Sir Stamford Raffles and his wife embarked on the East India Company vessel ‘Flame’ on 2 February 1824 from Bengkulu, Sumatra on their final journey back to England. That very evening, the ship caught fire due to a steward’s carelessness. Raffles and his wife were evacuated safely, but the fire destroyed Raffles’ extensive collection of Malay Archipelago maps, dictionaries, vocabulary lists, histories, manuscripts, books, natural history drawings, and specimens of plants, birds and animals.
