An exercise book containing a journal kept by Ellen Maria Wilson, a passenger on the ZUNGERU, travelling from Eket in Nigeria to Plymouth, from 4 November 1909 to 30 November 1909. Wilson was returning home from missionary work with the Qua Iboe Mission. Her journal covers events up to the ship’s arrival at Las Palmas, Canary Islands - this includes leopards on board were one night they broke loose of their chain and bar keeper awoke to find it in his room. She also goes into detail about some of the other passengers that come on board and describes the rough weather and how it affects different people.

Administrative / biographical background
Ellen Maria Wilson was born in 1885 at Romford in Essex. She became a missionary with the Qua Iboe Mission in Nigeria in 1909. There she met her future husband George Kearley Weeks. After their marriage at Romford in 1910, Ellen and George returned to Nigeria to resume their missionary work, funded by Thornton Heath Mission (later Thornton Heath Evangelical Free Church). Later in life they lived at Honiton in Devon. Ellen was living in Stonehouse, Gloucester, when she died in 1975. An archive collection relating to George and Ellen Weeks in Nigeria, circa 1908-1932, is held at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge. The Qua Iboe organisation became known as Mission Africa in 2002. The ZUNGERU ex BRUXELLESVILLE (1904) was a passenger/cargo steamer operated by the African Steamship Co. Ltd., London, managed by Elder, Dempster & Co.