APPENDIX A

Pioneer Biographies
of the British Period to 1947 

Henry Stuart Man (1815-1893)

Henry Man is first heard of 1834 as an ensign in the 49th Madras Native Infantry. He was a captain in 1848, serving in the second Anglo-Burmese war 1852-1853 later becoming executive engineer and superintendent of convicts at Mulmein in Burma. On 22nd January 1858 he was the officer in charge of the detachment that secured the British landing at Port Blair and formally annexed the islands to the British Crown. He remained in charge of the new settlement for its first two months before handing over to the first Superintendent of convicts, J. P. Walker. Man's landing marked not only the single most important date in the history of the Andaman islands but also the beginning of the long association of the Man family with the archipelago.

In 1868 then Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Man returned to Port Blair as its fifth Superintendent while at the same time taking over responsibility for the newly annexed Nicobar islands. The following year his son E.H. Man joined him at Port Blair. Shortly after the elder Man relinquished his official position at Port Blair in 1872 he was promoted to colonel. In 1881 he found himself unemployed and then retired to return to England where he received further formal promotion to Major-General. H.S. Man died at Surbiton, England, on 10th April 1898.

Henry Man, a military man through and through and something of a specialist in keeping convicts behind bars, despite his calling was a humane and educated man of wide interests. His collection of Andamanese artifacts and his sympathetic interest in the aboriginal population was instrumental in arousing his son's first interest in the subject. 

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