Geoscientist Online

Everyone has heard of Livingstone, but the name of Richard Thornton, Livingstone’s geologist, has been completely forgotten. Richard Boak tells his sad story.

Geoscientist 21.07 August 2011

In 1858, missionary explorer David Livingstone was at the height of his fame. He had returned to Britain at the end of 1856 a national hero, after a spectacular coast-to-coast journey across southern Africa. He was a celebrity. His book was an immediate bestseller; he won the Gold Medal of the Royal Geographical Society (RGS); he was mobbed wherever he lectured and was granted a private audience by Queen Victoria.

Image: Richard Thornton, aged 19, on the eve of the expedition. Photograph by Henry Berton, London, frontispiece in to J P R Wallis reference (see Further Reading).

But Livingstone’s heart was still in Africa, and he lobbied government to fund an official expedition to the River Zambezi. On his trans-continental journey, he had passed the Batoka Plateau, an area just north of the Zambezi. With healthy climate and good agricultural potential, Livingstone saw it as the ideal place to introduce commerce and Christianity, the twin forces that would civilise the ‘dark continent’. The key to the plan was the Zambezi. Was it navigable? Livingstone needed to find out. Sir Roderick Murchison, founder member and President of the RGS, Director General of the British Geological Survey and Director of the School of Mines, was a keen supporter. Asked to find a geologist for the expedition, Murchison summoned to his office a young man called Richard Thornton.

Thornton was born on 5 April 1838 in Cottingley, near Bingley, Yorkshire. Eleventh of 12 children, he had grown up with a strong interest in the natural world, and he entered the Royal School of Mines, Jermyn Street, in October 1855. Two years later, he graduated - winning a government prize of £15, and the De La Beche Medal and £5 worth of books for ‘excellence’. He was about to accept the post of geologist on a government survey in Australia when he received the summons from Murchison - and met David Livingstone for the first time. It was to prove a fateful encounter.

Image: Town of Tete from the north shore of the Zambezi, by T Baines, April 1859, oil, © Royal Geographical Society, Baines 30

CHANCE OF A LIFETIME

Thornton jumped at the chance offered him, and was immediately sucked into a whirlwind of preparations and farewells, reporting to Liverpool docks at the beginning of March 1858 to join the steamship Pearl for the voyage to Africa. Other expedition members were Dr John Kirk, botanist and medical officer; Commander Norman Bedingfeld, naval officer; Charles Livingstone (David’s brother), general assistant and ‘moral agent’; Thomas Baines, artist and storekeeper; and George Rae, ship’s engineer. Thornton suffered badly from sea-sickness, and was no doubt relieved when, 13 days out from Liverpool, Africa was sighted. He wrote: “We were now plainly in sight of land and a beautiful sight it was. Distant fine mountains with a beautiful foreground of low hills…all were richly clothed with tropical vegetation.”

On reaching harbour in Freetown, Thornton was first off the boat, eager to experience the sights, sounds and smells of Africa. Heading for Cape Town, he celebrated his 20th birthday as Livingstone gave him written instructions. “… you are specially charged with the duty of collecting accurate information respecting the mineral resources of the country through which we are to travel…and on the geology generally of the parts visited.” He had also to collect fossils, to examine any coal seams encountered, and discover the “probable value of any ores of Iron, Copper, Lead, etc.”

Image: “Working a coal seam near Tete, lower Zambezi”, T Baines, 1859, oil on canvas, © Royal Geographical Society, Baines 35. The figure dressed in white shirt and trousers is likely to be Richard Thornton.

VISION UNRAVELS

However, one year later the expedition that started with such promise had descended into farce. Thornton was handed a letter of dismissal on 27 June 1859. How had this sad state of affairs arisen?

Livingstone was inept at managing other Europeans (as opposed to African porters, guides and servants, who could not question him). Charles Livingstone fell out with almost everybody and inveighed against them with his brother. In June 1858, the expedition got lost among the labyrinthine channels of the delta, constantly running aground despite their shallow-draught launch. Continual hunger and shortage of fuel were all too much for Bedingfeld, who resigned within a few weeks. In fits and starts, the expedition made its way upriver as far as Tete. Thornton busied himself with the river channels, examining outcrops, developing some coal seams for fuel and occasionally helping to re-float the launch.

It soon became clear that the Zambezi would never a highway to the interior. The final blow was the mighty Kebrabasa Rapids upstream of Tete (now flooded by the Cahora Bassa dam). Livingstone, facing failure, pinned his hopes on the Shiré, a major tributary. The expedition split up, Thornton finding himself frequently alone at base camp, unsupervised and discouraged, without medical care, suffering malaria, fever, dysentery, sores and prickly heat. He lacked the energy to keep up his geological work, but Livingstone accused him of being ‘idle’ and of disobedience. Livingstone wrote: “[Thornton] has been incorrigibly lazy, seems to have no taste for geology and works none.” However bothLivingstones were probably jealous of Thornton and Baines (similarly dismissed), because they had formed constructive relationships with the Portuguese (who had already been in the area for hundreds of years). So, after exploring by himself for a while using a small sailing dinghy, Thornton eventually regained the coast. In March 1861 Thornton arrived in Zanzibar.

