James Chapman (explorer)
Encyclopedia
Cape Town
Cape Town is the second-most populous city in South Africa, and the provincial capital and primate city of the Western Cape. As the seat of the National Parliament, it is also the legislative capital of the country. It forms part of the City of Cape Town metropolitan municipality...
- 4 February 1872 Kimberley
Kimberley, Northern Cape
Kimberley is a city in South Africa, and the capital of the Northern Cape. It is located near the confluence of the Vaal and Orange Rivers. The town has considerable historical significance due its diamond mining past and siege during the Second Boer War...
, was a South African explorer, hunter, trader and photographer.
A son of James Chapman and Elizabeth Greeff of Malmesbury
Malmesbury, Western Cape
Malmesbury is a town with 37,529 inhabitants in the Western Cape province of South Africa, about 65 km north of Cape Town.The town is the largest in the Swartland due to the dark "Renosterbos" , an indigenous plant that turns black in the warm, dry summers...
and brother to Henry Samuel Chapman, he was educated in Cape Town and left for Durban
Durban
Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal and the third largest city in South Africa. It forms part of the eThekwini metropolitan municipality. Durban is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa. It is also seen as one of the major centres of tourism...
when 14 years old. He was appointed as chief clerk in the Native Affairs Department in 1848. A year later he settled in Potchefstroom where he became one of the first storekeepers. Shortly after, in 1852, he ventured across the Limpopo River
Limpopo River
The Limpopo River rises in central southern Africa, and flows generally eastwards to the Indian Ocean. It is around long, with a drainage basin in size. Its mean annual discharge is 170 m³/s at its mouth...
and into Bamangwato
Bamangwato
The Bamangwato can be said to be one of the eight 'principal' Tswana tribes of Botswana, and just like any other Tswana tribe in Botswana, constitutes a small percent in the central district even in their capital serowe. They ruled over majority Bakalangaand other tribes such as the san,bitwa and...
country. He became friendly with Khama, one of the sons of Sekgoma, the Bamangwato chief, enlisting his aid in reaching the Chobe River. Early the following year found him on the Zambesi River which he explored to within 70 miles (112.7 km) of the Victoria Falls
Victoria Falls
The Victoria Falls or Mosi-oa-Tunya is a waterfall located in southern Africa on the Zambezi River between the countries of Zambia and Zimbabwe.-Introduction:...
, almost beating David Livingstone
David Livingstone
David Livingstone was a Scottish Congregationalist pioneer medical missionary with the London Missionary Society and an explorer in Africa. His meeting with H. M. Stanley gave rise to the popular quotation, "Dr...
to their discovery.
By 1854 he had teamed up with Samuel H. Edwards, another explorer, and launched an expedition to Lake Ngami
Lake Ngami
Lake Ngami is an endorheic lake in Botswana north of the Kalahari Desert. It is seasonally filled by the Taughe River an affluent of the Okavango River system flowing out of the western side of the Okavango Delta. It is one of the fragmented remnants of the ancient Lake Makgadikgadi...
after which he trekked through the territory between Northern Bechuanaland and the Zambesi. An easygoing man, he was able to get on with the Bushman
Bushmen
The indigenous people of Southern Africa, whose territory spans most areas of South Africa, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola, are variously referred to as Bushmen, San, Sho, Barwa, Kung, or Khwe...
hunters of the semi-desert interior and spent long periods in their company, obtaining valuable help from them. Returning to Ngami, he travelled north to the Okavango River
Okavango River
The Okavango River is a river in southwest Africa. It is the fourth-longest river system in southern Africa, running southeastward for . It begins in Angola, where it is known as the Cubango River...
, crossing Damaraland
Damaraland
Damaraland was a name given to the north-central part of what later became Namibia, inhabited by the Damaras. It was bounded roughly by Ovamboland in the north, the Namib Desert in the west, the Kalahari Desert in the east, and Windhoek in the south....
and reaching Walvis Bay
Walvis Bay
Walvis Bay , is a city in Namibia and the name of the bay on which it lies...
. Here he busied himself with cattle-trading in Damaraland, before setting out on an expedition with his brother Henry and Thomas Baines
Thomas Baines
Thomas Baines was an English artist and explorer of British colonial southern Africa and Australia. Born in King's Lynn, Norfolk, Baines was apprenticed to a coach painter at an early age...
and lasting from December 1860 to September 1864. Their aim was to explore the Zambesi from the Victoria Falls down to its delta, with a view to testing its navigability. However, these plans were bedevilled by sickness and misfortune. They did reach the Zambesi, but did not get to explore the mouth. On 23 July 1862 they reached the Victoria Falls. It was on this expedition that Baines painted many of his famous scenes which were reproduced in an album of prints. His attempt at exploring the Zambesi ruined his health and exhausted his finances. He returned to Cape Town in 1864, dispirited and fever-stricken. The expedition was notable since it was the first time that a stereoscopic camera
Stereo camera
A stereo camera is a type of camera with two or more lenses with a separate image sensor or film frame for each lens. This allows the camera to simulate human binocular vision, and therefore gives it the ability to capture three-dimensional images, a process known as stereo photography. Stereo...
had been used to record its progress. The size of the negatives was about 6 x 4.5 inches and of rather poor quality. Prints of these photographs are at the Africana Museum in Johannesburg
Johannesburg
Johannesburg also known as Jozi, Jo'burg or Egoli, is the largest city in South Africa, by population. Johannesburg is the provincial capital of Gauteng, the wealthiest province in South Africa, having the largest economy of any metropolitan region in Sub-Saharan Africa...
