been warned by Brazilian officials in Santarém not to export rubber seeds. Wilken met Henry in 1925, three years before he died. Henry related that in early 1876, when he’d started collecting the seeds, he’d been given permission by Brazilian authorities to collect and export hevea. But then, when the consignment was packed and ready for shipment—or at least nearing that state—the Brazilians reneged, telling him now that he “would not” or “might not” be allowed to ship them after all. “This suggests that the rapid charter [of the Amazonas] was to beat a possible change of mind among Brazilian officials,” Wilken posited.

  It is easy enough to see what went through their minds. Santarém was a small place, and the Brazilian officials would have learned of Henry’s plans despite his best efforts at secrecy. At first, they probably thought nothing about the hapless Wickham sending a few seeds to London, but as they heard tales of his persistence, of his plans to start a nursery, or his requests for portable greenhouses, they no doubt remembered the cinchona fiasco in Peru. It was then they began to renege. Loading the seeds on the Tapajós, out of sight of Santarém and its resident officials, was the only chance he had to ship the seeds undetected.

  Not only is there no record of the Amazonas stopping in Santarém, there is no mention of rubber seeds in the cargo manifest, a point discovered by historian John Loadman. In fact, the bill of entry signed at the Liverpool Customs Office on June 12, 1876, has intriguing details. The Amazonas was not, in fact, empty when she got back home. She’d picked up a load of timber, “nuts,” “capini,” a resin used in varnish and perfume, and 171 cases of India rubber while still in port at Manaus. Either the tale of the supercargoes was false, or the Amazonas picked up the cargo on credit based on the strength of the Inman name. This was not unknown in the Amazon. Most of the rubber trade was handled on credit, and this would be the underlying cause of economic collapse in 1913. On the return trip at Obidos, she picked up “819 bags of Pará nuts”—Brazil nuts. Perhaps the line entry was convenient camouflage by Captain Murray once he understood what he was getting into; perhaps it was thought wiser not to mention the seeds at all.

  Running counter to these doubts are two new sources: the village lore of Boim, and a casual line in Violet’s newly uncovered diary. According to Boim historian Elisio Cohen, the Amazonas anchored within sight of Boim and Wickham paddled out to meet her. This is not inconceivable: a trading vessel like the Amazonas would have been very aware of Boim’s trading houses, and Murray would have known how far up the mouth-bay he could safely steam at this time of year. Such an arrangement had the added advantage of secrecy—there was no possibility that the Amazonas could be seen in that location from Santarém.

  Violet also addresses the mystery in a most casual way: “When [Henry] had collected and packed about 70,000 [seeds], we started for England on board the first steamer here.” No mystery at all to her: It was simply a matter of seizing the first opportunity. Henry himself in his March 6 letter to Hooker said, “I hope to leave with a large supply for England,” which suggests steamers stopped frequently below Boim. In any case, Henry, Violet, the adopted boy, and the seeds met the Amazonas at a given place and time, and they did so precipitately. They appeared as a speck on the water and Henry convinced a stranger to trust him in a desperate adventure, as he had done so many other times. “What seems most likely,” speculated Warren Dean, “is that Wickham managed to persuade the captain to accept himself, his wife, and their baggage on credit and that he later reimbursed the line with money the Indian Office paid for his seeds.”

  What’s more shocking than Captain Murray’s decision to participate in Wickham’s risky scheme was the sudden manner in which Henry left behind his remaining family. Only Violet would have known what was up, and perhaps even she was not fully informed until the last minute that they were accompanying the seeds to London. She would have been overjoyed: She was finally leaving this hellish place and returning to her family. For the past five years, they’d gambled everything on a new life, and it had nearly killed them. Now they gambled again, betting everything on the seeds.

  One can only imagine the shock to Henry’s surviving family when word drifted back that he and Violet had abandoned them. Henry, who’d led them into this tropical deathtrap, apparently did not offer them the chance to go home. The rift was complete, and the once close and hopeful family completely disintegrated, never to meet again. John Joseph Wickham, his wife Christine, and son Harry left the Amazon two years later. In 1878, he settled in Texas and became a cattle rancher. By 1881, Frank Pilditch, widower of Henry’s sister Harriette Jane, had settled with his parents in London, where he practiced again as a solicitor. In 1882, he married Alice Molson Symon, a woman about twenty years his junior, by whom he had at least five children. All that remains of the graves of the others are faded images in Henry’s sketch of the cemetery. The date is 1876. He was engaged in his desperate adventure when he made this last stop. The sketch was his only
way to ask forgiveness and say good-bye.

