The Penetration of the Niger

Macgregor Laird was in many ways the most important of the early pioneers of West African trade. He was a grandson of the John Laird who had been born into a farming community in Kilmacolm, Renfrewshire in the middle of the eighteenth century. This was the same John Laird who established a firm of ropemakers at Greenock and eventually became Provost of that Burgh. He was said to be a friend of Wesley and “a very handsome man, somewhat stern in his manner and kept his family at a great distance.“

One of John Laird's ten children was William, born in 1780. William married Agnes, the daughter of Gregor Macgregor who at one time commanded a ship which traded between Greenock and the West Indies, and their family included John, Macgregor, William, Henry and Hamilton. In 1822 William Laird left Greenock where he had become a partner in his father's rope-works and moved to Merseyside. He acquired land at Birkenhead from the Lord of the Manor, Mr. F.R. Price, and in 1824 developed a boiler-works and shipyard. His eldest son, John, joined the firm in 1828 and the concern became known as William Laird and Son. The successors of this establishment are, of course, the present shipbuilding firm of Cammell Laird and Company.

Macgregor, born in October 1809, was the second son of William Laird. He was educated at Edinburgh University where he excelled at mental arithmetic and mathematics. While at college Macgregor Laird experienced a severe attack of typhus. His survival was largely due to the devoted nursing given by his parents and by Thomas Briggs, a doctor who was later to accompany him up the Niger. After leaving Edinburgh, Macgregor joined his father and brother in the family firm at Birkenhead and it was while engaged in shipbuilding that he heard of the discovery of the outlet of the River Niger.

The importance of the discovery cannot be over-emphasised for although West Africa can be divided into two distinct zones - the tropical rain forests near the seaboard and the Savannah in the interior - both suffered from a lack of adequate communications.