Tinné, Alexandrine (1839–1869)

Dutch explorer in Africa. Name variations: Alexandrine Tinne. Born Alexandrine Petronella Francina Tinné at The Hague, the Netherlands, on October 17, 1839; murdered on August 1, 1869; daughter of Philip F. Tinné (a merchant) and Baroness Van Steengracht-Capellan.

On October 17, 1839, Alexandrine Tinné was born at The Hague to Philip F. Tinné, a Dutch merchant, and the Dutch Baroness Van Steengracht-Capellan , daughter of Admiral van Capellan. With the passing of her father when she was five, Tinné became one of the richest heiresses in the country, with the prospects of a brilliant marriage and an enviable social position. Instead, when she turned 18, she decided to travel and left The Hague. She never returned. Tinné made journeys to Norway, Italy, and the East, and when in Egypt she ascended the Nile. A return trip to the Nile regions in 1861 was made in company with her mother and aunt. Her interest in African exploration, developed while she was in Egypt, fueled her resolve to devote her fortune and energies to the cause of geographical discovery, to report on the slave trade, and to help the oppressed people of the "dark continent."

The party departed Cairo on January 9, 1862, made a short stay at Khartum and then, notes one historian, "ascended the White Nile to a point above Gondokoro." After exploring a portion of the Sobat, they returned in November to Khartum. Joined by Dr. H. Steudner and Baron Theodor von Heuglin, the women headed for the Bahr-el-Ghazal during February 1863 to "explore that region and ascertain how far westward the Nile basin extended; also to investigate the reports of a vast lake in Central Africa eastwards of those already known—reports referring in all probability to the lake-like expanses of the middle Congo."

The journey, which took them to the borders of the Niam-Niam country, saw all travelers terribly ill with fever. After Steudner's death in April, Tinné lost her mother in June, followed by her aunt in Khartum, to which the party returned in July 1864. Tinné made her way back to Cairo, and the geographical and scientific results yielded by her expedition were of great importance in adding to the knowledge of remote regions. Plantes Tinnéennes, which detailed some of the plants Tinné had encountered, was published in 1867 by T. Kotschy and J. Peyritsch.

Tinné passed the following four years living in Cairo and making trips to Algeria, Tunisia, and additional locations of the Mediterranean. She began her last and fatal expedition in January 1869, departing with a caravan from Tripoli intending to reach the upper Nile. En route from Murzuk to Ghat on August 1, she and her three European attendants were murdered, the caravan plundered, and the bodies of the victims left unburied in the sands. She was killed "by Tuareg in league with her escort, who believed that her iron water tanks were filled with gold." Tinné would be remembered not only for her own voyages but for her generous assistance to other scientific travelers.