River Gunboats
Page 17
On 7 December Tel el Hoween went on another foraging expedition down river, accompanied by Mansoureh. On their return the latter was hit by a shell from a new battery the Mahdists had set up. She was badly holed, and was grounded to enable Tel el Hoween to take on board most of the foraged provisions. She was taken in tow, but foundered, her crew being saved by Tel el Hoween. On her way back to Shendy her boiler was hit by a shell and disabled, with the loss of nine men killed and twelve wounded. The boiler repairs took three days, during which the Mahdists set up a new battery, which was destroyed by Nushi Bey’s soldiers.
On 15 December the steamers went north to obtain news and provisions. Opposite Matammeh, an enemy shell pierced the boiler of Safia, killing three men and wounding two. Her engineers managed to patch up the damage. Three more men were lost before they reached Jarki Island.
After rescuing the stranded Bordein, on 29 December Nushi Bey led the flotilla down the Nile to meet the British, passing the cataract in safety and engaging in a firefight at Nasri Island. On 9 January large enemy forces were seen heading north to fight the British, and the Mahdists sent messages exhorting the gunboat crews to surrender, which they ignored. On 18 January the crews heard the news of the British victory at Abu Klea, and three days later they sighted the advancing British cavalry near Matammeh. Nushi Bey wrote in his report that they hoisted all their flags, and their bands on board began to play. The flotilla had fought off all enemy attacks for nearly four months, but in the end their stubborn resistance was in vain, for Khartoum and Gordon were doomed.
Sir Charles Wilson and his small group approach Khartoum in the gunboats Bordein and Tel el Hoween.
The aftermath was a debacle. When Sir Charles Wilson returned down the Nile from Khartoum to Matammeh, having ascertained that the town was in the hands of the Mahdi’s followers and that Gordon was in all probability dead, he lost both of his gunboats: Tel el Hoween which struck a rock at speed on 29 January near Jebel Royan and was abandoned, and Bordein which, attempting to run the Sixth Cataract, struck a submerged rock near Mernat Island on the 31st and was beached just before she could sink. Lord Charles Beresford took Safia up river to come to the rescue, and although she was immobilised by a hit in her boiler, this was patched up and both stranded crews were carried to safety.
At Khartoum the Egyptian commander of Ismailiah had waited for Gordon to arrive on board, to evacuate him and the Greek residents of the town. On hearing of Gordon’s death he moved the gunboat into the middle of the river, but on receiving word from the Mahdi to the effect that he would be pardoned if he surrendered, he gave up the vessel. When Buller decided to evacuate Gubat, Gordon’s remaining two steamers, Safia and Tewfikieh were immobilised by removing parts of their machinery.
Bordein
Bordein may well be the world’s oldest surviving paddle steamer which has not been substantially rebuilt (as have Norwegian and Swiss survivors, and her sister Mahroussa which was converted to screw propulsion as the Egyptian royal yacht). She was one of five iron steamers ordered by the Egyptians from Samuda in London in 1862 for expanding Egyptian rule over the Sudan. Launched in 1863 she was sent in parts to Cairo and reassembled in 1869. She took part in Sir Samuel White Baker’s conquest of South Sudan and his journey to Uganda, as well as the rescue of Romolo Gessi in 1881 from the Sudd, and the later defeat of the slavers.
Bordein afloat and ‘restored’ in 1930. She has been dummied up to represent her form at the time of Gordon and the Mahdi, with vertical timber boarding and armour from boiler plate. Note also her ‘antique’ funnel cap. (Photo from the Bordein Presentation document, courtesy of Michael Mallinson).
Outline plan and profile views of the proposals to restore Bordein. (The Bordein Presentation document, courtesy of Michael Mallinson).
During the 1884 flotilla campaign on the Nile, Bordein was often used to convey messages between Nushi Bey at Shendy and Gordon in Khartoum. Carrying Gordon’s last despatches, she hit a rock in the 6th Cataract, and her captain had just enough time to run her aground at Wad Hassourreh Island, where she lay stranded and waterlogged. The rest of the flotilla had headed south to find her, and came across Bordein just in time to save her from being captured by the Mahdists. Eventually a caisson was erected around her damaged hull, she was repaired and on 25 December 1884 the reunited flotilla sailed north once more.
She was one of the two steamers carrying Sir Charles Wilson and a handful of British troops to reconnoitre the situation at Khartoum, and her loss has been described above. She then served in the Mahdist navy (see SUDAN, MAHDIST STATE). Recaptured in 1898, Bordein was used for troop transport during Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian Condominium, then for carrying timber. Wallis Budge who wrote a history of the Sudan, travelled on her when she was almost a wreck. Her heavy fuel consumption led to her withdrawal from service and for many years she languished either afloat or on the bank of the Nile. In 1930 work began to restore her to something resembling her appearance as a gunboat, in preparation for the fiftieth anniversary of Gordon’s death, then for the Coronation festivities of 1937 (which were cancelled with the abdication of Edward VIII). Once more abandoned, she was cut up and bulldozed into the bush to make room for more modern craft, but in 2011 was rescued from scrapping, reassembled and placed on a memorial site on the river bank at Omdurman, as the basis for a proposed museum. As funds are extremely scarce in the Sudan, the Director of the National Corporation for Antiquities and Museums, Abdelrahman Ali Abdelrahman, would welcome any financial assistance from enthusiasts interested in saving Bordein for future generations. His email address is: abdelrahman249@hotmail.com.
Launched:
1863 by Samuda, Poplar.
