Richard Lander

Richard Lander (1804–1834) was an English explorer born in Truro, Cornwall, the son of an innkeeper, who went to Africa in 1825 as servant to Captain Hugh Clapperton and was the only European to survive the expedition to Sokoto, bringing Clapperton's journals back to the coast alone. His Records of the expedition appeared in 1830. That year he and his brother John returned to West Africa and followed the Niger to its mouth, for which the Royal Geographical Society gave him its first gold medal. On a third expedition in 1834 he was wounded in an attack on the river and died at Fernando Po, aged twenty-nine.