Lost at Sea! Raffles and the wildlife of Southeast Asia

When the East Indiaman ship the Fame sank 200 years ago, Sir Stamford Raffles’ vast collections of natural history specimens and drawings from Sumatra and Singapore were lost forever. Raffles, a British East India Company official, found fame as the ‘founder’ of modern Singapore. He is also known as the founder of London Zoo and for the ‘discovery’ of Rafflesia, the giant flower of Sumatra. Why was Raffles collecting animals and plants in Southeast Asia, and how did some birds collected for Raffles end up in Liverpool?