.
Sir George Grey commissioned him to capture live animals and to compile glossaries of the Bantu languages
Bantu languages
The Bantu languages constitute a traditional sub-branch of the Niger–Congo languages. There are about 250 Bantu languages by the criterion of mutual intelligibility, though the distinction between language and dialect is often unclear, and Ethnologue counts 535 languages...
. Chapman kept diaries throughout his journeys, but his Travels in the Interior of South Africa appeared only in 1868, shortly before his death. Chapman travelled at times with Francis Galton
Francis Galton
Sir Francis Galton /ˈfrɑːnsɪs ˈgɔːltn̩/ FRS , cousin of Douglas Strutt Galton, half-cousin of Charles Darwin, was an English Victorian polymath: anthropologist, eugenicist, tropical explorer, geographer, inventor, meteorologist, proto-geneticist, psychometrician, and statistician...
and C.J. Andersson. He attempted to farm at Anawood on the banks of the Swakop river in 1863 and 1864, but was forced to abandon his holding due to the Nama-Ovaherero War, in which he refused to become involved. From 1864 until 1870 he lived at various places in South Africa, but returned as a trader and hunter to Hereroland
Hereroland
Hereroland was a bantustan in South West Africa , intended by the apartheid government to be a self-governing homeland for the Herero people. It was set up in 1968 and self-government was granted two years later....
and Ovamboland
Ovamboland
Ovamboland was the name given by English-speaking visitors to the land occupied by the Ovambo people in what is now northern Namibia and southern Angola...
between 1870 and 1871. He died at Du Toit's Pan near Kimberley, on 4 February 1872, aged 40 years.
Family
In 1857 he married Catherine Cecelia Roome, daughter of Capt. William Roome, (master of the vessel "Olivia" on which Thomas Baines arrived at Cape Town on 23 November 1842) and Catherine Cecelia Bushnell (who was born in Virginia USA - her father, also a sea captain apparently settled in Nova ScotiaNova Scotia
Nova Scotia is one of Canada's three Maritime provinces and is the most populous province in Atlantic Canada. The name of the province is Latin for "New Scotland," but "Nova Scotia" is the recognized, English-language name of the province. The provincial capital is Halifax. Nova Scotia is the...
). James and Catherine had four children.
One of their sons, William James Bushnell Chapman (1858–1932) became a trader, hunter and farmer. He came to Namibia
Namibia
Namibia, officially the Republic of Namibia , is a country in southern Africa whose western border is the Atlantic Ocean. It shares land borders with Angola and Zambia to the north, Botswana to the east and South Africa to the south and east. It gained independence from South Africa on 21 March...
as a child in 1864, spent ten years in Cape Town and returned on 16 June 1874 to Walvis Bay as assistant at Harrison's store. He traded and hunted in Ovamboland in 1875, then went to Angola
Angola
Angola, officially the Republic of Angola , is a country in south-central Africa bordered by Namibia on the south, the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the north, and Zambia on the east; its west coast is on the Atlantic Ocean with Luanda as its capital city...
in 1881 and farmed at Humpata :pt:Humpata. He finally resettled in 1928 with other Angola Boers in the Gobabis
Gobabis
Gobabis is a town in eastern Namibia. It is the regional capital of the Omaheke Region, and the district capital of the Gobabis electoral constituency. Gobabis is situated down the B6 motorway from Windhoek to Botswana. The town is from the Buitepos border post with Botswana, and serves as an...
district of Namibia, where he died in October 1932.
Another son, Charles Henry Chapman, was born in Cape Town and boarded the Titanic at Southampton
Southampton
Southampton is the largest city in the county of Hampshire on the south coast of England, and is situated south-west of London and north-west of Portsmouth. Southampton is a major port and the closest city to the New Forest...
as a second class passenger (ticket number 248731, £13 10s). He carried with him the family bible belonging to his grandparents' family in Virginia and/or Nova Scotia; Chapman himself lived in The Bronx, NY. He died at age 52 of hypothermia and drowning after the sinking in the early hours of 15 April 1912; his body was later recovered by the Mackay-Bennett.
Henry Samuel Chapman (1834–1922), brother of James Chapman, arrived at Walvis Bay by sea in February 1860 and travelled extensively as a hunter and trader between Walvis Bay, Ovamboland, Hereroland, Lake Ngami and the Cape until 1863. He later lived at Oudtshoorn, Kimberley and Johannesburg, and died in August 1922 at Braamfontein in South Africa.