[NORTHERN NIGERIA / COLONIAL WEST AFRICA] Historically significant archive by a young British colonial officer, vividly describing his travels along the West African Coast and service in the newly established Protectorate of Northern Nigeria

WOOD, CHARLES NORTON (fl. 1902-1903).

On board the S.S. “Jebba,” S.S. “Bornu,” S.S. “Aron” and other vessels; Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Lagos, Forcados, Lokoja and elsewhere in West Africa and Northern Nigeria, 1902-1903.

Complete title: [NORTHERN NIGERIA / COLONIAL WEST AFRICA] Historically significant archive of extensive autograph letters signed comprising over 300 pp. by a young British colonial officer, son of the Times of India Editor and writer on India William Martin Wood, vividly describing his travels along the West African Coast and service in the newly established Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, with detailed first-hand accounts of indigenous villages and banana plantations, dress and material culture, canoes and surf-boats, “Krooboys” and African Maritime Labour, slavery and liberated slaves, local rulers and notables, colonial courts and administration, the study of Hausa, tropical wildlife and everyday life in Lokoja; accompanying a group of original albumen photographs taken by Wood, with captioned versos, and a fine studio portrait photograph of Wood by Thomas Fall.

Archive of 30 autograph letters signed, mostly written by Charles Norton Wood to his mother and to other members of his family in England, 318 pp. (8, 4, 10, 8, 4, 8, 12, 18, 18, 7, 14, 28, 24, 8, 8, 12, 14, 14, 1, 8, 8, 1, 1, 12, 18, 1, 7, 20, 4, 18 pp.), mostly 8vo., with a few 4to., several written on the letterhead of the “African Steamship Company, Liverpool”. With original envelopes, several retaining their postage stamps, related ephemera, and 12 original albumen print photographs, ca. 13.5 x 10.5 cm, taken by Wood during his travels and service in West Africa, dated and extensively captioned in pencil on the versos. Together with a fine studio portrait photograph of the young Wood, apparently taken shortly before his departure for Africa by the distinguished London portrait photographer Thomas Fall, bearing the photographer's imprint, "Thos. Fall, 42 Notting Hill Gate, W." The collection also includes three postcards, three telegrams, and a printed flyer containing a passenger list and the route of the African Steamship Company. Some envelopes have been cut open; the letters retain their original folds, with several leaves loose. The handwriting is generally clear and legible. Overall, a very good collection.

An extensive and unusual private correspondence of a young British colonial officer during the first years of the Protectorate of Northern Nigeria, documenting both his journeys along the West African coast and his subsequent life and administrative work at Lokoja. Beginning with Wood’s outward voyage from England in 1902, the letters follow him through Sierra Leone, the Gold Coast, Lagos, Forcados and Burutu, and up the Niger to Lokoja, recording coastal and river travel by steamers, surf-boats, canoes and outriggers; “Krooboys” taken on at Liberian ports for service aboard the West African steamers; African villages, banana plantations, indigenous architecture, kola nuts and local trade; aspects of indigenous and domestic life; and encounters with local populations, often described in the racial language and assumptions of the colonial period. At Lokoja, the correspondence develops into a detailed record of the early colonial administration of Northern Nigeria, including slavery and its aftermath, liberated slaves and the “freed slaves’ home,” an abduction case involving that institution, colonial courts and legal proceedings, local rulers and notables, colonial personnel, the study of Hausa, and the practicalities of government service. Wood also records the tropical landscape and wildlife, including striking encounters with whales off the West African coast. The letters continue through further journeys in 1903 encompassing Sierra Leone, Liberia, the Gold Coast, Lagos and the Niger. The accompanying original albumen photographs, taken and captioned by Wood himself, substantially extend the archive, providing a dated visual record of his travels and of several places described in the correspondence, including coastal views of Las Palmas, Conakry, Sekondi and Cape Coast Castle, as well as photographs of Onitsha, Idah and Lokoja, depicting the Niger, local inhabitants, colonial settlements and Wood’s own bungalow at Lokoja.

