1873 | Exploration, Colonization
Exploration, Colonization
Port Moresby is founded on the Pacific island of New Guinea by Royal Navy captain John Morseby, who names it after his father, Admiral Sir Fairfax Moresby, now 87, who has been admiral of the fleet since 1870 and who half a century ago suppressed the slave trade at Mauritius. Captain Moresby raises the British flag on the island's south coast, but London refuses to support him unless Australia's colonial governments agree to assume responsibility for the territory's administration (when some colonies demur, London disavows Moresby's action).
Explorer-missionary-physician David Livingstone dies at Old Chitambo May 1 at age 60. His servants bury his heart, wait some weeks for his body to dry in the sun, and transport it to the coast, meeting en route a Royal Geographic Society expedition led by former Royal Navy officer Verney Lovett Cameron, 28, who has worked to suppress the East African slave trade and is proceeding west from Zanzibar. Cameron recovers some of Livingstone's papers at Ujiji on Lake Tanganyika (see 1875), Livingstone's body is carried to England for burial in Westminster Abbey; Northwest Passage pioneer Sir Robert J. Le M. McClure dies at London October 17 at age 66.