  Yet Henry’s problems did not end when he and the seeds boarded the Amazonas. The seeds were “slung up fore and aft in their crates in the roomy, empty forehold,” but Henry had little time to feel relieved. Captain Murray was “crabbed and sore from the experiences with his two rascally supercargoes,” but as Pará drew near, “I became more and more exercised and concerned with a new anxiety, so as not much to heed Murray’s grumpiness.” They were obligated to call at Pará to obtain official clearance before the Amazonas could lawfully put to sea. “It was perfectly certain in my mind that if the authorities guessed the purpose of what I had on board we should be detained under plea for instructions from the Central Government at Rio, if not interdicted altogether.” Any delay could increase the odds of his seeds beginning to germinate or decomposing to a rancid cyanide mush; once either process started, he was ruined. Good intentions were not enough in this venture: as he said himself, his understanding with Kew and the India Office was “a straight offer to do it; pay to follow result.”

  As the Amazonas neared Pará, he shut and secured the hatches. Once in port, the ship showed no sign of loading any cargo. According to one historian, she was known to be without cargo; although the bill of entry shows otherwise, “a number of Brazilians had been much amused by the discomfiture afforded the Inman Line,” which suggests that something happened in Manaus, even if the details are still unclear. Papers were cleared; no inspection was required.

  It was in Pará that the most fanciful accretions to Wickham’s tale occurred. Part of this can be laid on the imperial enthusiasms of later storytellers, but in a large measure Henry, his flawed memory, and his habit of bombast must take the blame. Although Pará was “an obstacle of appalling magnitude,” as one commentator described it, Henry did have “a friend in court”—Consul Thomas Shipton Green. The Honorary Consul had worked against Henry’s interests when setting up the failed shipment of seeds from the Bolivian patrão Ricardo Chávez and was probably involved in the disappointing attempt of Charles Farris to smuggle seeds in his crocodiles. But he’d also handled the correspondence between Wickham and London, and his ultimate duty lay not in his personal feelings but in advancing the interests of Great Britain. Nothing within Green’s sphere of influence was more important than obtaining a separate source of rubber for the empire, and he jumped at the chance when Wickham magically appeared. Green “quite [entered] into the spirit of the thing,” wrote Henry:[He] went himself with me on a special call on the Barão do S_, chief of the “Alfandiga,” and backed me up as I represented “to his Excellency my difficulty and anxiety, being in charge of, and having on board a ship anchored out in the stream, exceedingly delicate botanical specimens specially designated for delivery to Her Brittanic Majesty’s own Royal Gardens of Kew.” Even while doing myself the honour of thus calling on his Excellency, I had given orders to the captain of the ship to keep up steam, having ventured to trust that his Excellency would see his way to furnish me with immediate dispatch.

  In other words, Wickham and Green bluffed their way through, not exactly lying about the ship’s cargo, but not exactly telling the whole truth, either. To add weight to the request, they appealed in the name of Her Brittanic Majesty, as if the plants were to be set right before the throne. Queen Victoria’s name had clout in a country where Britain was the leading foreign investor.

  There seems little question that the meeting with Pará’s officials took place, though again the details are misty. The only baron with the initial “S” who made his home at the time on the Amazon was the Baron of Santarém, a venerable old gentleman who’d been one of Henry’s neighbors and who, aware of recent history, would have been suspicious of the ruse. It was known, after all, that Wickham had wanted to be a rubber planter. Pará’s port director was a commoner named Ulrich. Green would have been there, since ships, customs, and ports were well within his scope of duties, and he soon would help Robert Cross in his own quest for seeds.

  In the early 1900s, a story had credence that Henry also called on the governor while in Pará. Before leaving, he allegedly told Murray to raise anchor and move slowly downstream. It was a quiet social evening in the governor’s palace. Other guests were present, and Henry was well received. He was a known Amazon “character,” so he would have had entertainment value at such an affair. There was interest in town about the Amazonas’s closed hatches, and again Henry was said to have repeated his concern about the “delicate botanical specimens” destined for Her Majesty’s personal garden at Kew. If there was one thing to which Henry was always attuned, it was his audience and his effect upon them. He was a showman, and this touch of panache no doubt delighted the small group of Brazilian and Portuguese nobility. The evening was pleasant and cordial, and Henry took his leave in a spirit of goodwill. He boarded a cutter, made all speed to the Amazonas, joined her downriver, and put out to sea. “I could breathe easy,” he said. The seeds, and the Wickhams, were free.