Image: “Shibadda, or two channel rapid, above the Kebrabasa, Zambesi River”, T Baines, January 1859, oil on canvas, © Royal Geographical Society, Baines 24. Surveying the Kebrabasa rapids on the Zambezi, which finally put paid to hopes that the river would be navigable.

SNOW ON THE EQUATOR

Thornton was probably expecting to pick up a home-bound ship, but instead met Baron Karl von der Decken, a German nobleman of 27 who was devoting himself to exploring East Africa. Von der Decken had just made an unsuccessful attempt to reach Lake Nyasa (Lake Malawi), and was turning his attention to Kilimanjaro.

The mountain had been seen by German missionary Johann Rebmann in 1848, whose reports stirred up a fierce debate. How could a snow-capped mountain exist so close to the Equator? Thornton and the Baron signed an agreement to join forces to solve Rebmann’s paradox. The terms were very strict, and a clause relating to publication would come to haunt the Thornton family later. However, the men had a good working relationship and the contrast with Livingstone could not have been greater. Thornton flourished.

The caravan finally set out from Mombasa on 29 June 1861. The objective was to conquer Kilimanjaro - and the provisions included a bottle of champagne, for the summit. It took just over a month to reach the foot of Kilimanjaro, by which time the champagne had been broached as a thirst-quencher while traversing the waterless ‘nyika’ (thorn-bush wilderness). There were severe problems obtaining guides and porters; and frustrating delays due to heavy rain, and they only reached just over 2400m - not out of the forest zone - before the porters deserted and they had to turn back. However, the expedition was a success: snow and ice were confirmed.

Thornton correctly identified the volcanic origins of the mountain and its neighbours and speculated about their age. He made remarkably good estimates of the height of the mountain – actually 5895m – at 6039-6296m). He became the first Englishman to set eyes on Kilimanjaro, and his diaries provided many fascinating descriptions of local culture, society, agricultural practices, vegetation, geography and geology. Von der Decken won the RGS’s Gold Medal. Kilimanjaro was not successfully climbed for another 28 years.

BACK TO THE ZAMBEZI

Thornton seems to have been in no hurry to go home, even though by the time he and the Baron returned to Mombasa it had been three years, seven months since leaving Liverpool. Surprisingly perhaps, Thornton decided to make his way back to the Zambezi. Branching off up the Shiré, he caught up with the Livingstone party at Chibisa’s village, just above Elephant Marsh. Kirk, Rae and the Livingstones were astonished but fascinated by his tales of adventure.

Thornton agreed to re-join the expedition (in January 1863), on his own terms. The expedition was still struggling. Drought and famine had hit, exacerbated by tribal warfare related to slaving. Livingstone had established a mission, and both it and the expedition were running out of supplies. Thornton volunteered to trek 150 miles overland to buy supplies. Tete was also hit by drought, so it was only Thornton’s friendship with the Portuguese that enabled him to obtain 60 goats and 40 sheep. He returned severely weakened. Fever and dysentery soon set in, and he died after several days on 21 April 1863, on board the river-launch Pioneer, aged 25 and 16 days. He was buried the next day under a large baobab tree.

Thornton’s family was devastated when the news filtered back, their sadness compounded by a long fight to retrieve his belongings, settle accounts and claim salary arrears. Thornton’s scientific legacy has never been fully evaluated, partly because of his untimely death and partly because his family was prevented from publishing the Kilimanjaro material by the agreement with von der Decken.

As Murchison wrote: “So gifted and rising an explorer – had he lived, his indomitable zeal and great acquirements would have surely placed him in the front rank of men of science.”

Further reading

• Coupland R 1928, “Kirk on the Zambesi, a Chapter of African History”, Clarendon Press, Oxford, UK.
• Fosbrooke H A 1962, “Richard Thornton in East Africa”, Tanganyika Notes and Records, Vol.58, pp43-63.
• Martelli G 1972, “Livingstone’s River, a History of the Zambezi Expedition 1858-1864”, Victorian (& Modern History) Book Club, Newton Abbot, UK.
• Reader J 1982, “Kilimanjaro”, Elm Tree Books, London, UK.
• Tabler E C 1963 (ed), “The Zambezi Papers of Richard Thornton”, 2 volumes, Chatto & Windus, London, UK.
• Wallis J P R 1956 (ed), “The Zambezi Expedition of David Livingstone 1858-1863”, 2 vols, Oppenheimer Series Number 9, Chatto & Windus, London, UK.