William Sheppard

“Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” That line was spoken by Henry Morton Stanley in 1871 in the vicinity of Lake Tanganyika, present-day Tanzania. Actually, it probably wasn’t spoken but rather invented after the fact for literary effect. In either case, one hundred fifty years later it remains the most celebrated utterance in the history of African exploration. Exploration by white dudes, that is.

You know these dudes. Livingstone — a national hero back in England, famous for making a coast-to-coast crossing of the African continent and a number of other rugged journeys — hadn’t been heard from in five years, his whereabouts in the interior a mystery. Stanley — a budding adventurer and opportunistic newspaperman on the assignment of a lifetime — managed to locate the wayward Brit with an eight-month, seven-hundred-mile search, thereby ensuring his own stardom. This tale of two sunburnt, civilized chaps uniting in the wild, exotic outback has become the well-worn classic.

Okay, but why don’t many people know William Sheppard, often called “The Black