Lander, Richard Lemon

Lander, Richard Lemon (1804-1834), British explorer of West Africa, who determined the true course of the River Niger, thus completing the work of Mungo Park. Before Lander established that the river flowed to the Atlantic Ocean, geographers believed that the Niger was a tributary of the Nile.

Lander was born in Cornwall, England, the son of an innkeeper. When he was 13 years old, he sailed to the West Indies to work for a merchant. In his later teens, Lander saw much of Europe while working as an assistant to travellers. He also visited South Africa. In 1825 the Scottish explorer Hugh Clapperton hired Lander as his assistant on an expedition to determine the course of the Niger. Clapperton died while they were still in the interior of West Africa, leaving Lander as the only surviving European member of the expedition. Lander did not complete the mission, but he managed to reach the coast and returned to England in 1828.

In 1830 the British government commissioned Lander to complete the exploration of the Niger. Accompanied by his brother John, a guide, and a party of porters, Lander headed inland from Lagos, on the coast of present-day Nigeria. They reached the Niger at Bussa (as far downstream as Park had reached in 1806) and explored upriver for about 160 km (100 mi). Returning downstream, they explored the Benue River, the Niger's main tributary, and the Niger's coastal delta. On their way downstream Lander and his brother were taken hostage by the Igbo. Their captors took them down the Niger to the coast, hoping that visiting Europeans there would pay a ransom for their release. Lander and his brother were eventually released on the promise of a ransom, and found passage on a ship bound for Brazil (the ransom was later paid by the British Colonial Office). They returned to Britain in 1831. Lander's descent of the uncharted section of the Niger from Bussa to its outlet in the Gulf of Guinea revealed that the river did not flow into the Nile, as was once speculated, but to the southern coast of West Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1832 the Royal Geographical Society awarded Lander a cash prize for this major achievement in African exploration, as well as its gold medal (the first it had awarded to an explorer).

Lander returned to West Africa in 1832 to lead trading expeditions up the Niger. Two years later he was wounded in an attack at the inland settlement of Angiama. He managed to return to the coast, but died of his injuries on what is now Bioko Island in Equatorial Guinea. Lander wrote several books, including the story of his expedition up the Niger in Journal of an Expedition to Explore the Course and Termination of the Niger (1832).