St Vincent Whitshed Erskine

St Vincent Whitshed Erskine (1846 - 1918), Surveyor General of South Africa, was an early explorer in Gazaland and was the first European to travel down the length of the Limpopo river to its mouth.

Erskine was born on 7 February 1846 in Tasmania, the second son of Lieutenant Colonel The Honourable David Erskine (son of David, 2nd Lord Erskine of Restmorel) and his first wife (m. 12 November 1839) Anne Maria Spode daughter of Josiah Spode.David Erskine married secondly Emma Florence Mary Harford the daughter of Captain Charles Joseph Harford, 12th Lancers. St Vincent Erskine married in 1870 to Alice Lindley Buchanan 5th daughter of David Dale Buchanan (born 1819, died 4 Sep 1874 in Cape Town), the founder of the "Natal Witness" (The Witness (South African newspaper)) and his wife Mary Amm. St Vincent Erskine and Alice Buchanan had six children:

St Vincent Erskine was a friend of Thomas Baines the well known artist of African Exploration, who had accompanied David Livingstone along the Zambezi in 1858.

St Vincent Erskine died from the Spanish flu on 8 July 1918 aged 72 years and is buried in the Maitland Cemetery, Cape Town. Alice Erskine died on 22 October 1922 at Uitenhage, South Africa.

St Vincent Erskine carried out a number of exploratory journeys in Southern Africa between 1868 and 1875 from Natal northwards into Gazaland and down to the mouth of the River Limpopo. Gazaland (modern day Mozambique and Zimbabwe extending northward from the Komati River at Delagoa Bay in Mozambique's Maputo Province to the Pungwe River in central Mozambique) records - “Probably the first European to penetrate any distance inland from the Sofala coast since the Portuguese gold-seekers of the 16th century was St. Vincent W. Erskine, who explored the region between the Limpopo and Pungwe (1868-1875).”

St Vincent Erskine's four journeys are reported in the Journal of the Royal Geographical Society, London:

Following his exploratory journeys St Vincent Erskine worked as a surveyor in Natal, the Transvaal and Cape Province. He settled with his family in Cape Town where he died in 1918.

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