Citation Needed - The Congo River Expedition

Episode Date: August 12, 2026

The expedition aimed to find if there was a connection between the Congo and Niger basins of western and central Africa. Tuckey sailed up the river from its mouth but found that the lower river is not navigable due to rapids (later called the Yellala Falls) above Matadi. He only found ruins of the Portuguese colony and moribund Catholic missions. He suggested sending Protestant missionaries to the Congo. He explored the river up to Isangila. Most of the officers and crew died of fever and Tuckey himself died on 14 October 1816, aged 40, in Moanda, on the coast of today's DR Congo. The expedition was a failure but raised interest in the exploration of Africa.

Hello and welcome the citation needed, the podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article but on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts because this is the internet, and that's how it works now. I'm no illusions and I'm going to be leading this expedition, but like all good expedition leaders, I'm going to drink wine and leave all the work to other people. And according to my cursory Googling, the four main jobs in an old-timey expedition were scout, scientist, blacksmith, and surgeon, so I think those jobs would respectively fall to Tom, Marsh, Cecil, and a surgeon. Ah, yes, scout. Be prepared to die. And I'll take scientists. You know, when you're a good scientist, there's never a null day. Why's it got to be a blacksmith, Noah? And also, Eli's here tonight. Carry me higher, Tom. I'm touching leaves.

And before we get going, I want to remind everybody that if Heath was in a position that he needed, ransomed out of the people that would help the most would probably be our patrons. Like if that was the situation. Anyway, if you'd like to contribute to Heath's theoretical ransom, be sure to stick around to the end of the show. And with that out of the way, tell us, Eli, what person, place, thing, concept phenomenon, or event are we going to be talking about today? We'll be talking about the Congo River expedition.

And Tom, you found another opportunity to tell us about old-timey explorers losing toes and shit. Are you ready to regale us? I am indeed, Noah. So what is a verbose and circuitous way to introduce today's topic? Look, I know for a while there was on something of an explorer's kick. Mostly a frozen tundra-related one at that. I make no apologies.

There's something about the call to see the world set foot in wild spaces to challenge the body and mind and spirit and ways to test the metal of who we are and what we can endure that as always will always appeal to me. conceptually in real life I call for service if my air conditioner can't keep my house at a comfortable 68 degrees and if I miss lunch I compensate with two dinners at midnight snack and a double helping of dessert. I guess I like the

idea of exploration though, you know? I like the mythology of it. I like the optimism baked into the very notion of needing to see what is around the next bend. Since I also like the Chaudenfroid of doomed dipshits failing and stumbling through the various miseries

of their own creations, I'm here to call our collective attention to another story of hardship and misery, though this time not of the frozen variety. Today, in fact, we will learn about the Congo River Expedition of 1816. Yep. If this show has taught us anything, it's that nobody should have been trying to go anywhere before you could bring a North Face jacket and an air-conditioned vehicle. Right. And if history's told us anything, it's that the Congo is basically top of the list for where white people shouldn't have been going in the first place. Now, it's important to begin with a bit of context about what people knew about the world in 1816.

Not fucking much, it turns out. And when it came to Africa, Europeans pretty much knew nothing at all that wasn't deeply problematic. Ah, how times have changed. This includes some very basic geography stuff that we now take for granted, such as where rivers start and stop, and which rivers are which ones. But that shit only gets found out by killing a bunch of red-shirted expendables along the merry way. I'm pretty sure red wasn't the color most associated with those deemed expendable by European colonizers on expeditions in Africa. But it was worth it for all that rich knowledge of African geography we all now have. So when the British looked at their various maps and realized they didn't know where the Congo or Zaire River traveled through and ended up,

They figure they should definitely sacrifice a whole lot of their lives to figure that out. White lives, everybody. We're having fun here. Well, not exclusively, but yeah, it's mostly at least. You're picturing it, picture white lives, and you'll have more fun. Don't picture them in blackface as well. Why would you even picture that? Or you can't.

If they're dying, maybe that's a nice revenge for you. Treat yourself. Now, they would not be the first. In 1806, Scottish Explorer, Mungo Park. which sounds like a cartoon name, vanished on the Niger. But not before setting off a missive back home, speculated that the river almost certainly ended up at the Atlantic, and which could get him around to the West Indies.

