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Search for the Nile’s Source : The Ruined Reputation of John Petherick, Nineteenth-century Welsh Explorer

Posted By: readerXXI
Search for the Nile’s Source : The Ruined Reputation of John Petherick, Nineteenth-century Welsh Explorer

Search for the Nile’s Source :
The Ruined Reputation of John Petherick, Nineteenth-century Welsh Explorer

by John Humphries
English | 2013 | ISBN: 0708326730 | 193 Pages | PDF | 3.2 MB

The source of the Nile had long eluded and tormented explorers, and John Hanning Speke's discovery of Lake Victoria in 1858 elevated him to the pantheon of heroes of African exploration, alongside Livingstone and Stanley. But the part played by the Welsh mining engineer John Petherick in the discovery was ignored after he was branded a slave trader by Speke, and the controversy that followed ended with Petherick ruined and Speke dead. This first biography of Petherick places him at the centre of one of the great discoveries in African exploration – and as the focus of a dispute that rocked the geographical establishment. Was Petherick a rogue, as portrayed by some, or the victim of a conspiracy that destroyed his reputation and denied him a share of the credit for his part in one of the greatest feats in African exploration?

“The marvelous John Humphries has unearthed another great character ignored by historians. The celebrated missionary-explorer Livingstone shares the bicentenary of his birth with the forgotten man of central African exploration—the Welsh mining engineer John Petherick, who went to Africa to look for coal. While Livingstone was idolized, the achievements of his contemporary from Merthyr Tydfil were buried beneath a mountain of acrimony and accusation. Was Petherick an ivory trader or slave trader on the White Nile? Did he abandon John Hanning Speke to his fate after Speke became the first European to set eyes on Lake Victoria? Whatever the verdict, in time served and distance covered, Petherick is worthy of a place in the realm of nineteenth-century heroic exploration. Humphries has pieced together the remarkable and riveting story of the man and his courageous wife Katherine, their incredible struggle against the wilderness, and Petherick’s tremendous fight to salvage his ruined reputation.” - Terry Breverton, author of The Welsh: The Biography