Dixon Denham

Born in London on January 1, 1786, he first made his name as a British Army officer and served in the Napoleonic Wars. In 1821 he volunteered for an official expedition into central Africa with Walter Oudney and Hugh Clapperton, a journey that took the party south from Tripoli across the Sahara.

That expedition reached Bornu and Lake Chad in 1823, making Denham one of the first Europeans to record the region directly. Accounts of his travels helped introduce many readers in Britain to the political geography of west-central Africa, including the Lake Chad basin and nearby states that were little known in Europe at the time.

Later, he was appointed Governor of Sierra Leone. He died in Freetown in 1828, still only in his early forties, leaving behind a reputation as both a tough military man and one of the notable British explorers of his era.