Hugh Clapperton

Explorer, born in Annan, Dumfries and Galloway, SW Scotland, UK. At sea with the Royal Navy from the age of 13, he attained the rank of captain. He was sent in 1821 with Dixon Denham to discover the source of the Niger. They travelled S across the Sahara to L Chad in 1823; from there he pushed on alone to Sokoto, returning to England in 1825, the first European to have entered N Nigeria. He started again from the Bight of Benin in December 1825, travelling N in company with Richard Lander and others, but died near Sokoto.

Hugh Clapperton (May 18, 1788 - April 13, 1827), Scottish traveller and explorer of West and Central Africa.

He was born in at Annan, Dumfriesshire, where his father was a surgeon.

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 1820 Clapperton removed to Edinburgh, where he made the acquaintance of Walter Oudney, who aroused in him an interest in African travel.

Lieutenant G. Walter Oudney was appointed by Lord Bathurst, then colonial secretary, to proceed to Bornu as consul and Hugh Clapperton and Dixon Denham were added to the party. From Tripoli, early in 1822, they set out southward to Murzuk, and from this point Clapperton and Oudney visited the Ghat oasis.

At Murmur, on the road to Kano, Oudney died (January 1824). Clapperton continued his journey alone through Kano to Sokoto, the capital of the Fula Empire, where by order of Sultan Bello he was obliged to stop, though the Niger was only five days' journey to the west. An account of the travels was published in under the title of Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa in the years 1822 - 1823 and 1824 (1826).

Immediately after his return 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 landed at Badagry in the Bight of Benin, and started overland for the Niger on the December 7 1825, having with him his servant Richard Lemon Lander, Captain Pearce, and Dr. Morrison, navy surgeon and naturalist. 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.

Clapperton was the first European to make known from personal observation the semi-civilized Hausa countries, which he visited soon after the establishment of the Sokoto Empire by the Fula. In 1829 appeared the Journal of a Second Expedition into the Interior of Africa, &c., by the late Clapperton, to which was prefaced a biographical sketch of the explorer by his uncle, Lieut.-colonel S. Clapperton.

Richard Lemon Lander, who had brought back the journal of his master, also published Records of Captain Clapperton's Last Expedition to Africa .