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Born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the sixth child and third son of John Stairs and Mary Morrow, he attended school at Fort Massey Academy in Halifax, Merchiston Castle School in Edinburgh, Scotland, and the Royal Military College of Canada.
After graduating as a trained engineer, Stairs spent three years working for the New Zealand Trigonometrical Survey in northern New Zealand. In 1885, he accepted the offer of a commission in the British Royal Engineers and trained in ChathamChatham is the name of an English town that developed around an important naval dockyard on the east bank of the River Medway in the county of Kent. Together with Rochester, Gillingham and Strood it is part of a conurbation called the Medway Towns, having, EnglandEngland is the largest, the most populous, and the most densely populated of the four " Home Nations" which make up the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (UK). Occupying the south-eastern portion of the island of Great Britain, England.
In the tradition of the great Victorian eraJune 20, 1837) gave her name to the historic era. The Victorian Era of Great Britain is considered the height of the British industrial revolution and the apex of the British Empire. It is often defined as the years from 1837 to 1901, when Queen Victoria explorers, on his first mission Capt. Stairs distinguished himself as the British military chief officer, and second in command to Henry Morton StanleySir Henry Morton Stanley ( 1841 1904) was a 19th century Welsh-born journalist and explorer famous for his exploration of Africa and his search for David Livingstone. Biography He was born John Rowlands January 29, in Denbigh, Wales. An illegitimate child, in the Emin Pasha Relief ExpeditionThe Emin Pasha Relief Expedition of 1886 to 1889 was the last major European expedition into the interior of Africa in the 19th century. Led by Henry Morton Stanley, ostensibly to rescue Emin Pasha of Equatoria from the Mahdists, the expedition came to be.
During two of his three-year journeys across AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest continent in both area and population, after Asia. 30,244,050 km2 (11,677,240 mi2) including the islands, it covers 20. 3% of the total land area on Earth, and with over 800 million human inhabitants it accounts for ar, William Grant Stairs discovered one source of the NileThe Nile ( Arabic: an-nil , in Africa, is one of the two longest rivers on Earth. Whether the Nile is longer than South America's Amazon still remains the subject of much debate. This is, for the most part, due to two reasons: first, the lengths of rivers, the Semliki River , and became the first non-African to ever climb in the Ruwenzoris. In the midst of the first three thousand mile trans-African trek he was seriously wounded by a poisonous arrow in the chest from an attack by warring natives. He would recover from his wound to continue the journey. In Dublin, Ireland there is a bronze plaque depicting this August 13, 1887 event on the statue of expedition Surgeon Major T.H. Parke who removed the arrow and sucked the poison from the wound.
Lauded in Europe and North America for his heroic exploits, on his return to England Capt. Stairs was named a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1890. In 1891 he transferred to the Royal Welsh Regiment and was then asked by King Leopold II of Belgium to command a mission to take control of the African copper lands of Katanga.
After leading this successful expedition, Capt. Stairs began planning for another mission into the African continent. However, in 1892, a few weeks shy of his twenty-ninth birthday, and suffering from recurring bouts of malaria, he passed away at Chinde, Mozambique.
Upon his passing, memorials were erected at the Royal Military College of Canada and St. George's Cathedral in Kingston, Ontario and in Rochester Cathedral near Chatham, England. A collection of artifacts from his African expeditions are at the McCord Museum , Montreal, Quebec and his diaries are preserved in the Public Archives of Nova Scotia .
His missions are detailed in books, two of which contain Stairs' diaries compiled during the two major expeditions:
The detailed personal diaries of Capt. Stairs of the day-to-day events during these two major expeditions in the quest to explore the "dark continent" portrays a chilling story of battles with slave trade operators and cannibals, the threat of disease and starvation, and the daunting challenge in leading a caravan of several thousand men through the unforgiving jungles and dangerous rivers of a vast and hitherto little known land.
Captain Stairs is buried in the European Cemetery in Chinde, Mozambique at the mouth of the Zambezi River.