Okay, I read his name as Muncho Park, and I thought, I'm pretty sure that's the Scottish equivalent of makeout point. Now, he believed that because some African trader told him that the Congo and Niger were, in fact, the same river under two names. African rivers all look the same to me. What, that's not racist, they do. This is, by the way, complete bullocks. But if it had been true, then whoever found that route would control a major trade waterway.

And there were only a few problems with this theory. If such a route existed, it would have to traverse an unbroken mountain chain. And would have to extend nearly 4,000 miles. That is an improbably ridiculous distance. And from an evidence standpoint, there's also the total lack of any trace of Arabic speakers or Islamic influence on the Congo coast. despite that influence being pervasive, literally everywhere else along the Niger River's known course. Guys, good news, it's only 4,000 miles with one easy portage.

Just one. What do you mean machete sharpeners? So there's a lot of very motivated reasoning influencing things here, but that, that did not sway the British Admiralty one bit. So they chose to outfit two expeditions and just go ahead and Eiffel Tower. the African continent. One ship would follow the Niger. One ship would follow the Niger downstream to where a park had disappeared

and the other would approach from the other side and ascend to the Congo from the sea to try to find its source. Just discovering a continent the way people find good drugs at Burning Man. Okay. My ipal towering somebody, yeah. I'll do it.

The Congo expedition would be captain by James Hinkston Tucky. Now, if you were outfitting an expedition into very dangerous and unknown territory, territory that had swallowed up other explorers very fucking recently, you would probably choose a physical specimen of a captain, an indomitable fortress of a human being, impervious and unshakable. You would not choose Tucky. Not because he's not brave.

This fucker is brave as hell. Crazy brave, actually, which is not, that's not great. But more on that later. Right, yeah. I feel like it is genuinely insane how brave he is. It's a worrying attitude in any captain. Ataki spent his whole life as a sailor searching for and finding action and adventure from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. In 1798, he fought a famed and much-celebrated single-to-ship battle between the HMS Sibble and the French frigate Lafort, a battle so lopsided as to be almost comical, counting only three dead among the British,

versus 150 killed on the French frigate. And Tucky, he was right in the thick of things. Wow, he defeated the French. Very impressive. It is impressive, though. Even if, yes, the French had just narrowly lost a battle to Spain that everyone expected him to win. So by the time they fought Tucky, the heart clearly wasn't.

It still counts. It still counts, is what I'm saying. I'm really not over the World Cup still. Given how early we're recording this one, it's good that you clarify. That's what you're talking about, I think. Abatucky paid a heavy physical price for all of his adventuring. While capturing a dutch ship, a shell splinter wounded his arm badly. In another battle, his own gun exploded and broke his wrist so badly that he was forced to grit his teeth and set it himself mid-action.

Jesus. He later had to have that same wrist re-broken and reset by an actual doctor. But since no one back then was really an actual doctor. his right arm was pretty fucked up. And while sailing the Red Sea, he became sick. Big sick. And it's not clear from what, but it sounds from a couple of sources like it was something to do with his liver, and it got so bad that it left him positively skeletal.

We're not talking here about a guy known for his immense physical fortitude. Well, Captain, it looks like you're pretty sick with liver stuff. So we're going to break it again and see if that helps. I mean, that's how Heath has been treating his liver. So that's not true. We should tell him. He was, by all accounts, a capable captain. Well, not all accounts.

And some of them, he's getting exploded by his bad guys and exploded by himself and incapacitated with amaciating illness. But other than those accounts, other than those accounts, some account, some capable-ish, he was capable. More the accounts, then yes. In 1802, while a first lieutenant aboard the HMS, Calcutta, he was sent to survey Port Phillip in Australia. And he did such a great job that the governor of the colony, sent back glowing letters of recommendation for Tucky. Things were looking up and Tucky was poised for some real advancement until in 1805, while sailing home,

his ship was run down and captured by a French convoy. Tucky ended up imprisoned for nine years in Verdun, where he met his wife, which I don't understand, but I guess the French do things differently in their prisons. After your torture this afternoon, zero-b-speed dating event. No, but he was allowed to take a wife,

but not also a mistress, which to the French is a form of torture. Sure, sure. A Tucky spent nine years in prison before being released in 1814, and so when the Admiralty in 1815 started looking for an expedition captain, kind of felt like maybe they owed poor old Tucky a shot,

despite his bum arm and his liver problems, his skeletal build, and having just endured the physical toll of spending nine years in a 19th century French prison. even Tucky was aware that this expedition commission felt like something of a pity commission. And so he forced the Admiralty to very specifically lay out the conditions for success so that he could be sure that when he was victorious in his mission, there would be no doubts. And the Admiralty obliged laying out an extremely detailed expedition's memorandum,

detailing everything from the vocabulary lists that they wanted to gather from local tribes, to dictating where the men should camp and not camp in relation to mangrove swamps. It was micromanagement by request. Yeah, like, whenever Eli gets all, tell me exactly what you'd consider failure on me. I take that as a cue to just do that shit myself, right? The ship they had built was itself something of an experiment.

