10 July 1836

Sir William Cornwallis Harris, traveller, hunter and renowned artist, arrives in Algoa Bay to begin a hunting expedition

 

Sir William Cornwallis Harris was born in Wittersham, Kent on 2 April 1807, and was educated at military college. After this he was posted as second lieutenant in the East India Company’s Bombay Establishment, and spent several years in India.

In India, Harris began to take part in field sports and took to sketching animals. When he was promoted to first lieutenant in 1824, Harris moved to Cape Town, where he went on to hunting and sketching local fauna after recovering from a prolonged illness.

On 10 July 1836, Harris and William Richardson of the Bombay Civil Service began a hunting trip that began in Algoa Bay (present day Port Elizabeth) and went as far into the interior as the Western Transvaal and Magaliesberg.

On this trip, Harris observed the conflict between the Voortrekkers and the Matabele, and was the first White person to observe the sable antelope, a specimen and description of which was sent to the Zoological Society of London.

Harris went on to conduct further expeditions into the Kalahari and present day Ethiopia, and was the first person to write a book on big game hunting in Africa, The wild sports of Southern Africa (1839), along with several other books.

Harris passed away from fever in Poona, India in 1848, while working as an engineer.

References:

1. Joyce, P. (1989) The South African Family Encyclopaedia, Cape Town: Struik
2. Potgieter, D.J. et al (eds) (1972) Standard Encyclopaedia of Southern Africa. NASOU: Cape Town. Vol. 5, p. 440-1.
3. Wallis, F. (2000) Nuusdagboek: feite en fratse oor 1000 jaar, Kaapstad: Human & Rousseau