ABSTRACT
James Kingston Tuckey lost both his parents in infancy but was fortunate enough to be raised by his maternal grandmother. He entered seafaring life early. He sailed on the Suffolk to the East Indies. Military appointments just kept coming. He was put in charge of a prize brig and ordered to ‘cruise off the island, to prevent a threatened insurrection of the natives'. Although Tuckey's health was precarious, his two published works proved that he had the intellectual rigour and scientific mindedness to undertake the mission to the Congo. He sailed in early 1816 in a ship built specifically for the mission called the Congo, accompanied by a storeship called the Dorothy. The Dorothy stayed in the lower river while the Congo pushed as far as the cataracts. Tuckey then went by land to see what was beyond the cataracts, but he became too sick and had to turn back.
