Richard burton and john hanning speke

John Hanning Speke  ©>Speke was an English explorer and the first European to reach Lake Victoria in east Africa, which he correctly identified as the long-sought source of the Nile.

John Hanning Speke was born on 4 May 1827 in Bideford in Devon.

He was commissioned into the British army in 1844 and posted to India where he served in the Punjab and travelled in the Himalayas and Tibet. In April 1855, as part of Richard Burton's expedition to explore Somaliland, Speke was severely wounded in an attack by the Somalis.

Invalided home, he volunteered for the Crimea and served during the war with a regiment of Turks.

In December 1856, Speke accepted an invitation from Burton to join an expedition to search for the reported great lakes in east central Africa and, particularly, to try and find Lake Nyassa, said to be the origin of the Nile.

They left Zanzibar in June 1857 and, after exploring the East African coast for six months to find the be