John Hanning Speke (4 May 1827 – 15 September 1864) was an English explorer and army officer who made three exploratory expeditions to Africa. He is most associated with the search for the source of the Nile and, with Richard Burton, was the first European to reach Lake Victoria.
Life Early life Speke was born on 4 May 1827 at Orleigh Court, Buckland Brewer, near Bideford, North Devon. His father was William Speke and an uncle was John Lee Lee.
In the British Indian Army In 1844 Speke was commissioned into the Bengal Army and posted to British India, where he served in the 46th Regiment of Bengal Native Infantry under Sir Hugh Gough during the Punjab campaign and under Sir Colin Campbell during the First Anglo-Sikh War. He was promoted lieutenant in 1850 and captain in 1852. He spent his leave exploring the Himalayan Mountains and Mount Everest and once crossed into Tibet.
Joining Burton's expedition In 1854 he made his first voyage to Africa, first arriving in Aden to ask permission of the Political Resident of this British Outpost to cross the Gulf of Aden and collect specimens in Somalia for his family's natural history museum in Somerset. This was refused as Somalia was considered rather dangerous. Speke then asked to join an expedition about to leave for Somalia led by the already famous Richard Burton who had Lt William Stroyan and Lt Herne recruited to come along, but a recent death left the expedition one person short. Speke was accepted because he had travelled in remote regions alone before, had experience collecting and preserving natural history specimens and had done astronomical surveying. Initially the party split with Burton going to Harrar, Abyssinia, and Speke going to Wadi Nogal in Somalia.
During this trip Speke experienced trouble with the local guide, who cheated him; after they returned to Aden, Burton, who had also returned, saw that the guide was punished, jailed and killed. This incident probably led to larger troubles later on. Then all four men travelled to Berbera on the coast of Somalia, from where they wanted to trek inland towards the Ogaden.
Berbera confrontation While camped outside Berbera, they were attacked at night by 200 spear-wielding Somalis. During this fracas Speke ducked under the flap of a tent to get a clearer view of the scene, and Burton thought he was retreating and called for Speke to stand firm. Speke did so and then charged forward with great courage, shooting several attackers. The misunderstanding laid the foundation of their later disputes and dislikes. Stroyan was killed by a spear, Burton was seriously wounded by a javelin impaling both cheeks and Speke was wounded and captured; Herne came away unwounded. Speke was tied up and stabbed several times with spears, one thrust cutting through his thigh along his femur and exiting. Showing tremendous determination, he used his bound fists to give his attacker a facial punch; this gave him an opportunity to escape, albeit he was followed by a group of Somalis and had to dodge spears as he ran for his life. Rejoining Burton and Herne, the trio eventually managed to escape with a boat passing along the coast. The expedition was a severe financial loss, and Speke's natural history specimens from his earlier leg were used to make up for some of it. Speke handed Burton his diaries, which Burton used as an appendix in his own book on his travels to Harrar. It seemed unlikely that the two would join again and Burton believed that he would never lead an expedition to the interior of Africa, his fervent hope, after this failed journey.
Search for the Nile source, 1856–1859
In 1856, Speke and Burton went to East Africa to find the Great Lakes, which were rumoured to exist in the centre of the continentWhere is the Source of the Nile?, , sportsafari.africa, Uganda, accessed on April, 2026. It was hoped that the expedition would locate the source of the Nile (known to locals as Kiyira in Luganda). The journey, which started from Zanzibar Island in June 1857, where they stayed at the residence of Atkins Hamerton, the British consul, was extremely strenuous and both men fell ill from a variety of tropical diseases once they went inland. Most of the day to day work of exploration was carried out by a large, diverse, and changing labour force of porters, soldiers, guides, and cooks.
By 7 November 1857, they had travelled over 600 miles on foot and donkey and reached Kazeh (Tabora), where they rested and recuperated among Arab slave traders who had a settlement there. In Kazeh Burton became gravely ill and Speke went temporarily blind as they travelled further west. After an arduous journey, the two arrived in Ujiji in February 1858 and became the first Europeans to reach Lake Tanganyika (although Speke was partially blind at this point and could not properly see the lake). They decided to explore the lake, but it was vast and they could get only small canoes from the locals. Burton was too ill to journey, and thus Speke crossed the lake with a small crew and some canoes to try to rent a larger vessel from an Arab who, they were told, had a large boat and lived on the west side of the lake. (Lake Tanganyika is over 400 miles long on the north–south axis but only about 30 miles wide.) During this trip Speke, marooned on an island, suffered severely when he became temporarily deaf after a beetle crawled into his ear and he tried to remove it with a knife. Unable to rent the larger vessel from the Arab, Speke returned. The pair were unable to explore Lake Tanganyika properly and they initially misunderstood that a river flowed out of it from the north side. A few weeks later the explorer and guide Sidi Mubarak Bombay confirmed via locals that the river flowed into the lake; however, since neither man actually saw this river, this remained a source of speculation.
