John Ledyard
After a brief spell as a missionary among Iroquois Indians on the Canadian border, Connecticut-born explorer and adventurer John Ledyard (1751 – 1789) spent a year at sea, visiting Gibraltar, the Barbary Coast, and the Caribbean before he was pressed into the Royal Navy after jumping ship in Portsmouth.
As a Royal Marine on James Cook's third voyage in search of the fabled Northwest Passage (1776–79), Ledyard developed a lifelong interest in the lucrative fur trade with China.
On his return, Ledyard was sent to Canada to fight in the American War of Independence but deserted, returned to Dartmouth, and produced his Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage. When the work appeared in 1783, it was the first title protected by copyright in the United States.
During futile attempts to gain backing for trading ventures in America's Pacific Northwest, Ledyard met Thomas Jefferson when he served as the American minister to France.
After a short-lived partnership with John Paul Jones in France, Ledyard crossed to London, where he met Sir Joseph Banks.
Still seeking financial support for his fur-trading ventures, he travelled to St Petersburg via Scandinavia at Jefferson's suggestion, intending to walk across Siberia, crossing the Bering Strait, and continuing across North America.
He left St. Petersburg in March 1787 and wintered in Irkutsk before he attracted the authorities' attention the following January. His travel journal and selected letters appeared in 1966 as John Ledyard's Journey through Russia and Siberia, 1787–1788.
After the Russians deported him as a spy, Ledyard returned to London, where Banks' influence prompted the African Association to offer him a commission to lead an expedition across the Sahara Desert to Timbuktu, investigating the sources of the Nile and the Niger.
He arrived in Cairo in August 1788 and was still preparing for the expedition when he died on 10 January 1789 from a bilious complaint he was treating with vitriol (sulphuric acid).
Links to add:
African Association
John Ledyard's Journey through Russia and Siberia, 1787–1788
Journal of Captain Cook's Last Voyage
