Herbert Ward (sculptor)

Herbert Ward (11 January 1863, in London – 5 August 1919, in Neuilly-sur-Seine) was a British sculptor, illustrator, writer and African explorer. He was a member of Henry Morton Stanley's Emin Pasha Relief Expedition who became a close friend of Roger Casement while they were working in the Congo Free State. He later became a sculptor and lived in France. He was awarded the Croix de Guerre, was twice mentioned in dispatches in World War I, was an officer of the Légion d'Honneur and a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors.

He left Mill Hill School at the age of 15, and travelled to New Zealand, spending the next three years in New Zealand and Australia. He was "in turn kauri-gum digger, coal and gold miner, stock-rider, circus performer and sail-maker". He then spent a year as a cadet with the British North Borneo Company, before a bout of malaria forced him to return to England.

In 1884, Ward met Stanley in London, when he was interviewed for a post as an officer in the new Congo Free State. Stanley recommended Ward for a position, and he spent the next two years working on the upper and lower Congo River, where he first met Roger Casement, who was working on construction of a railroad to bypass the cataracts of the lower river. After being replaced by a Belgian officer, Ward joined the Sanford Exploring Company.

In March 1887, having left the Sanford Company, Ward was returning to England when he again encountered Stanley, who was assembling the Emin Pasha relief expedition. Stanley appointed Ward as a lieutenant and placed him under the command of Major Edmund Barttelot in the expedition's rear column. Stanley left the rear column, consisting of 250 porters and five officers, in June 1887, saying "I shall find you here in October when I return." Because of Stanley's delays, the rear column remained at Yambuya by the Aruwimi River for the next 14 months, rather than 4. By that time, two of its officers and more than 100 of its porters had died.

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