Henry Smeathman (1742–1786) was an English naturalist, best known for his work in entomology and colonial settlement in Sierra Leone.
In 1771 the Quaker physician John Fothergill, along with two other members of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks and Marmaduke Tunstall, sponsored Smeathman to spend four years in and around the Sierra Leone peninsula studying its natural history,[1] specifically its insects.
Smeathman made his voyage to Africa aboard a trade ship called the Fly, which was transporting barrels of rum to the West African coast.
Smeathman was given some key contacts in West African coast including Afro-European slave trading families, presumably from Drury, Fothergill or Banks.
Though he claimed that he had cured himself with Dr. Fothergill's advice and his medical books that he had brought along, he suffered from symptoms of the disease until his death from a fever, which was fifteen years after initial exposure.
Smeathman relied on assistance from indigenous people in his collections and research, particularly with the examination of termite mounds, but was often reluctant to accept their entomological knowledge.
[3] On 21 July 1772, Smeathman married his first wife, an African woman who was the daughter of "the King of a Country up the River Sherbro," and at one point may have had three wives simultaneously.