Hugh Clapperton

Hugh Clapperton (18 May 1788 – 13 April 1827) was a Scottish traveller and explorer of West and Central Africa.

He was born in Annan, Dumfriesshire, where his father was a surgeon. He gained some knowledge of practical mathematics and navigation, and at thirteen was apprenticed on board a vessel which traded between Liverpool and North America. After having made several voyages across the Atlantic Ocean, he was impressed for the navy, in which he soon rose to the rank of midshipman. During the Napoleonic Wars he saw a good deal of active service, and at the storming of Port Louis, Mauritius, in November 1810, he was first in the breach and hauled down the French flag.

In 1814 he went to Canada, was promoted to the rank of lieutenant, and to the command of a schooner on the Canadian lakes. In 1817, when the flotilla on the lakes was dismantled, he returned home on half-pay. In 1820 Clapperton removed to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of Walter Oudney, who aroused his interest in African travel.

Lieutenant G. F. Lyon having returned from an unsuccessful attempt to reach Bornu from Tripoli, the British government determined on a second expedition to that country. Walter Oudney was appointed by Lord Bathurst, then colonial secretary, to proceed to Bornu as consul, accompanied by Hugh Clapperton . From Tripoli, early in 1822, they set out southward to Murzuk, where they were later joined by Dixon Denham, who found both men in a wretched condition. Eventually proceeding south from Murzuk on 29 November 1822, a great antipathy soon developed between Clapperton and Denham, Denham at one stage openly accusing Clapperton of having homosexual relations with one of the Arab servant boys. The accusation was almost certainly unfounded, leading the historian E W Bovill to write that "it remains difficult to recall in all the checkered (sic) history of geographic discovery.... a more odious man than Dixon Denham".

The party eventually reached Kuka (now Kukawa in Nigeria) on 17 February 1823, having earlier become the first white men to see Lake Chad. Whilst at Kuka, Clapperton and Oudney parted company with Denham to visit the Hausa states. Denham remained behind to explore and survey the western, south and south-eastern shores of Lake Chad, and the lower courses of the rivers Waube, Logone and Shari. Clapperton and Oudney reached Bornu where they were well received by the sultan, and after remaining in the region until 14 December, they again set out for the purpose of exploring the course of the Niger River.

However only a few weeks later, Oudney died at Murmur on the road to Kano. Undeterred, Clapperton continued his journey alone through Kano to Sokoto, the capital of the Fulani Empire, where by order of Sultan Muhammed Bello he was obliged to stop, though the Niger was only a five day journey to the west. Exhausted by his travels, he returned by way of Zaria and Katsina to Kuka, where Denham found him barely recognizable after his privations. Denham departed Kuka alone for Tripoli in August, 1824; Clapperton followed, reaching Tripoli on 26 January 1825. An account of his travels was published in 1826 under the title Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the years 1822 - 1823 and 1824.

Immediately after his return to England, Clapperton was raised to the rank of commander, and sent out with another expedition to Africa, the sultan Bello of Sokoto having professed his eagerness to open up trade with the west coast. Clapperton came out on HMS Brazen, which was joining the West Africa Squadron for the suppression of the slave trade. He landed at Badagry in the Bight of Benin, and started overland for the Niger on 7 December 1825, having with him his servant Richard Lemon Lander, Captain Pearce, and Dr. Morrison, navy surgeon and naturalist. Before the month was out Pearce and Morrison were dead of fever. Clapperton continued his journey, and, passing through the Yoruba country, in January 1826 he crossed the Niger at Bussa, the spot where Mungo Park had died twenty years before. In July he arrived at Kano. From there he went to Sokoto, intending afterwards to go to Bornu. The sultan, however, detained him, and being seized with dysentery he died near Sokoto.

Clapperton was the first European to make known from personal observation the Hausa states, which he visited soon after the establishment of the Sokoto Caliphate by the Fula. In 1829 the Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, &c., by Clapperton appeared posthumously, with a biographical sketch of the explorer by his uncle, Lieutenant-Colonel S. Clapperton, as a preface.

Richard Lemon Lander, who had brought back the journal of his master, also published Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa . . . with the subsequent Adventures of the Author (2 volumes, London, 1830).