John Speke

John Speke (1827-1864), British explorer, the first European to sight Lake Victoria and recognize it as the principal source of the Nile River. John Hanning Speke was born near Bideford, in Devon, England, into a wealthy family. At age 17 he joined the British army in India, where he participated in several battles. While abroad, Speke spent time shooting and collecting specimens in the Himalayas and Tibet. In 1854 Speke, who by then considered himself an experienced collector and explorer, headed to Africa to explore. On his way, he met British linguist and explorer Richard Francis Burton in Aden, in southern Arabia (present-day Yemen), and together they planned an expedition to Somalia. Speke arrived in Somalia after Burton, and soon afterward both explorers were wounded in an attack by Somalis. After recovering, Speke fought for Britain in the Crimean War (1853-1856). He then rejoined Burton to explore equatorial Africa in search of the sources of the Nile.

In June 1857 Speke and Burton left the island of Zanzibar for the East African interior. Hardship and illness accompanied them. In February 1858 the expedition sighted Lake Tanganyika, but after discovering that the lake did not empty northward and thus was not a source of the Nile, the party turned back toward Zanzibar. While at rest in Tabora (a village in present-day northwestern Tanzania), the men heard of a massive lake to the north. With Burton ill, Speke made the trip alone and sighted the lake, which he named Victoria Nyanza (Lake Victoria) after the queen of Britain. Based only on its immense size, he declared Lake Victoria to be the source of the Nile.

Burton thought Speke foolish to make such a declaration. However, Speke reached England before Burton, in 1859, and informed the Royal Geographical Society of his “discovery” of the Nile’s source. Burton later contested the claim and added other accusations, and a rift developed between the men that would never heal. In 1860 Speke returned to East Africa, accompanied by British army officer James Augustus Grant, and in 1861 he again reached Lake Victoria. This time Speke explored west of the lake and visited the kingdom of Buganda. Unaccompanied by Grant, Speke explored the north end of Lake Victoria. There, in 1862, Speke spotted the falls where the Nile issued from the lake’s waters. He named them Ripon Falls after the president of the Royal Geographical Society. Joined again by Grant, Speke proceeded downriver to Khartoum in Sudan and Cairo in Egypt.

Burton and other prominent British explorers and geographers continued to dispute Speke’s claim that he had located the Nile’s source. In September 1864 the British Association for the Advancement of Science arranged a public meeting for Burton and Speke to debate their views. The day before the event, Speke died while hunting when his gun discharged, apparently accidentally, into his chest. Some speculated, without evidence, that Speke preferred death to facing Burton. Speke’s published works include Journal of the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1863) and What Led to the Discovery of the Source of the Nile (1864).