Dowlish Wake home of the family of John Hanning Speke who took part in three expeditions to Central Africa from 1854-1862, the last two in search of the source of the Nile. He discovered Lake Victoria and maintained that it was the source of the White Nile. On his third expedition, Speke identified Ripon Falls, the outlet of Lake Victoria, as the source of the Nile; this was confirmed by Henry Morton Stanley in a later expedition. Speke was killed in Neston Park in Wiltshire by his own gun while hunting with his cousin on 18 September 1864; Dr David Livingstone and
John Kirk (explorer) William Carnegie Kirk was author of "A British Garden Flora". The engineer, Alexander Carnegie Kirk, was John Kirk's elder brother. From 1858 to 1864 Kirk accompanied the explorer Dr David Livingstone on the Second Zambezi Expedition as a botanist and experienced his work to end the East African slave trade. He found Livingstone an inept leader and in 1862 wrote "I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr. Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader"". In 1866 Livingstone’s began his next and final expedition, to find the source of the Nile, from Zanzibar. From