English physician and naturalist, Clarke Abel was born into a Norfolk family, his father trading as Matthias Abel & Son, Grocers, Drapers & Bankers (Norfolk & Suffolk Bank). Abel trained as a surgeon, practising at Norwich and later at Halesworth.
He joined the diplomatically ill-fated embassy of Lord Amherst to China (1816-1817) as physician but on the recommendation of Joseph Banks, was given the additional office of naturalist. The officials of the mission and ship's officers were some of the earliest europeans to make collections from the interior of China. The mission also visited other countries and provided the first western account of the Ryuku Islands (Japan), creating a sensation with descriptions of an idyllic and weapon-free society.
Abel's main collections were lost in the shipwreck of HMS Alceste (18 February 1817) on a hitherto uncharted reef off the Indonesian island of Pulau Liat. Two boats were sent to Jakarta (Batavia) to summon help while Captain Murray Maxwell and most of the crew sought refuge on the small, uninhabited island. After two weeks, rescuers arrived to find the survivors holding off a blockade by some sixty boats of Malay pirates, that had already raided and burned the hull of the ship. Sketches from some of the expedition's artists showing the ship being burned by the pirates appear in later reports, including the publication by H. Ellis (1777-1869), principal librarian of the British Museum.
Also lost in the shipwreck was material collected for Abel by several colleagues and live material tended by Mr James Hooper, a gardener from the Royal Gardens at Kew (K), who would later become curator of the Buitenzorg Botanic Garden (1817-1830). Less publicised losses were the tea plants smuggled from China, part of a secret plan formulated by Joseph Banks for the East India Company, to grow tea in British territories and redress the rapidly growing trade deficit with China. Banks did not live to see his plan succeed but, over the next few decades, the work of Robert Bruce (-1824), his brother Charles (1793-1871), Archibald Campbell (1805-1874) and Robert Fortune (1812-1880) would create the foundation which led to India becoming the tea-growing capital of the world.
A small duplicate collection of Abel's specimens had been given to Sir G.T. Staunton who had joined part of the expedition, and who subsequently returned the specimens to Abel. Surviving Chinese specimens are at BM by way of the Banks herbarium, bequeathed to Robert Brown, and transferred to the Museum in 1827. They include types of new taxa described by Brown in the appendix to Abel's Narrative of a Journey in the Interior of China. In honour of Dr Abel, Brown named the genus Abelia R. Br., based on A. chinensis R. Br. which is typified by Abel's original specimen (BM) from the shores of the 'Po-Yang lake' (Poyang Hu) on the Yangtze river.
Abel published observations on algae and pteridophyes and presumably collected cryptogams; he also made zoological and geological collections. Lord Amherst subsequently became Governor-General of India (1823-1828), the major event of his administration being the first Anglo-Burmese war (1824-1826). He took Clarke Abel as his physician but, the same year that the war ended, Abel died at Cawnpore (Kanpur) aged just 37.
