Allen Gardiner (1794-1851), the founder of the South American Missionary Society, trained at the Royal Naval College in Portsmouth, and then went to sea as a midshipman. He served for many years, rising to the rank of Commander. On leaving the Navy, he felt called to missionary work overseas. He travelled extensively in Africa, South America, and the East Indies. He said that he was not a missionary, but a pioneer sent ahead to prepare the ground for others. It was while exploring the harsh territory of Tierra Del Fuego that he and his six companions perished of exposure and starvation. He is remembered by the Church on 6 September, the supposed date of his death.
“HIS success was by no means equal to his enthusiasm, but his resolution did not abate.” John Marsh wrote these words in his memoir of Allen Gardiner in 1857. They were meant as a comment on Gardiner’s failed fund-raising lecture tour in Scotland, but they might just as well have been a description of his entire career. This former naval officer brought to his endeavours an impetuous courage and an unshakeable trust in divine protection, which at times amounted to a kind of holy madness.
It was his calling to take the gospel where it had never before been heard. For more than 17 years, he — and often his family with him — travelled in Africa, the East Indies, New Guinea, Chile, Patagonia, and Tierra Del Fuego. It is hard, however, to find evidence of any lasting effect that his efforts might have had on the indigenous populations whom he sought to serve.
What hindered his hopes was the sheer distance and danger of travel. His journal is a catalogue of disasters encountered during his frustrated attempts to reach the tribespeople whom he wished to meet. He rarely arrived at his planned destination, and, when he did, he was seldom able to remain long enough to achieve any lasting success.
In 1834, he made his first expedition into Zulu territory. As he left Grahamstown, at that time an outpost of the British Cape Colony, many advised him not to go. Undaunted, he set off, accompanied by two Europeans, a native servant, an interpreter, two wagons, 30 oxen, seven horses, and a host of wagon-drivers and native attendants. By the time they reached Zulu territory, the party had been reduced to three travellers on foot. All the rest had fled, taking with them cattle and horses.
Gardiner persuaded the Zulu king, Dingane, to allow the establishment of a mission. Reluctantly, Dingane agreed, although he said that instead of the Bible, he would prefer his men to be taught how to use a musket.
A missionary, the Revd Francis Owen, was sent out from England. Schools were set up, Bible classes were held, and instruction was given in reading, sewing, planting, and building. Sadly, when war broke out in 1838 between the Zulus and the Boer voortrekkers, the missions had to close. It had been one of Gardiner’s only successes.
Besides the difficulties of travel, another obstruction was the hostility he faced not only from colonial authorities, but also from the indigenous people themselves.
In the Dutch East Indies, Gardiner and his family led a nomadic existence, travelling for months over mountains and through jungle, as they sought permission to journey to the interior. He wished to reach the Papuans, at that time regarded as among the most dangerous people on earth.
Sometimes, when it was not possible to take horses, he and his wife and children were carried in three large palanquins, 12 men to each, with 44 porters to carry the baggage. At other times, they embarked in unseaworthy boats, and risked death at the hands of Malay pirates.
Finally, after months of prevarication, the Dutch Governor of Batavia refused to grant them a pass to the interior. The Governor of the Moluccas, for reasons of his own, had put it about that Gardiner was a secret agent of the British government.
Leaving the Dutch East Indies, they took ship for Valparaiso, in Chile, via Cape Town, Rio de Janeiro, and round Cape Horn to the Pacific coast. This time, he fell foul of a Roman Catholic friar, Brother Manuel, who objected to Gardiner’s attempts to sell Bibles and Protestant tracts. Brother Manuel spread reports that Gardiner was a dangerous heretic who had been banned by the Church.
In 1850, Gardiner set off from England for his last expedition. He had recruited six others: Richard Williams, a surgeon; John Maidment, a catechist; Joseph Erwin, a ship’s carpenter; and three Cornish fishermen — John Pearce, John Badcock, and John Bryant. Their destination was Picton Island, at the southern extremity of South America. Their purpose was to establish a mission station from which to evangelise the Yahgans, a race of hunter-gatherers who inhabited that inhospitable land.
They reached Picton Island in December 1850, but had little success in making peaceful contact with the elusive inhabitants. They had brought with them two 26-foot launches, in which they had packed provisions for six months. By the end of that period, there was no sign of further provisions. Sickness, hunger, and exposure to one of the worst climates on the planet began to take their toll.
In June, Badcock was the first to die, followed by Williams. Then, in August, it was the turn of Erwin and Bryan; then Pearce; then, on 4 September, Maidment.
The last entry in Gardiner’s journal was dated Friday 5 September. It included the words: “Great and marvellous are the loving kindnesses of my gracious God unto me.” When the supply ship, the John Davison, arrived in late October, Gardiner had been dead for six weeks. Lying beside him, they found his journal.
The Revd Adrian Leak is an Hon. Assistant Priest at Holy Trinity, Bramley, in the diocese of Guildford.