The story behind Speke's death

At issue was the source of the Nile - as compelling to the Victorians as the search for the Holy Grail was to the knights of the Round Table. The row between Speke and Burton had been smouldering on for five years, ever since they returned from Africa in 1859. Although they hadn't met in the intervening years, the insults and innuendoes they had traded in the Press had grown more vicious by the year.

The row was due to come to a head at a public meeting in the Royal Mineral Water Hospital, Bath, a formal confrontation organised by the Royal Geographical Society to settle the matter.

Bath was agog. Anything could happen. While Speke, a local hero - his home was Jordans, Ilminster, and he had an elder brother William living at Hazelbury Manor, Box - was expected to behave with decent restraint, the unpredictable Burton was another matter. He was thought to be capable of almost anything. The meeting, said former Bath author James Morris in his book Heaven's Command, "promised the combined allures of a sporting contest, a scientific debate and an evangelical demonstration.”

But the confrontation never took place. By 3 pm, the time of the meeting, Speke had been dead nearly 24 hours, killed in a mysterious shotgun accident.

Some years earlier the two men had been commissioned by the Royal Geographical Society to look for the fountains of the Nile. They made an unlikely pair. Burton, then 37, was famous for his journey in disguise to the forbidden places of Mecca and as the first European to penetrate the city of Harar in Ethiopia. He was a rootless Anglo-Irish intellectual, a scholar who was later to translate the unexpurgated version of the Arabian Nights.

Speke was 31, a fine up-standing Victorian sportsman who had yet to make his mark - a jolly good sort who rarely read a book. They set out in 1856 to solve the mystery of the ages. After months of travel, sickness and exhausted, they rested up at a slave trading settlement where Burton enjoyed the company of the unprincipled Arab grandees.

The company was not to Speke's taste. He proposed a solitary sortie to the north, leaving Burton to work on his notes and continue his recovery.

The following month on August 3, 1858, Speke became the first European to see what is now called Lake Victoria Nyanza. It was, he concluded intuitively, and on no real evidence, the source of the Nile. After his death, he was to be proved right.

Burton was infuriated when Speke returned to camp, no doubt because he'd turned down the chance to accompany Speke, but also because of Speke's irrational certainty that he was right.

They returned wearily to the coast, Speke sailing immediately for England. Burton following two weeks later when he was stronger. The parting was cordial, and, according to Burton, Speke promised not to say anything to the Royal Geographical Society until both were back in England. But when Burton arrived, be found Speke’s discovery was already the talk of the town. Speke had gone straight to the Royal Geographical Society to report his news the day after he landed.

The seeds of the row were sown.

Five years later, Burton stayed in a hotel near Bath railway station with his wife Isabel for the much-publicised reunion. Speke stayed with his cousin, the squire of Neston Park, George Fuller - his descendants still live on the estate.

On the day before the public debate, Burton and Speke had a preliminary meeting at the Mineral Water Hospital, now called the Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases. According to Isabel Burton, the two did not speak, but their eyes met. "I shall never forget his face," she said of Speke. ''It was full of sorrow, and yearning, and perplexity. Then he seemed to turn to stone".

After a while, she, said, he began to fidget and got up. saying. “Oh I cannot stand this any longer". The man behind him asked, 'Shall you want your chair again Sir? May l have it? Shall you come back?" Prophetically, Speke said, "I hope not," and left the hall.

The following day, the crowds, drawn from all over the country, converged on the hospital for the debate. But the start was delayed. The audience realised something was amiss, At last the chairman of the meeting. Sir Roderick Murchison, appeared on the platform with Sir Richard and Lady Burton.

Speke, he said, was dead.

After the previous day's meeting with Burton, Speke had returned to Neston to let off steam by shooting partridge. He set off with his cousin and the gamekeeper. At about 4pm as they crossed a field near the Bath road, a shot rang out. Speke was climbing a dry stone wall and the other two turned round to see him fall. He died where he fell before the doctor could reach him.

The inquest duly brought in a verdict of accidental death. But four days after Speke's death, Burton wrote to a friend, “Captain Speke came to a bad end but no-one knows anything about it”. He also wrote that “the charitable say he shot himself, the uncharitable that I shot him”.

No one seriously believes Burton shot him. But there were many apart from Burton who believed Speke didn’t intend to shoot partridge that day. He intended to shoot himself.