health, as he found that now any exertion brought on shivering and sickness. Ten
days later, on 12 July 1852, and after all his collections were loaded, he was helped
on board the brig Helen. Wallace was expecting to return home in triumph from his
four years on the Amazon. His last consignment of duplicates had been shipped to
Stevens a year earlier. With more time and in better health he would have split up the
shipment, but on board the Helen was his entire personal collection of 10,000 bird
skins, a large herbarium of dried plants, an unparalleled collection of birds’ eggs, all
his numerous butterflies and insects, and his menagerie of live animals. As well as his
diaries and books of sketches of his explorations of the Amazon, the Rio Negro and
the Rio Vuapés.
The Helen was carrying a cargo of rubber, cocoa and most importantly a resinous
substance used in making varnishes and lacquers. After twenty-six days at sea this
volatile substance caught fire and the ship was burned to the waterline. All was lost
and the only things Wallace recovered were a few personal items:
I went down into the cabin, now suffocating hot and full of smoke, to see what was worth
saving. I got my watch and a small tin box containing some shirts and a couple of old note-
books, with some drawings of plants and animals, and scrambled up with them on deck.Wallace was given a rope and told to lower himself into the lifeboat. Too weak to
support his own bodyweight, he burned the skin off his hands as he did so and tumbled
into one of the lifeboats, from which the captain and crew watched in the darkness as
the Helen went up in flames. The survivors then drifted for ten days until, blistered
by the sun and running out of water, they were picked up by another vessel bound for
England. Wallace arrived in the port of Deal on 1 October 1852 and wrote:
Oh glorious day! Here we are on shore at Deal, where the ship is at anchor. Such a dinner,
with our two captains! Oh, beef-steaks and damson tart, a paradise for hungry sinners.Wallace now had time to consider the magnitude of his loss. He was alive. He was
back in England. But he had lost his brother and his entire personal collection along
with all his notebooks and sketchbooks. What might have brought him some fame or
at least a comfortable life was now gone and he wrote:
With what pleasure had I looked upon every rare and curious insect I have added to my
collection! How many times, when almost overcome by the ague [malaria] had I crawled(^116) Where Australia Collides with Asia
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