John Wood (explorer)

This article is about the nineteenth-century Scottish explorer. For other people of the same name, see John Wood (disambiguation).

John Wood (1812 – 14 November 1871) was a Scottish naval officer, surveyor, cartographer and explorer, principally remembered for his exploration of central Asia.

Wood was born in Perth, Scotland. After schooling at Perth Academy, he joined the British Indian Navy and soon demonstrated a flair for surveying. Many of the maps of southern Asia which he compiled remained standard for the rest of the nineteenth century.

In 1835, aged twenty-two, he commanded the first steamboat to paddle up the Indus River and surveyed the river as he went. Four years later he led an expedition up the Pamir River to Lake Zorkul ("Wood's Lake"), which he took to be the source of River Oxus. He was the first European in the Pamir Mountains since Bento de Goes, and it was Wood who introduced the term "Roof of the World" for the Pamirs, when in 1838 he wrote that "Bam-i-Duniah or Roof of the World" was a "native expression" (presumably Wakhi language). The Royal Geographical Society recognised his work by awarding the 29-year-old “Lieutenant John Woods” its Patron's Medal in 1841 “for his journey to the source of the Oxus and for valuable labours on the Indus”.

Wood retired from the Navy of the East India Company after his central Asian explorations, still in his late twenties. He purchased some land, probably as an investment, in the area of Wellington, New Zealand and spent a year there. He ventured to the Hutt Valley and up to the Kapiti Coast but never travelled north of the Wellington region or visited the South Island, spending most of his time in the Wellington township. On returning to England he wrote and, in 1843, had his Twelve Months in Wellington published. At first glance it is a guide for prospective settlers, but it is also a damning critique of the New Zealand Company and a warning to prospective emigrants of the difficulties and hardships they would encounter. Wood moved back to India and established himself in Sindh, a northern Indian province that is now part of Pakistan. In 1871, he decided to return to Britain but before leaving made a trip to Simla in the Punjab, where he fell ill. He embarked on the voyage home but died on November 14, two weeks after his arrival.

Bibliography

• Narrative of a Journey to the Source of the River Oxus, By the Route of the Indus, Kabul, and Badakhshan, Performed under the Sanction of the Supreme Government of India in the Years 1836, 1837, and 1838, London: John Murray, 1841.
• A Journey to the Source of the River Oxus. New edition, edited by his Son. With an Essay on the Geography of the Valley of the Oxus by Colonel Henry Yule. London: John Murray. 1872.
  Reprints:
  Kessinger Publishing, Whitefish MT 2007 ISBN 1-432-66034-9, 978-1-432-66034-5 ;
  Elibron Classics Replica Edition, Adamant Media Corporation, New York 2002 ISBN 1-402-10034-5;
  Oxford University Press, Oxford-London ISBN 0-19-577215-6
• Twelve Months in Wellington, Port Nicholson, or, Notes for the Public and The New Zealand Company, London: Pelham Richardson, 1843.