The Congo River was known for having brutally strong current. So they figured the best way to defeat them was a steamship. which had never been used before for anything remotely approaching anything on this scale. So they built a fucking huge steam engine that took up pretty much most of the room on this ship. The weight a goddamn

ton and it moved the ship along at a snail's pace. If the snail also had a leg cramp. So Tucky insisted they ripped the thing out of the ship entirely. And what they ended up with for the trip was a ship that was built like a horse trough, a transport ship with extra provisions, and two specialty built

double boats meant to be portaged in case the main ship was unable to proceed. But if they made it to the top of the river on that mountain, it would make an awesome toboggan. Like a maze. Now, the crew themselves numbered 49 volunteers, and they were the usual boat people like surveyors and pursers, a lieutenant, some semen for doing ship stuff, and a bunch of science guys. There was a botanist, geologist, naturalist, anatomist, and even a gardener to tend to the seeds and specimens. It was on paper the best prepared expedition ever assembled by the British. They had the right ships. They had experts of all stripes. They had plenty of provisions.

And still, from the original source material, the narrative of an expedition to explore the river Zaire, quote, by a fatality that is almost inexplicable, never were the results of an expedition more melancholy and disastrous. All right. Well, with the promise of both melancholy, and disaster on the horizon. We're going to pause for a quick break and a bit of apropos of nothing. Gentlemen, I have called you

the brightest minds in the British University and Academy of Sciences for our next great project. The exploration of Africa. Pardon, sir? Yes, Jenkins. So, you know how most people think the cure for disease is just

lose a bunch of blood? Yes. And almost as many people think that the best treatment for a wound is to rub piss in it? Piss, yes, of course. Do you have a point? I do, yes. Wouldn't it be better for us to focus on that stuff? Now come now, Jenkins. Exploration is not at the detriment of other discoveries. Think of all we may learn from foreign lands and her peoples. This shall magnify our learning, not slow it down. I see.

So when we meet people on this new continent, we're going to... I'll probably make them slaves. Right. But like, like for science. Is that better? I think it's better. I'll see Craig gets it. And we're back when we left off.

Tom was rubbing his hands together and getting all boh-ha-ha about the proceedings. So without further ado, let's get to the dying parts. The expedition set sail from England in February of 1816. It reached the mouth of the Zaire by mid-year. Despite the intense currents, Tucky capably tacked the ship upstream and pushed into the river, beginning his expedition proper. And he ran immediately into trouble, though not by the river, but rather the locals who controlled access to it. At Embamba, the trading town at the mouth of the river, the crew were met with open, hostility, and suspicion.

Okay, but given that this was after, in the early 19th century. I'm going to say their level of suspicion and hostility for the Europeans would prove to be, in retrospect, insufficient. The British were at the time patrolling the coast actively fighting to suppress the slave trade that the local leaders depended on. At Tucky tried to convince local leaders he had no intention of interfering or making war with anyone, but it didn't work.

The expedition's interpreter bailed on the expedition, took four of their hired locals with them, and left the expedition short of labor that they had counted on hired. and without any local language help. Still, they pressed onward. Don't worry, guys. I'm just going to yell English in the accent of the language I think I'm talking to.

That usually does it. Trust me. Hey, no, come on, that definitely does work. The locals understood me perfectly well when I was in New York. There you go. I know it's historically accurate

and it matters to the story, but pointing out that this was like the one time any British expedition in Africa wasn't directly trying to exploit or murder the natives. It just feels like we're throwing Marsha bone, doesn't it? Like apologizing for how bad our accents were in the sketch or something. And their banner was wrong.

Their banner was incorrect. How about that? You like that? Beyond 140 miles up river, the terrain began to change. The river began to narrow and hills closed in on both sides of the bank, hemming in the expedition and completely halting it when they ran into the Yelalla Falls. Until this expedition, no Europeans had made their way past this point. Even the Portuguese, who had a presence in the region for hundreds of years, had never traversed beyond these falls.

