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After significant encouragement from the Church Missionary Society (CMS), the British Government entered into a five year contract with Mr Macgregor Laird to explore by steamship the River Niger and its tributaries. The main intentions of the expedition being to establish factories or trading posts at Aboh, Onitsha and Lairdstown [Lokoja] and to encourage missionary endeavours. However, the expedition also planned to chart and navigate the Niger and its tributaries, explore adjacent areas, establish anti-slavery treaties and promote British interests.
Macgregor Laird formed the Central Africa Company and on the 25th April 1857 he launched the steamship 'Dayspring'. A second steamship, the 'Sunbeam', was also planned but due to delays and mishaps it did not depart until a year later. The expedition was under the command of Dr Baikie who was assisted by Captain Alexander Grant and Lieutenant John Glover (who had been seconded from the Royal Navy). When the 'Dayspring' reached Fernando Po [Bioko, Equatorial Guinea] they were joined by the Rev Samuel Adjai Crowther and the Rev J C Taylor, both of the CMS.
The expedition reached the mouth of the Niger on 20th July 1857. The expedition visited Abo, Onitsha (where a CMS mission was founded) and Lairdstown. The Kaduna River was also explored and the party travelled to Bida. The expedition then continued up the River Niger to Rabba. Not far beyond Rabba, on the rocks near Boussa, the 'Dayspring' was wrecked and the expedition stranded. Some of the party made their own way back, others explored whilst the remainder awaited the arrival of the relief ship, the 'Sunbeam', which eventually picked them up in October 1858. As a direct result of the expedition the CMS founded the Niger mission.
The Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society was offered free passage for any agents they wished to send on the Expedition. Four agents (George E Roach, superintendent of the group, Joseph Thomas Jackson, Isaac Benjamin Lefevre and W Herbert) were selected from the Sierra Leone mission. However, before arrangements could be finalised the Niger expedition began with the first ship, the 'Dayspring', departing in the summer of 1857. The WMMS decided to send their agents to meet the second ship, the 'SS Sunbeam', in November 1857. Unfortunately this ship was severely delayed in reaching Fernando Po [Bioko, Equatorial Guinea] and did not sail for the River Niger until June 1858. After the expedition the WMMS considered sending missionaries to the left bank of the River Niger but no lasting mission was ever established there.
Further reading:
Crowther, S, Niger expedition of 1857-1859;
Dike, K O, Origins of the Niger mission, 1841-1891 (1957);
Hastings, A C G, The voyage of the Dayspring: being the journal of the late Sir John Hawley Glover ...: together with some account of the expedition up the Niger River in 1857 (1926)
Hollet, D, The conquest of the Niger by land and sea: from the early explorers and pioneer steamships to Elder Dempster and Company (1995);
Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Annual Report (1858).
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