Speke's travels to Lake Victoria They had also heard of a second lake to the north-east, and in May 1858, they decided to explore it on the way back to the coast. But Burton was too weak to make the trip and thus stayed in base camp when the main caravan halted again at Kazeh. Speke went on a 47-day side trip that was 452 miles up and down in which he took 34 men with Bombay and Mabruki as his captains and on 30 July 1858 became the first European to see Lake Victoria (known to locals as Nam Lolwe in the Dholuo language and Nnalubaale in the Luganda language or Ukerewe). Speke renamed the lake after the British monarch, Queen Victoria, and was one of the first persons to map it. It was this lake that eventually proved to be the source of the River Nile. However, much of the expedition's survey equipment had been lost at this point and thus vital questions about the height and extent of the lake could not be answered easily. Speke's eyes were still bothering him and he only saw a small part of the southern end of the lake and his view was blocked by islands in the lake so he could not judge the size of the lake well. However, Speke did estimate the elevation of Lake Victoria at 4000 feet by observing the temperature at which water boiled at that level. (This lake's being substantially higher than Lake Tanganyika did make it a more likely candidate for the source of the Nile.)
From the beginning, the relationship of Speke and Burton was one of opposites; Burton considered Speke inferior linguistically and a less experienced traveller in remote regions (which was partially true), but Burton himself appears to have been jealous and far less able to relate to the safari caravan to keep the expedition motivated and moving (a vital factor as they were completely dependent on their safari crew). While Speke enjoyed hunting and thus provided the caravan with meat, Burton was not much interested in such pursuits. Burton was appointed the head of the expedition and considered Speke the second in command, although the pair seemed to have shared the hardships and labours of the journey pretty much evenly. Once it became clear that Speke might have found the source of the Nile the relationship deteriorated further. Why Burton did not journey back to Lake Victoria with Speke to make a better reconnaissance of the Lake after Speke returned to base camp in Kazeh is unclear. Burton was incapacitated and had to be carried by bearers but this had been true for a great deal of the trip.
While Speke and Burton were instrumental in bringing the source of the Nile to the wider world and were the first to record and map this section of Africa, the efforts and labours of Sidi Mubarak Bombay and Mabruki were instrumental in the discovery of the lake. Bombay was captured as a child near Lake Nyasa by slave traders and was sold to Indian merchants on the coast of Africa who took him to Sindh. Thus he spoke Hindustani, and after his master's death he sailed back to Zanzibar, where Speke and Burton met and hired him. Both spoke Hindustani, which greatly facilitated the travel in the interior as Bombay spoke several native languages beside Swahili. Speke was much attached to Bombay and spoke highly of his honesty and conscientiousness. Bombay's efforts in dealing with hostile tribes, interpreting and keeping the safari crew on track, was a great help to the expedition. Less is known of Mabruki, the other caravan leader, but he was later known as Mabruki Speke, and like Bombay became one of East Africa's great caravan leaders and was also a member of the Yao tribe like Bombay. Because of Speke's recommendations, both Bombay and Mabruki served on Henry Stanley's 1871 expedition to find Livingstone.
Return to England and debate over the source of the Nile On 26 September 1858 the return journey from Kazeh was started with 152 porters; both men had to return as their military leaves were coming to an end, although Jeal contends that they could have extended the trip by asking for an extension, as their clear mission statement of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS) was to find the source of the Nile. The expedition had lost a great many people through desertions, disease and hostilities, but in Kazeh, on the return journey, Mabruki had recruited local porters. Again Speke and Burton suffered from severe illnesses and had to be carried in a litter (machilla) by the porters some of the way. Once Speke and Burton were back on the coast they went by ship to Zanzibar and then travelled to Aden. Once in Aden, Burton was not granted a medical certificate to travel and thus Speke left on and arrived in England on 8 May 1859. Burton was not far behind and he arrived on 21 May 1859. When back at the coast Burton had written a letter to Norton Shaw of the Royal Geographical Society (which had partially sponsored the journey) in which Burton enclosed a map of Lake Victoria made by Speke and wrote "there are grave reasons for believing it (the lake) to be the source of the principal feeder of the White Nile".