Charles Norton Wood was a son of William Martin Wood (1828-1907), journalist and writer on India and editor of the Times of India from 1864 to 1874. The British Library’s Wood Collection preserves papers relating to William Martin Wood and his family, including Charles. A generation after his father wrote extensively about British India, the younger Wood thus produced his own substantial private record of another rapidly expanding field of British imperial administration. Unlike a retrospective published travel account, however, these letters were written as the events occurred and principally for his family.

The earliest letters follow Wood southwards along the West African coast and subsequently into the Niger. Some of their strongest passages concern the changing physical and human landscape, including tropical forest, cultivated land, indigenous settlements and watercraft:

“The vegetation much about like the Thames at Hammersmith when full, the wildest tropical forest coming right down to each bank, with here & there a biggish village in its plantations of bananas. The most primitive boats there were narrow outriggers [...] I didn't get a snapshot of any of these villages, which I regret now [...].”

Wood describes compounds enclosed by mud walls, grass-thatched houses with high mud walls and verandahs and, farther inland, houses which were generally “round with conical roofs.” His observations extend to the appearance and dress of the inhabitants he encountered, as well as their settlements, boats and cultivated surroundings, creating a remarkably visual account of the passage from the West African coast towards the interior.

Some encounters were recorded in markedly different language. On one occasion the passengers threw bottles and tin cans overboard, prompting men, women and children to swim or set out in canoes after them:

“At one we were startled from breakfast by their yelling & shrieking. They wanted bottles & tin cans which we flung into the water & for which men women & children either plunged in & swam or dashed off in their canoes. One boy remarked ‘That town be wake man-chop’.”

Wood follows the phrase, apparently rendered from West African Pidgin, with his own reference to cannibalism. Approaching the Gold Coast, the correspondence becomes particularly descriptive. Near Accra on 8 October 1902 Wood encountered a “wild crowd of surfboats propelled by paddles, usually five a side,” even adding a small sketch of one of the boats to his letter. Their crews kept time and sang while paddling. Wood describes the difficult transfer of passengers and cargo between ship and shore; women and babies being hoisted aboard and a surf-boat capsizing in the heavy water. Watching African workers under artificial light, he employs one of the archive’s starkest examples of dehumanising racial language:

“The blacks looked like horrible great reptiles writhing and swarming in some evil place.”

The natural world repeatedly interrupts these accounts of coastal travel. During the same voyage Wood records several sightings of whales, including one sufficiently close for him to observe its movement and colouring:

“Nothing less than another whale even closer than the last. It also had a thresher at it & was swinging its great tail out & beating fiercely at the water. Its under side was perfectly white.”

At Lagos he records the movement of kola nuts from shore before continuing towards the Niger Delta. By 10 October he was at Forcados, awaiting a government steamer to take him inland:

“Here we are lying in the river & busily unloading cargo into two branch boats. We arrived about 11.30 & hoped we should be off in the govt. steamer before now, but the beastly thing hasn't appeared. [...] This river mouth is not very wide & there isn't a hill to be seen anywhere: nothing but forest right down to the edge of the brown water.”

Beyond the bend lay Burutu, described as “the local collection of thatched houses with one or two white ones.” Here Wood passed his luggage, provisions and saddlery through customs and began assembling his domestic staff, describing the two men he engaged as “one a melancholy-looking man as a cook & the other a squat pugnacious cheerful little Yoruba boy as valet, or boy proper.”

By mid-October the character of the correspondence changes decisively. Wood reached Lokoja, at the confluence of the Niger and Benue, expecting to proceed to Kabba. Instead, his superior was preparing for a patrol along the boundary with Southern Nigeria:

“I should have gone to Kabba. But at the end of the month Hargrove goes on a patrol along the boundary between us & Southern Nigeria and I shall have to stick here to represent him for the two months that he is away.”