But this expedition was made for exactly this scenario. The main ship was moored, supplies, and men transferred to the double boats they had bought just for this purpose. And the double boats, laden with supplies, were brought up on land, and they began dragging them alongside the river. Sounds fun. Despite this being a river expedition, the impossibility of the river forced the crew into a grueling overland march. The party dragged these brutally heavy boats and all of their supplies through unforgiving conditions, tracking the river, but without the benefit of trails, much less roads. The party moved much more slowly than they had planned for, and they were literally chewing through their supplies faster than they could have anticipated, and the men were beginning to become exhausted. And then they started to become sick.

Guys, starting to think we'll just carry the boat. Wasn't an amazing plan for crossing a continent. You know, it's like fun of the group. We'll think about it like this. The fact that we're going so steeply uphill now will make it way easier for those of us who live long enough to go back. Now, it's impossible to know with certainty what the cause of the illness is. But it was absolutely certainly yellow fever. And yellow fever is a scourge.

It is a plague, and it is relentless. Carried by mosquitoes, the current fatality rate for yellow fever runs as high as 43%. Jesus. In humans, anyway, like, it's 100% survivable for the mosquitoes. You're trying to make it sound worse than it is, Tom. Yeah, blowing things out of proportion over here. I don't know what the fatality rate would be for a few dozen exhausted dudes at the turn of the century, but I think we can confidently say

bad. I think the FDA said it's only dangerous if you drink pasteurized mosquitoes. That's really the problem. Yeah, it's the boiling. Now, from the narrative, the assistant surgeon from the expedition describes in vivid detail what happened to the men as they began to fall ill. Began with a savage headache and uncontrollable chills and shivering, excruciating pain in the back and limbs and violent vomiting. The

Tongue turned first yellow, then brown, then black and crusty. Then patients began to grow delirious and crazily to develop remorseless, unstoppable hiccups. What? It just feels fucking rude. The skin and eyes turned yellow. And if the afflicted were lucky, they would be dead in three days. The unlucky lingered in this state of misery and hell for as long as 20.

Yeah. And because they weren't sorry about their hiccups, they fucking deserved it, okay? Okay, but on the plus side, seeing your tongue go black and crusty probably proved enough of a shock to cure at least some of the hicckels. I honestly, I feel like the unlucky ones were the ones that were still pulling all the fucking boats when half the team was down with a hiccuping cold tongue. Now, they had doctors with them, but again, no, they didn't. Their doctors didn't know shit about fuck, because no one had invented knowing stuff yet. The docks, they were flummoxed when bleeding their patients and further weakening them didn't aid in their swift and complete recovery.

Purgatives, which induced just more vomiting, were similarly of no use. And while yellow fever isn't contagious in the medical sense, it spread among the men as the mosquitoes that fed on them swarmed and followed them everywhere they went. Soon enough, everyone who had set off Overland was sick, as were all of those who tried to nurse and care for the sick. I remember some of the men had stayed back at the main ship where it was moored, and those men slept out in the open to enjoy the cool night air,

and so they too soon fell ill. Also, some of the men passed the time by trying to cultivate a flea circus staffed entirely by mosquitoes. Others would have competitions for how many mosquito bites they could catch in a single night. When they found out how yellow fever was spread, boy, were their faces red from all the mosquito bites. Falling Hill led to many of the expedition very predictably dying. I say predictably because the Admiralty literally predicted this.

Remember that long memorandum of wind conditions and instructions that I mentioned before? Well, one of the things that was written out and required was that the men avoid sleeping out in the open among the mangroves. Because while it's true that no one had yet figured out that mosquitoes carried deadly viruses, they had figured out that sleeping outside by the goddamn mangroves was a death sentence. But no one paid attention to that part. And within three months of entering the river, half of the men that began the expedition were dead. Okay, but I feel like if I ask for a point system that I want my expedition to be graded by

and you don't put things that will for sure kill you at the top, that's on you. Now, improbably, given his condition, at the outset, Tucky actually held out longer than most, but he was certainly not immune, and he too contracted the same fever that was culling his crew. He ordered the crew, well, what was left of them, to turn back, though not so much because he was retreating from the horrors of the river, but because so many of his men had died that they lacked the manpower needed to continue forward. Okay, but surely they also lacked the manpower needed to turn back

in that case. Bach involved carrying boats through the jungle but with fewer men doing it. But downhill now, though. Yeah, and actually it's heavier because the living packed up the dead and they began their slow crawl out of the wilderness with their macabre freight.

