William Archer

by John Dawson

Clathrus archeri, photographed by Benutzer:Oilys, from Wikipedia

The spectacular octopus stinkhorn Clathrus archeri (Berk.) Dring was first found in the United States by David Arora in 1981.1 Reported from various locations in Europe and Kazakhstan during the 1960s and 1970s, it is native to Tasmania and was first described by Miles Joseph Berkeley in 1859 in Joseph Hooker’s Flora Tasmaniae — one of many fungi there to which Berkeley gave the epithet archeri, in honor of the Tasmanian (or rather, Van Diemanian) botanist, architect and politician William Archer (1820–1874).2

Archer was born in Launceston, Van Dieman’s Land (then part of the British colony New South Wales), the second of the six surviving children of Thomas and Susannah Archer. His father had emigrated to New South Wales from England in 1811, had married five years later, and by 1825 had become the owner of a 6000-acre estate in (what is now) northern Tasmania. The following year Thomas was elected to the Upper House of the Legislative Council, where he took an active part in political affairs until ill health forced him to resign in 1845. He was especially known for his opposition to the continued transport of felons to New South Wales, which finally ceased in 1853 (at which time Van Diemen’s Land was renamed Tasmania and became self-governing.)

The Archer family was devoutly Anglican and Thomas’s three sons all received their higher education in England. William, in particular, studied architecture and surveying in London under William Rogers from 1836–40, and then spent two further years in Newcastle upon Tyne under the tutelage of the engineer Robert Stephenson. In 1842 he returned home and began his career as an architect. In 1844, however, his older brother Thomas William died suddenly of scarlet fever, and that same year a banking establishment in which his father was a partner failed. Consequently, William was obliged to take time away from his profession to manage his father’s lands.

photo of William Archer, by J.W. Beattie

On 7 April 1846 William married Ann Hortle, who bore him thirteen children, all but one of whom survived to adulthood. During the following decade he designed a number of notable buildings, and in 1851, like his father before him, entered into politics. In 1856, however, he traveled once again to England, where he pursued botanical studies for two years and was elected a member of the Linnaean Society.

Oddly, the principal sources I have found on Archer’s life3 say nothing about when his interest in botany developed. The Australian Fungi Website, however, states that

Joseph Hooker … visited Tasmania in 1840–41 as part of the Erebus and Terror expedition and undertook some collecting trips [there] with [Ronald]Gunn. Berkeley wrote the fungal section of Joseph Hooker’s 1859 Flora Tasmaniae …[but though] he used the collections of Gunn, [Robert]Lawrence and Joseph Hooker in th[at] work, most of the new species recorded there were collected by William Archer. Gunn and Archer were prolific collectors over many years and as recognition of their efforts, Berkeley named several species in their honor.4

At first glance that seems puzzling, since Archer was in England at the time of the Erebus and Terror expedition and was only sixteen when he went there; so it seems unlikely that Hooker or Gunn would have brought back specimens he had collected before that. The explanation seems to be that Archer donated specimens to Hooker (as well as drawings of Tasmanian orchids) when he went back to England in 1856, three years before the publication of Hooker’s book (jointly dedicated to Archer and Gunn). He must thus have begun collecting some time before that.

On his return to Tasmania Archer moved to Hobart and resumed his political activities. He also served as secretary of the Royal Society of Tasmania during 1860–61 and contributed a number of botanical articles to the Society’s Papers and Proceedings. He resigned from public office in 1867 and spent his last years on his estate at Cheshunt, as Stillwell says, “each year with greater financial difficulty, until he left it a broken and poor man.” He died in Cressy, Tasmania, on 15 October 1874.

Historical Postscript

The names Erebus and Terror are likely familiar to readers in other contexts. The two vessels were built as warships, and the Terror took part in the bombardment of Fort McHenry during the War of 1812. Later they were refitted for polar exploration, and James Clark Ross, who in 1831 had located the north magnetic pole, was placed in charge of a voyage to Antarctica, whose principal purpose was to determine the location of the south magnetic pole. It was this expedition, which took place from 1839–43, that visited Tasmania and brought back botanical samples from there; and it was then, too, that Ross named two Antarctic volcanoes after his ships.6

After their return to England, the ships were refitted once again and placed under the command of Sir John Franklin, who set out in 1845 to search for a Northwest Passage. Later that year the two ships became trapped in the ice and the entire crew perished from exposure and starvation. Numerous voyages have subsequently been undertaken to try to locate the wreckage of the ships, but no trace of them has yet been found. Nonetheless, searches continue.7