Educated at "Old Pascoe's" in Coombs Lane, Truro, until 1817 when, aged 13, he accompanied a merchant to the West Indies, where he suffered an attack of yellow fever in San Domingo.

Clapperton died on 13 April 1827 near Sokoto, in present-day Nigeria, leaving Lander as the only surviving European member of the expedition.

He proceeded southeast to Kano[5] and from there decided to travel south to Panda (mispelt Funda) on the Benue River which led him to becoming the first European to visit the important town of Zangon Katab whose people, the Atyap he described in his notes[6] before returning through the Yoruba region to the coast and thence Britain in July 1828.

A few days later, on the 17th, Richard was taken to Akassa at the Nun estuary of the Niger River to persuade an English merchant Captain Luke, to repay the ransom along with other gifts paid by Kingboy Amain while John remained in Nembe between 17 and 23 November.

[11] In 1832, Lander returned to Africa for a third and final time, as leader of an expedition organised by Macgregor Laird and other Liverpudlian merchants, with the intention of founding a trading settlement at the confluence of the Niger and Benue rivers, using two armed paddle steamers, the Quorra and the Alburkah.

[14] According to a document in the John Holt papers in the Bodleian library (mss air s 1525 Box 11 folder3 p 8) the musket ball is in the Rotunda museum of artillery at Woolwich (Object Class XXX No 172 presented by Col Nichols RM, at whose house Lander died).