page_title: George Francis Lyon
section_title: Expedition to Africa
hierarchical_section_title: George Francis Lyon / Career / Expedition to Africa
caption_attribution_description: English: "Tuaricks of Ghraat" by Lyon
context_page_description: George Francis Lyon FRS was an English naval officer and explorer of Africa and the Arctic. While not having a particularly distinguished career, he is remembered for the entertaining journals he kept and for the pencil drawings he completed in the Arctic; this information was useful to later expeditions.
context_section_description: In 1818, he was sent along with Joseph Ritchie by Sir John Barrow to find the course of the Niger River and the location of Timbuktu. The expedition was underfunded, lacked support and because the ideas of John Barrow departed from Tripoli and thus had to cross the Sahara as part of their journey. A year later, due to much officialdom they had only got as far as Murzuk where they both fell ill.  Ritchie never recovered and died there, but Lyon survived and travelled a little further around the region. Exactly a year to the day he left, he arrived back in Tripoli, the expedition being a complete failure.
caption: Tuareg people, by Lyon
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