Which British explorer first reached Lake Victoria in 1858?

John Hanning Speke was the British explorer who first reached Lake Victoria in 1858. He saw the lake on 30 July during an expedition to investigate East Africa’s Great Lakes and the possible source of the Nile.

Speke was travelling with Richard Francis Burton, but Burton was too ill to accompany him on the side journey from Kazeh. Speke travelled with a caravan that included the guides Sidi Mubarak Bombay and Mabruki, whose local knowledge and logistical work were essential to the expedition.

Speke named the lake after Queen Victoria and argued that it was the Nile’s principal source. His claim caused a long-running dispute with Burton, who doubted the evidence. Later expeditions, especially Henry Morton Stanley’s survey in the 1870s, supported Speke’s broad conclusion, although the Nile’s most distant headwaters remain a more complex geographical question.