I don't know. Right. I'd be like, sorry you died here. That sucks. Tucky's journal entries began to grow shorter and less coherent and his handwriting reflected his deteriorating condition even as he led his dying.

crew back toward the sea. Just like Ronald Reagan. When they got to the hill that they could ride the boat down like a sled, his entry just read, we. A tuckie would not make it. He made it only so far as to return from across the overland portion and back to the moored ship, where he died a day later. The chief surgeon, remarkably still alive, claimed that Tucky died from exhaustion rather than

disease, though he also noted that Tucky wasn't exactly in the best of shape on the way out of England, so who fucking knows? One guy picks him up, cracks him like a glow stick, and he starts working again. Yeah, I don't know. This diagnosis feels very like, dude spent too much time in a French prison for us to admit he died

of the hiccups to me. Yeah, no, I feel it. Now, not everyone died. Obviously, we wouldn't have the journals this is all based on, but just an absolute shit ton of these guys did. The Gardner, managed to not only survive. It's so weird that they brought a gardener, right?

To a joke. There might be hedges, you know. Though he would remain badly weakened from the fever for the rest of his life, but he also managed to save and deliver hundreds of botanical specimens to Britain's most eminent botanist Robert Brown, who spent two years working through and cataloging everything before publishing a landmark paper still cited today

on their rich flora returned from the voyage. pretty cool, but a very rough trip to the garden center. No, I get it. One time I asked a guy if he worked at Home Depot because he looked like the kind of guy who works at Home Depot, and he didn't, but he knew I asked him. Oh, God damn.

I just, I love how Robert Brown got to publish that paper and then get everlasting credit for the discoveries without ever leaving England. So many people died, and the best they get is to be part of the et al. a tucky's journal and the journal of some other guy who died were given over to an editor in London

and published in 1818. And these journals became a warning to all other would-be adventures looking to reach the interior of the continent by traversing the Zaire River and these same journals would go on to influence Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness.

Huh. And if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence, what would it be? Well, maybe my blog will make a difference to someone after I perish in agony from a terrible malady. Oh, there you go.

On the upshot there. All right. I love that you're staying upbeat about things and are you ready for the quiz? I am indeed. All right, Tom. What should they call the movie about this expedition? A. I can go no further. B.

Mosquitoes, no problems. That's actually good. See? Boats are for water not carrying. Or D. You don't know when I got high

in the writing of that joke. Here's, I, Eli was like, no, no, no, sober. Eli, let me take over. Or D. Or D, I was sober again for this one. An awesome week of lunches. A mosquito's perspective.

Mosquitoes. That's pretty great. Correct. Okay, Tom. Obviously, this story benefits cartoon than live action. So what would the animation about this be called? Would it be A, a bugs rife?

Would it be B, K-pop semen blunders? Oh, shit. Would it be C, the portage preparation montage, How to Train Your Dragon? Or is it D? Steamboat Ili. Steamboat Ily. That one's amazing.

they're all good, but K-pop semen blunders is fucking great. That's the good one. All right. Tom. What's a famous pornographic film about mosquito-borne illnesses? A, coagula, B, Diet Throat, C.

Oh, my God. Or C. Behind the screen door. Fucking deat throat kills me. Oh, man, what a week of great bees. All the bees are fucking killer this week. So, all right, I'm declaring myself a winner, and I want an Eli essay next week.

Ooh. All right. Well, for Cecil, Eli, he didn't say yes. I was saying that's the same sound that all the listeners made. Yeah. Same. So for Cecil Eli, Marsha, Tom,

I'm Noah. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week. And by then, Eli will be a quote, unquote, expert on something else. Between now and then, you can hear the mother. Of the no rogan experience,

you can hear more from Tom and Eli and dear old dads, more from Tom and Cecil on cognitive dissonance, more from Marsha and on myself, on God, awful movies, and more from Eli and me on The Skathing Atheist. And now I feel like me, Tom, and Marsha, have to start a new show

so I can finish this sentence. And if you're like to help keep these shows on soccer, you can make a per episode donation at patreon.com, I citation pod, or leave us a five-star review everywhere you can. And if you like to get in touch with us, check out past episodes. Connect with us on social media or check the show notes. Be sure to check out CitationPod.

Dot com. Gentlemen, I have terrible news. All the men we sent to explore Africa died of a mysterious illness after sleeping under trees. Do we maybe want to look at that? No. Boring. Who would we even enslave?