structural:expansion, structural:scholar_edition, structural:reformatting, information:classification
Zambezi expedition

In December 1857 the Foreign Office proposed a huge expedition. Livingstone had envisaged another solo journey with African helpers, in January 1858 he agreed to lead a second Zambezi expedition with six specialist officers, hurriedly recruited in the UK.

The prefabricated iron river steamer Ma Robert was quickly built in portable sections, and loaded onto the Colonial Office steamer Pearl, which took them out on its way to Ceylon. They left on 10 March, at Freetown collected twelve Kru seafarers to man the river steamer, and reached the Zambezi on 14 May. The plan was for both ships to take them up the river to establish bases, but it turned out to be completely impassable to boats past the Cahora Bassa rapids, a series of cataracts and rapids that Livingstone had failed to explore on his earlier travels. Pearl offloaded their supplies on an island about 40 miles (64 km) upstream. From there, Ma Robert had to make repeated slow journeys, getting hauled across shoals. The riverbanks were a war zone, with Portuguese soldiers and their slaves fighting the Chikunda slave-hunters of Matakenya (Mariano), but both sides accepted the expedition as friends.

The experts, stuck at Shupanga, could not make the intended progress, and there were disagreements. Artist Thomas Baines was dismissed from the expedition. Others on the expedition became the first to reach Lake Nyasa and they explored it in a four-oared gig. In 1861 the Colonial Office provided a new wooden paddle survey vessel, Pioneer, which took the Universities' Mission to Central Africa (UMCA) led by Bishop Charles MacKenzie up the Shire river to found a new mission.

Livingstone raised funds for a replacement river steamer, Lady Nyasa, specially designed to sail on Lake Nyasa. It was shipped out in sections, contrary to his request, with a mission party including Mary Livingstone, and arrived in 1862. The Pioneer was delayed getting down to the coast to meet them, and there were further delays after it was found that the Bishop had died. Mary Livingstone died on 27 April 1862 from malaria.

Livingstone took Pioneer up the coast and investigated the Ruvuma River, the physician John Kirk wrote "I can come to no other conclusion than that Dr Livingstone is out of his mind and a most unsafe leader".

When Pioneer returned to Shupanga in December 1862, they paid (in cloth) their "Mazaro men" who left and engaged replacements. On 10 January 1863 they set off, towing Lady Nyasa, and went up the Shire river past scenes of devastation as Mariano's Chikunda slave-hunts caused famine, and they frequently had to clear the paddle wheels of corpses left floating downstream. They reached Chibisa's and the Murchison Cataracts in April, then began dismantling Lady Nyasa and building a road to take its sections past the cataracts, while explorations continued.

He brought the ships downriver in 1864 after the government ordered the recall of the expedition. The Zambezi Expedition was castigated as a failure in many newspapers of the time, and Livingstone experienced great difficulty in raising funds to further explore Africa. John Kirk, Charles Meller, and Richard Thornton, scientists appointed to work under Livingstone, contributed large collections of botanical, ecological, geological, and ethnographic material to scientific Institutions in the United Kingdom.