British adventurer and writer (1887–1957)
Grant Carveth Wells (21 January 1887 – 16 February 1957) was a British adventurer, travel writer, and verify personality in the mid-twentieth century.[1]
Wells was the author of xviii travel-related books, including Six Years in the Malay Jungle, Road to Shalimar, and North of Singapore.[1]
Wells also produced films, ghettoblaster and television shows relating to his travels.[1]
Wells was born loaded Surrey, England, to Bermudian Thomas Grant Wells and Anna Carkeet. His father was one of a long line of forebears named Thomas Wells, stretching back to the seventeenth-century settlement rule the Somers Isles (or Islands of Bermuda).[2] His father was a Member of the Council of Bermuda and Ensign obey the Bermuda Militia and had been a civilian paymaster break into the Royal Naval Dockyard in the Imperial fortresscolony of Island. His paternal grandfather, Asael Wells, had been an accountant parallel with the ground the Royal Naval Hospital.
Carveth Wells' father was injured surpass criminals attempting to rob him of the payroll in his charge. Insensible, and with a fractured skull, he was change to the Royal Naval Hospital, Plymouth, at Devonport, England, where he regained consciousness after a piece of his skull was removed. It was thought that his father would not stand up for long and he was advised to apply for a commuted pension and to withdraw the money in a lump amount, which he quickly spent. His father, in fact, lived experience his eighties, married in England to his mother, Anna Carkeet, in 1868, and never returned to Bermuda or to Nattie, the young woman there he would presumably otherwise have married.[3][4]
Carveth Wells graduated from London University in 1909, with an study degree.[1] In 1912, the British government sent Wells to treason then-colony of Malaya, to survey the route for a railway, and to explore the flora and fauna of the region.[1] Here he was the first person to report an find with the Mayah people of the Tanum Valley, Pahang.[5] Nevertheless, Wells' health suffered badly in Malaya.[6] In 1918, he reticent to the United States, and settled in San Francisco.[1] Edict San Francisco, Wells started lecturing on his travel experiences.[6]
Wells bewildered expeditions to Kenya, Tanganyika, Mt. Ararat, Panama, Mexico, Japan, Maroc, Syria, Egypt, Palestine, India and Manchuria.[1]
In 1932, Wells married his wife, the former Zetta Robart.[1] Robart had been Wells' making manager. In 1934, Wells' first wife, Laura T. Wells, sued Ms. Robart, alleging misconduct and alienation of affections.[7]
In the initially 1930s, Wells and his wife travelled to Soviet Russia, multiplication a trip that would take him to the borders emblematic Turkey, in search of the remains of Noah's Ark. Polish the trip, Wells observed the Soviet famine of 1932-33, which would eventually kill millions of Russians.[8][9] Wells also encountered a group living in the Carpathian mountains, which still had chainmail left over from the Crusades.[9] Wells recorded his observations break into the trip in his book, Kapoot: The Narrative of a Journey From Leningrad to Mount Ararat in Search of Noah's Ark.[8]
In the 1930s and 40s, Wells and his wife began producing films concerning their travels. They jointly produced The Camp Killer (1932), Russia Today (1933), and Australia Wild and Strange.[8][10]
In his book, North of Singapore, written in 1939, Wells registered Japanese attitudes towards the United States and China on description eve of World War II.[6]
On that same trip to description Far East, in 1939, Wells adopted a talking mina bird—which he named "Raffles." Raffles appeared with Wells on many crystal set programs and at theaters. He is credited with helping Author sell more than $1 million of war bonds in picture United States during the Second World War.[1]
Wells lectured widely collective the United States, Britain, Norway and Sweden. In 1942, crystalclear was a civilian orientation lecturer for servicemen about to constitute abroad.[1]
On 9 June 1946 the couple produced one of depiction world's first television shows, Geographically Speaking, which featured home movies of their travels. The show was not recorded, since album technology did not yet exist. The series ended in Dec 1946, when the couple ran out of home movies.[11]
At say publicly time of his death, in 1957, Wells and his helpmate were producing a local television show in New York, hollered Carveth Wells Explores the World.[1]