Imperial Britain was no longer fighting any wars by the 1820s, so a pause in warfare allowed it to focus more of its attention on exploration. For Britain, exploration had a dual purpose; it was fundamentally interested in science, in mapping out the geographic boundaries of countries, of knowing their geology, their history, their social structure, their politics and above all their natural resources.

When foreign countries were 'discovered' and charted and the superior civilization with its weaponry and discipline and ongoing search for widening its empire with the British Empire version of  satrapies, theirs by conquest in a world where seafaring European countries like Europe, Spain, Holland, Portugal, Italy and France were looking for new lands they could dominate and extract riches from to further their own fortunes, the competition was fierce, the stakes high, and the mass looting satisfactory to European entitlements.

At the time in question, the British Admiralty had an excess fleet of ships, no longer dispatched to fight competitive wars, but at the ready with seafaring personnel ready and willing to lend themselves to the national effort of mounting expeditions. Not only the polar regions were being explored but exotic locales of the world like the far east, and as well, Africa. The Second Secretary of the Admiralty was obsessed with the Niger River, eager to know what it linked to, where it ended, all in the interests of furthering trade.



The British Admiralty dispatched expedition after expedition, both on the high seas and overland. In 1821 the search was on to "investigate the region's natural history, to open the area to British commerce and to inquire into the nature of sub-Saharan life -- they were to search diligently for any large river 'principally with a view of tracing the course of the Niger and ascertaining its embouchure." Some of these expeditions were well planned and funded, commanded by men whose experience and intrepid intelligence made them a legend in their time.

Others were not. Did the Niger join the Nile? was one of the queries demanding an answer and documentation to prove it. When those assigned to the task to survey the coast of North Africa between Tripoli and Alexandria for the purpose of producing useful navigation materials setting out the geography in navigable-ready charts, one of the recommendations returned with the completed charts was for members of the British Navy to ditch their formal uniforms and dress as the natives do, otherwise risk rejection, contempt and lack of cooperation. Once Muslim traders knew they were dealing with Christians all cooperation was summarily halted.

One expedition set out for Timbuktu with 37 camel-loads of trade goods, prepared to astonish the natives and their leaders with the largess that Britain was prepared to bestow upon those who give aid in  helping to guide the expedition to areas in question as requested. It was well known that Arabs living in North Africa had a robust and vastly remunerative trade in black slaves, that regular raids were conducted, and thousands of black Africans were rounded up, marched or shipped off to slavery, bought and sold in established slave markets.

'Slaves captured from a dhow' (Arab sailing vessel)

"The road from Murzouk to Lake Chad was 700 miles long and strewn so thickly with the remains of the some 8,500 slaves who died annually on the journey north that Oudney's party moved with an audible crunching sound. Denham, who had been dozing on his horse, 'was suddenly awakened by a crashing under his feet, which startled me excessively. I found that my steed had . . . stepped upon the perfect skeletons of two human beings, cracking their brittle bones under his feet, and by one trip of his foot separating a skull from the trunk, which rolled like a ball before him. This event gave me a sensation which it took some time to remove'."

"For days on end they trampled through the brittle remains. In places -- wells which had obviously failed in past seasons -- the skeletons lay in drifts 100 deep. Sometimes the bones were scattered in all directions -- 'here a leg, there an arm, fixed with their ligaments at considerable distance from the trunk. What could have done this?' Oudney asked in wonder. 'Man forced by hunger, or the camels?'

Sometimes, more movingly, they retained the postures of life. 'Those of two women, whose perfect and regular teeth bespoke them young, were particularly shocking', wrote Denham. 'Their arms still remained clasped around each other as they had expired, although the flesh had long since perished by being exposed to the burning rays of the sun, and the blackened bones only left; the nails of the fingers, and some of the sinews of the hand, also remained; and part of the tongue of one of them still appeared in the teeth'."
From: Barrow's Boys, Fergus Fleming

Arab captors and Zanzibar workers   The Coli