  The scene at the Customs House raises the question of whether or not Henry broke the law. His request was very specific: He was shipping “delicate botanical specimens” to Kew, an appeal based on Article 643 of the Brazilian Customs Regulations, which stated:Products destined for Cabinets of Natural History, collected and arranged in the Empire by professors for this purpose expressly commissioned by foreign Governments or Academies, or duly accredited by the respective Diplomatic or Consular Agents, national or foreign, will be dispatched without opening the volumes in which they are encased, a sworn statement by the naturalist sufficing, and duties will be charged according to the value which he gives them, in accordance with a list in duplicate which he must present.

  This is an extremely liberal regulation, one based on scientific trust, a quality that has disappeared amid current fears of biopiracy. The most generous interpretation that can be given is that, at best, Wickham and Green bent the law. True, the seeds were destined for Kew, but merely as a waypoint. And these seeds weren’t for study but were destined for Britain’s plantations in India and the Far East for purely commercial purposes. Their delivery to Kew and other Royal Gardens around the world was to sow the seeds and raise them to maturity, thus producing stock to sell to planters and commercial nurseries.

  With Wickham a new idea was added: biopiracy. Minerals and metals can be guarded and sold by the countries in which they are mined, but crops can be grown elsewhere. Even if a plant’s original habitat occurs completely within a nation’s boundaries, it can still be sown in more favorable conditions. Markham’s cinchona coup was a prime example, but there have been hundreds of others. Pineapples, found in South America, did well in Hawaii. The failure in the 1840s of potatoes from Peru spelled disaster for Ireland in the Great Famine. The early Virginia colony, Zimbabwe, and scores of other countries would all depend upon tobacco revenue. Brazil itself has been both victim and victimizer. In 1747, the Brazilian adventurer Francisco de Melo Palheta charmed from the wife of a French governor in Arabia a sample of coveted coffee seeds, which remains today one of the nation’s most profitable exports. Although it was not expressly written that “whatever Victoria wants, Victoria gets,” the essence of colonialism for every Great Power was assured markets and expanded riches and resources. Henry knew he could be stopped by Brazil, since such tactical moves were part of the Great Game. But it never entered his mind that he might be doing anything wrong. When it came to plants, the whole world was open ground.

  In fact, it’s doubtful that Henry would have backed off from his plan for any reason. He was not particularly ruthless, but neither did he overly concern himself with ethical issues. As he later said, he was a practical man. He was trying to survive the jungle, and this was his last way out of what had become a damnable place. His ethical guide, like his empire’s, was the Protestant ethic: “God helps those who help themselves.”

  Henry’s theft was no different than that by scores of others before him—and yet, in a fundamental way, it was. He did not s
teal one seed, or even a hundred; he stole seventy thousand. Like the anaconda, the sheer size of the subject made one pay attention. Thirty-four years after Henry’s theft, the British rubber grown in the Far East from Henry’s seeds would flood the world market, collapsing the Amazon economy in a single year and placing in the hands of a single power a major world resource. In 1884, the state of Amazonas levied a heavy export tax on rubber seeds, and in 1918, Brazil banned their export entirely. By 1920, when Henry was being knighted and called the “father of the rubber industry” in Great Britain, Brazilians dubbed him the “executioner of Amazonas,” “the prince of thieves,” and called his theft “hardly defensible in international law.”

  Biopiracy in its modern sense refers to the appropriation, without payment and usually by patent, of indigenous biomedical knowledge and genes by foreign corporations, institutions, or governments. The rosy periwinkle of Madagascar is often cited as a classic case in modern international law. Research into the plant was prompted in the 1950s by the periwinkle’s use in native medicine, and it resulted in the discovery of several biologically active chemicals—most notably, vincristine—that were instrumental in the fight against various childhood cancers. When pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly patented and marketed vincristine, it made billions, but Madagascar never made a dime. There was a complication, however. The locally known medical properties were not the same as those discovered by Eli Lilly, and when the company filed its patent, the flower had been replanted in numerous tropical countries. Since the researchers did not necessarily obtain local knowledge and plant samples from Madagascar, this muddied the legal claims.

  In a looser sense, though, biopiracy is about power and its imbalance—the historical fact that poorer countries have been high in resources, while richer nations want—and can take—what they have. In that sense, Henry’s theft became a symbol for every act of exploitation visited on the Third World. The issues revolve around ownership rights. Who owns the earth’s riches? Current international law holds that nations own their resources, yet the counterargument is as old as Clement Markham’s for taking cinchona: Nature, and her “improvement,” belongs to mankind.