Wood was consequently drawn almost immediately into local administration. He attended the court and records a “Prolonged palaver with the local King & notables as to keeping the native town clean [...]”.

These letters offer a valuable insight into the everyday workings of the early colonial administration, particularly its dealings with local rulers and communities, judicial proceedings, and the practical responsibilities of British officials in Northern Nigeria. Of considerable historical interest are Wood’s references to slavery and liberated slaves. He was sworn in by Sir Henry Cowper Gollan (1868-1949), then Chief Justice of Northern Nigeria, and subsequently attended Gollan’s court:

“We were sworn in by Gollan yesterday [...] We [...] have been attending in court while he tries a case of abduction from the freed slaves' home. He also sits in a magistrate's wig & judge's gown.”

The case provides valuable evidence of the administration of justice in early colonial Northern Nigeria, particularly in relation to slavery, emancipation, and the treatment of liberated slaves.

The correspondence brings Wood into the administrative world of several of the principal British officials then serving in West Africa. Later letters refer to Frederick Lugard (1858-1945) and the developing administration of Northern Nigeria, while aboard ship Wood discusses Sir Ralph Denham Rayment Moor (1860-1909), High Commissioner of Southern Nigeria. His fellow passengers, he writes,

“Speak highly of their governor Sir Ralph Moor & are afraid of his being transferred to some other colony.”

By December Wood was established at Lokoja. His correspondence now moves between official work and the peculiarities of everyday colonial life. His quarters consisted of half of an old three-room bungalow which had become “full of rats & insects” under its previous occupants:

“The rats remain [...] but the cockroaches & many of the other insects have nearly disappeared. The place was thoroughly washed out before I came & I keep my food well shut up in a meat-safe [...] Ants of course nothing can stop.”

In the same letter Wood sits in his bungalow on a Sunday afternoon, the temperature at 90°F, while the parrots belonging to Higgins, the P.W.D. head foreman, are “whistling & chattering away most cheerily” and Higgins and a friend play ping-pong nearby. Such scenes accompany descriptions of the P.W.D., Marine workshops, passing Residents, courts and local government and provide a detailed picture of the small colonial community at Lokoja.

The significance of these descriptions is considerably strengthened by Wood’s photographs. A photograph taken from the old Post Office at Lokoja on 27 October 1902 bears his caption:

“Lokoja looking S. (downriver) from old Post Office. My half bungalow is nearly invisible through trees on the left. That row of bungalows is called ‘Blackwater Crescent’.”

The archive therefore preserves both Wood’s written description of his quarters and his own contemporary photograph locating them within the settlement. A companion view, taken from the same position in the opposite direction, is captioned:

“Lokoja looking N. (upriver) from old Post Office.”

The later correspondence returns to coastal and maritime travel. During his 1903 voyage Wood remarks upon one of the practical requirements of his Northern Nigerian service:

“I must begin & put my back into Hausa.”

His letters from the West African steamers also record the distinctive maritime labour system of the coast. On 12 May 1903, while travelling towards Sierra Leone, Wood records “Krooboys”, Kru African maritime labourers widely employed aboard European vessels in West African waters, being taken aboard at ports in Liberia:

“Krooboys at various Liberian ports & shall have to get more in the Gold Coast. Last night the brutes kept us awake with their noise, but we hope that will be stopped to-night.”

The passage combines an unusual first-hand reference to African maritime labour with another example of the racial vocabulary which runs throughout the correspondence.

In the same letter to his mother, dated 12 May 1903, Wood records approaching Sierra Leone from about thirty miles offshore aboard the S.S. Aron:

“We are approaching Sierra Leone dead slow. If we went at an ordinary pace we should get there some time to-night and have to lie there all night. As it is we shall arrive at 4 or 5 in the morning & get away early.”

The Aron subsequently continued along the coast towards the Gold Coast, with Wood expecting calls at Accra, Cape Coast Castle and Sekondi.

