Biography

British explorer and colonial administrator. Born in London and educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Dixon Denham volunteered for the army during the Napoleonic wars and served as an officer in the Iberian Peninsula and Belgium, later becoming a peacetime instructor at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst.

Meanwhile, British expeditions to trace the source of the Niger River from West Africa, originally begun by explorer Mungo Park, had failed. When a proposal was then made to approach the Niger from Tripoli, where friendly relations had been established with the ruling Turkish pasha, Denham, who had a reputation as a pushy and arrogant man, volunteered his services to the Colonial Office. He was not only accepted but appointed leader of the expedition over the head of the previously named chief, Walter Oudney, and second-in-command Hugh Clapperton. On this sour note, the three explorers set out from Tripoli in April 1822, spent six months in Murzuq, the capital of Fezzan, awaiting a military escort, and finally journeyed south across the Sahara Desert along a long-established trade route littered with the skeletons of slaves abandoned over the centuries. After a gruelling desert crossing, they arrived at Lake Chad, the first Europeans to see it, and reached Kuka (later Kukawa) the capital of Bornu (later Nigeria) where they were welcomed by 5,000 horsemen, some sporting medieval chain-mail armour, sent by the local ruler and Muslim prophet Sheikh Muhammed el Kanemi who at that time was warring with neighbouring Fulani. Unwillingly, the sheikh let Denham join the fray, where he was wounded and almost captured before returning to Kuka.

The expedition now split up. Denham explored Lake Chad to determine if it was the source of the Niger or Nile, while Oudney and Clapperton set off west for Kano. On the way, Oudney died of fever, but Clapperton pressed on through the Hausa kingdom to its capital Sokoto, whose Sultan ruler, fearing for his safety, denied him permission to explore further. Returning in frustration to Kuka, he and Denham made the long and terrible trek back through the desert to Tripoli, reaching England in June 1825. There Denham was feted as a hero, elected Fellow of the Royal Society, and published his Narrative of Travels and Discoveries in Northern and Central Africa (1826). Clapperton, meanwhile, despite poor health, embarked again for Africa on the Niger quest, and died of pneumonia.

In 1827, Denham, now a lieutenant-colonel, was sent to Sierra Leone to reorganise the liberated African department, caring for slaves rescued by the British in Freetown. Travelling through villages where the liberated slaves were now settled, he sent detailed recommendations to the Colonial Office. In time he became the lieutenant-governor, but died shortly after of fever in Freetown on 9 June 1828. The genus Denhamia Meissn. was named after him.