After the failure of James Kingston Tuckey's expedition to the Congo in 1816, the authorities felt that the best course to follow was to send an expedition across the Sahara Desert to reach the lower Niger, and accordingly a caravan under Dr Joseph Ritchie (ca 1788 - 1819) and a naval captain, George Francis Lyon (1795 - 1832) started from Tripoli in 1818 and reached the country of Fezzan. Here Ritchie died, and Lyon was forced to return. Lyon had wrongly come to the conclusion that the Niger must enter Lake Chad and then flow on to join the Nile. The direction of the British government's next expedition was influenced by Lyon's mistaken theory. This time the plan was to go to Bornu, the kingdom around Lake Chad, using the same caravan route which had been taken by the German, Frederick Hornemann, in 1798.
Four years later, in 1822, a much stronger expedition to Bornu and Lake Chad was mounted. A three-man team for the expedition to Bornu and Lake Chad was selected in London. The explorers were an Edinburgh doctor and botanist, Walter Oudney, a naval lieutenant, also from Edinburgh, Hugh Clapperton and an army officer, Dixon Denham.
Clapperton had been born in Annan in Dumfriesshire in 1788. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed as a cabin boy in a ship trading between Liverpool and America. After making several voyages to North America, he had either entered or been press-ganged into the Navy and sent to the Mediterranean. There, through the influence of an uncle, he was promoted from the lower deck to midshipman. After serving in the East Indies, he was sent to Canada where he remained from 1814 to 1816. During those two years, he saw much active service, in the course of which he proved himself a man of great courage and hardihood. In 1817, having promoted to lieutenant, he was placed on half-pay and went to live in Scotland. A tall, strong and handsome man, with a fine service record and considerable foreign experience, he must have seemed an admirable addition to the intended expedition.
The expedition left Tripoli in early 1822, and began their journey across the desert with a caravan of camels and equipment. Before long all three were sick with malaria. Although they were really to ill to attempt to cross the desert, they struggled on until they reached Lake Chad. The journey from Tripoli had taken them 11 months, but the result made it worthwhile, as they were the first Europeans to see the lake. At Kukawa, the capital of the kingdom of Bornu, the party camped. They then explored the lake and concluded that it was not the key to the mystery of the Niger, as had been suggested by Lyon. None of the rivers flowing from the west was big enough to be the Niger, and no great river flowed out of it to the east.
Having found and explored Lake Chad, the party split up. Denham set off to the southeast to follow the Chari River. Clapperton and Oudney decided to make for the Niger by going west through the Hausa states. They joined a caravan travelling westward to Kano under the direction of a merchant named Fezzan. Clapperton and Oudney were still following in the footsteps of Hornemann, although his objective had been Katsina, not Kano. Oudney, however, died before they reached their destination. Clapperton pressed on to Kano, the capital of the Hausa kingdom and a trading centre with a reputation as legendary as that of Timbuktu. During the journey, Clapperton must have learned much about Kano from the merchants in the caravan and particularly from its leader, Fezzan. At first, Clapperton was disappointed with the city, but he soon became interested in the life around him and he recorded numerous details about the life and customs of Kano.
On leaving Kano, Clapperton went on to Sokoto, the Fulani capital. Sokoto was a more powerful city than the older and more famous Kano. The ruler of the Fulani, Mohammed Bello, was the most powerful man in the whole of western Sudan, and knew something of the outside world. He welcomed Clapperton kindly, but refused to allow him to continue his journey to the Niger, less than 150 miles away. When Clapperton asked about the course of the river, Mohammed Bello sketched in the sand a diagram showing the river entering the sea, but a map later shown to Clapperton, apparently drawn according to Bello's instructions, and perhaps designed to confuse him, showed that the Niger flowed northeast to reach Egypt. Clapperton thought that this second map was a deliberate fake prepared to put him off going south to the river.
Mohammed Bello and his advisers put heavy pressure on Clapperton to dissuade him from pressing on the Niger. It was perfectly true that the country was disturbed and that there would have been danger. However, all evidence suggests that Mohammed Bello had simply decided to discourage inquisitive strangers. He was, however, anxious to establish good relations with Britain, especially if they would enable him to improve trade, purchase muskets, and obtain a British physician for his court. Eventually, having convinced Clapperton of the futility of heading in any other direction, Mohammed Bello provided him with an escort and set him on the eastward road. He sent a letter to the British king with Clapperton expressing his willingness to co-operate in ending the slave trade and a wish to establish trade with Britain.
On his return journey, Clapperton met Denham at Kukawa. Denham had been searching for him. The trek from Lake Chad back to Tripoli took them from mid-September 1824 to the end of January 1825. In spite of all they had been through, Clapperton and Denham heartily despised each other, yet they were forced to spend day after day in each other's company. To make matters worse, Clapperton was going back to Tripoli without having reached Timbuktu or the Niger. Denham , too, became depressed by the intense hardships of the return journey. At long last the two dejected explorers reached Tripoli.
In Tripoli, Clapperton learned from the British Consul, Hanmer Warrington, that Alexander Laing had received official backing in London for a journey to the Niger.The government wanted Laing to travel across the Sahara to Timbuktu, after which he was to proceed to the Niger and explore the river to its mouth. Clapperton was absolutely convinced that he had learned the secret of the Niger from the map which Mohammed Bello had originally drawn in the sand. He felt sure that if only he could get to the Niger, he could sail to the sea. It would be a bitter disappointment to be forestalled by Laing.
Back in London, Clapperton's success in reaching Kano had made him famous. The letter he carried from Mohammed Bello also impressed the government officials. Two months after his arrival in England from Tripoli, Clapperton sailed for Africa in H.M.S.Brazen with a party consisting of two doctors (Dickson and Morrison), two black servants, a Captain Pearce and Richard Lander, who was Clapperton's manservant. By November 1825, they had reached the Bight of Benin and had landed at Badagri on the coast of what is now Nigeria. By the time Clapperton had journeyed 200 miles inland, three of his English companions, including Pearce, had died of malaria, and he was alone with Lander. By coincidence, Clapperton's route northward to Sokoto took him past the falls of Bussa where Mungo Park had died. There he first saw the Niger. He crossed the river and struggled on north-eastward to Kano. From Kano, he travelled on to Sokoto, where Mohammed Bello was involved in a new war against Bornu, but was no longer interested in entering into diplomatic relations with England. Bello was still against Clapperton's continuing to the Bornu country, and he was also opposed to Clapperton's having anything to do with the enemies of the Fulani. It eventually transpired that what had really upset Bello were the letters of introduction and gifts for the Sultan of Bornu which Clapperton and Lander had in their baggage. At an audience with the Sultan in February 1827, Bello agreed to send Clapperton to the sea by way of the Niger, thus ensuring the success of the expedition. However, before setting out, Clapperton became very ill with malaria and dysentery. By March, he was completely incapacitated and, in spite of Lander's constant nursing, died on 13 April 1827.
The death of Clapperton left Lander in a precarious situation. He was completely without anyone he could trust, deep in a country where the local tribesmen were hostile to European travelers. His duty was to return to England with Clapperton's papers. Lander did not trust the Arabs with whom he would have to travel if he went north across the desert. He also badly wanted to try to find the Niger and trace its course, but it was now May and the rainy season. From Kano, accompanied by only one slave and a servant boy, he made his way back to Badagri and boarded a ship for home, arriving back in England in April 1828. He delivered his master's papers to the officials in London, and then began to write an account of their adventures. Together with his brother John, Lander eventually returned to Africa and succeeded in canoeing down the Niger from Bussa to the sea.
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This page was written for Discoverers Web by Leigh Rayment. For which our gratitude.