A further letter, written aboard the Aron immediately after leaving Lagos on 15 May 1903, contains one of the archive’s most striking descriptions of African deck passengers aboard the West African steamers. Wood states that some five hundred men, women and children had been taken aboard along the Gold Coast, most of whom were subsequently landed at Lagos:

“The only unpleasantness lately has been the crowd of blacks we took on board along the Gold Coast but of which we re-shipped the greater number off at Lagos. There were 500 on board, men women & children, lying on the scanty deck-space amongst & almost upon one another like a huge litter of black puppies. They kick up a considerable row at night, but I am beginning to be able to sleep soundly through it, & my constant cold in the head prevents me from being as sensitive as most to their unpleasant reek.”

The passage is simultaneously a direct observation of the crowded conditions endured by African deck passengers on coastal steamers and one of the clearest examples in the archive of Wood’s dehumanising racial attitudes. Wood was by then returning inland. He expected to reach Forcados the following morning and continue up the Niger towards Lokoja, but reports that the river was exceptionally low:

“The river is extremely low & this will mean slow steaming as they will have to be cautious about going after dark.”

The letters thus permit much of Wood’s route to be followed almost day by day, from the Canary Islands to Sierra Leone and Liberian ports, the Gold Coast, Lagos, Forcados and Burutu, followed by the long river journey towards Lokoja.

The accompanying original albumen photographs taken by Wood constitute a significant component of the archive. Measuring approximately 13.5 x 10.5 cm, they retain Wood’s pencilled dates and captions on their versos and closely follow the geographical sequence recorded in his correspondence. The captions include:

“Las Palmas looking down the stream.”

“Natives at Onitsha.”

Wood adds to the latter an explanatory note identifying Onitsha as a trading and missionary station on the river.

Another Las Palmas view records the presence of the S.S. “Avondale Castle”, with Wood noting that the vessel carried “troops from S.A.”; another photograph records Conakry, while further images are captioned Sekondi and “Cape Coast Castle.”

A Niger view taken above Idah is particularly informative. Wood identifies the place as the boundary with Southern Nigeria and notes the geographical change in the landscape, explaining that the hills begin there but had failed to appear in the photograph, in contrast to the flat river landscape farther north.

Two views taken at Lokoja from the old Post Office provide complementary upriver and downriver perspectives. In the latter Wood identifies his own residence:

“My half bungalow is nearly invisible through trees on the left. That row of bungalows is called ‘Blackwater Crescent’.”

A further photograph appears to be captioned “Jebba [Ferry]”. Taken together, the photographs extend from the Canary Islands and the Atlantic coast into the Niger and Northern Nigeria and constitute Wood’s own dated visual itinerary through many of the places described in his letters.

The archive is further accompanied by what is apparently a pre-departure portrait of Wood himself, photographed by the distinguished London portrait photographer Thomas Fall, whose clientele included prominent members of British society, military officers and public figures. The photograph bears Fall’s studio imprint, “Thos. Fall, 42 Notting Hill Gate, W.”.

The Northern Nigeria Protectorate had been formally established on 1 January 1900, following the transfer of the Royal Niger Company’s territories to the British Crown, with Frederick Lugard as its first High Commissioner. Wood therefore arrived only some two years after its creation, while British administrative and military control was still being extended and the emerging colonial government was establishing its relations with existing rulers and political structures. The Protectorate remained a separate political entity until 1914, when it was amalgamated with Southern Nigeria and the Colony of Lagos to form the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria.

Taken together, Wood’s letters and photographs form a substantial contemporary record of travel and early colonial administration in West Africa, encompassing banana plantations, indigenous villages, dress, outriggers and surfboats, Krooboys and African deck passengers, whales, tropical forest and the Niger, local kings and notables, slavery and liberated slaves, colonial courts and the study of Hausa. The combination of extensive private correspondence, Wood’s own captioned photographs and his formal studio portrait provides both a written and visual record of a young British administrator at a formative moment in the history of colonial Northern Nigeria.