Stanley, Henry Morton

Welsh-born US explorer and journalist who made four expeditions to Africa. He and David Livingstone met at Ujiji in 1871 and explored Lake Tanganyika. He traced the course of the Congo River to the sea 1874–77, established the Congo Free State (Democratic Republic of Congo) 1879–84, and charted much of the interior 1887–89. GCB 1899.

Stanley worked his passage over to America when he was 18. He fought on both sides in the US Civil War. He worked for the New York Herald from 1867, and in 1871 he was sent by the editor James Gordon Bennett (1795–1872) to find the ailing Livingstone, which he did on 10 November. From Africa he returned to the UK and was elected to Parliament in1895.