Joseph Ritchie (c. 1788 – 20 November 1819) was an

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a medical doctor who performs surgery. Even though there are different traditions in different times and places, a modern surgeon is a licensed physician and received the same medical training as physicians before spec ...

explorer Exploration is the process of exploring, an activity which has some Expectation (epistemic), expectation of Discovery (observation), discovery. Organised exploration is largely a human activity, but exploratory activity is common to most organis ...

and

naturalist Natural history is a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study. A person who studies natural history is cal ...

. His primary interest lay in the natural sciences, though he is best known for playing a minor role in the British exploration of Africa.

Life

In 1818, Ritchie was directed by Sir John Barrow to find the course of the

River Niger The Niger River ( ; ) is the main river of West Africa, extending about . Its drainage basin is in area. Its source is in the Guinea Highlands in south-eastern Guinea near the Sierra Leone border. It runs in a crescent shape through Mali, Nige ...

and the location of

Timbuktu Timbuktu ( ; ; Koyra Chiini: ; ) is an ancient city in Mali, situated north of the Niger River. It is the capital of the Tombouctou Region, one of the eight administrative regions of Mali, having a population of 32,460 in the 2018 census. ...

. Ritchie chose subordinate

George Francis Lyon George Francis Lyon (23 January 1796 – 8 October 1832) was an English naval officer and explorer of Africa and the Arctic. While not having a particularly distinguished career, he is remembered for the entertaining journals he kept and ...

to accompany him. The expedition was underfunded and lacked necessary support. Based on the recommendation of Barrow, they left from

Tripoli Tripoli or Tripolis (from , meaning "three cities") may refer to: Places Greece *Tripolis (region of Arcadia), a district in ancient Arcadia, Greece * Tripolis (Larisaia), an ancient Greek city in the Pelasgiotis district, Thessaly, near Larissa ...

and thus had to cross the entire

Sahara The Sahara (, ) is a desert spanning across North Africa. With an area of , it is the largest hot desert in the world and the list of deserts by area, third-largest desert overall, smaller only than the deserts of Antarctica and the northern Ar ...

, an arduous journey no modern European had ever done before. A year later, due to many delays, they had only reached as far as

Murzuk Murzuk, Murzuq, Murzug or Merzug () is an oasis town and the capital of the Murzuq District in the Fezzan region of southwest Libya.Robinson, Harry (1960) "Murzuq" ''The Mediterranean Lands'' University Tutorial Press, London, p. 414 It lies on ...

, the capital of

Fezzan Fezzan ( , ; ; ; ) is the southwestern region of modern Libya. It is largely desert, but broken by mountains, uplands, and dry river valleys (wadis) in the north, where oases enable ancient towns and villages to survive deep in the otherwise in ...

, where they both fell ill with fever. They ran out of funds, and food, subsisting on dates and handouts from the local villagers who were little better off. Ritchie never recovered and died there, having made no new discoveries. Richie was distinctly unsuited to exploration. He was "deeply self-centered, morose and uncommunicative". After arriving in Murzuk, he cut himself off from locals and even his own people. He was reserved, took little interest in the people and places he saw, took few notes, and generally spent much of his time indoors studying mathematics. Instead of stocking food and trade goods before departing Tripoli, Richie squandered the limited expedition funds on profligate items. After Ritchie died, George Lyon opened the crates they hauled through the desert and found things like 600 pounds of lead, a camel-load of cork for preserving insects, and two camel-loads of brown paper for pressing plants. Lyon sold what he could and was able to make it back to Tripoli, alive. In 1831, R.Br. ex

G.Don George Don (29 April 1798 – 25 February 1856) was a Scottish botanist and plant collector. Life and career George Don was born at Doo Hillock, Forfar, Angus, Scotland on 29 April 1798 to Caroline Clementina Stuart and George Don (b.1756), pr ...

published '' Ritchiea'', a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

s from Tropical Africa, belonging to the family

Capparaceae The Capparaceae (or Capparidaceae), commonly known as the caper family, are a family of plants in the order Brassicales. As currently circumscribed, the family contains 15 genera and about 430 species. The largest genera are ''Capparis'' (about 1 ...

and named in Joseph Ritchie's honour.

References

* 1780s births 1819 deaths English explorers 19th-century English naturalists English surgeons British explorers of Africa {{UK-explorer-stub