Dimensions:
L: 42.7m/140ft; B: 8m/26ft over paddle boxes; B: 3.55m/11ft 8in over hull; D: 0.8m/2ft 7½.
Power/Speed:
Side paddle wheels; steam engines, 40 nominal hp/10 knots.
Guns/Armour:
2 × 9-pounder brass howitzers.
Fate:
Preserved at Omdurman.
Tamai Class
Wolseley preferred to transport his Gordon relief expedition up the Nile using a Canadian design of rowboat, which reduced his progress to a crawl. Yarrow had been asked by Gordon to design stern-wheeler gunboats for the Nile, but the British government took so long to place the contracts that they would never arrive in time to make a significant contribution.
When the government finally acted, Yarrow was able to propose supplying one of his standard stern-wheeler section-alised gunboats, which was on the verge of completion at Poplar, intended to be named Lotus. She was taken over and despatched to Egypt in late 1884, being reassembled above the Second Cataract. A sister-ship, planned to be launched as the Water Lily, was also taken over by the Admiralty and Yarrow completed her in the remarkably short time of seventeen days. She was also shipped to Egypt, and both vessels helped cover the British withdrawal. It is probable that this emergency purchase was what resulted in the two Yarrow-built vessels of the Tamai class, which became known in Egyptian service as the Abu Klea and Metemmeh.
Bordein’s reassembled hull at Omdurman.
A Yarrow publicity page from The Engineer, showing the type of gunboat the firm would be building for Egypt as two of the four ships of the Tamai class, Abu Klea and Metemmeh. When in service they would receive additional vertical armour plates – because, as well as Krupp artillery the Mahdists possessed captured Egyptian Remington rifles.
During the years which followed the death of Gordon, the four gunboats of the Tamai class formed the first line of defence of Egypt, patrolling the Nile from Aswan to Wadi Halfa.
Launched:
1884 Tamai and El Teb by Randolph, Elder & Co., Clydeside; Abu Klea and Metemmeh by Yarrow, Poplar.
Dimensions:
Displ: 74 tons; L: 27m/89ft; B: 5.5m/18ft; D: 0.46m/1ft 6in.
Power/Speed:
Stern paddle wheel; steam engines, 50ihp/9 knots.
Guns/Armour:
&
nbsp; 1884: 1 × 90mm Krupp on pivot mounting; 2 × .45in Nordenfelt MG. 1894: 1 × 12-pounder QF; 2 × 37mm Maxim Pom-Poms; 4 × .303in Maxim MG.
Fate:
Metemmeh discarded 1925; Abu Klea scrapped 1937; Tamai lost in the Red Sea 1915; Hafir sunk 1941.
THE NILE CAMPAIGN 1896–1898
While it is clear that Kitchener’s gunboats assured the success of the expedition, several of their commanders later went on to great things.
A young lieutenant during Wolseley’s attempt to save Gordon, because of his Nile experience Commander Stanley Colville was chosen to command Kitchener’s gunboat flotilla in 1896. He brought with him from the battleship HMS Trafalgar one of his lieutenants, David Beatty. They led the advance up the Nile on board the Tamai Class gunboat Abu Klea. During the fierce action at Hafir, Colville was severely wounded in the arm, and after two hours was forced to hand over temporary command of the flotilla to Beatty. Colville continued to pursue a successful naval career, promoted to admiral in 1914, and by his retirement in 1922 was principal naval aide-de-camp to the King.
Winston Churchill was a witness to the progress of the flotilla, and he described the ascent of one of the gunboats, the Metemmeh, as follows:
Stanley Colville.
The boat had been carefully prepared for the ordeal. Her freeboard had been raised, guns and ammunition removed, a wire strop passed round the hull and the fires drawn. Five hawsers were employed on which 2,000 [men] were set to pull, yet such was the extraordinary force of the current that although the actual distance was less than 100 yards, the passage of each steamer occupied an hour and a half.
El Teb, with the additional armour in place, being hauled up the Second Cataract of the Nile in 1896. In 1897 at the Fourth Cataract she would come to grief. (Drawing Illustrated London News)
It is interesting to note that, contrary to the practice on the Upper Yangtze, the passage of the Cataracts was effected under manual haulage alone.
As a young lieutenant, in 1896 the future C-in-C Grand Fleet and ultimately First Sea Lord David Beatty commanded the gunboat Abu Klea. During the fight at Hafir, where the flotilla commander Colville was wounded, Abu Klea was hit in the magazine by a Mahdist shell which failed to explode. It is likely this was a shell which one of the Egyptian artillerymen, pressed into the service of the Khalifa, had deliberately not fuzed correctly. In any case, Beatty threw it overboard. Continuing up the Nile past Hafir, Beatty outflanked the Mahdist defenders and forced them to withdraw, an action for which he received the DSO. After a period of leave, Beatty returned in 1897 to command another of the Tamai class gunboats, this time the El Teb. When she was being hauled by ropes up the Fourth Cataract, disaster struck. The gunboat heeled, hundreds of tons of water poured onto her flat deck, she capsized and was swept downstream. Beatty and the crew on deck jumped overboard and were saved by the Tamai. They thought they had lost the two men in the engine room, but when they examined the overturned El Teb cast up on the riverbank, they heard a knocking coming from inside the hull. A hole was duly cut and the two men rescued. El Teb was righted and repaired, and returned to service, renamed Hafir.
David Beatty.
Metemmeh passing the Second Cataract en route for Dongola in 1886. The vessel is being guided through the Alemagiri Channel by Koki Arabs standing on sunken rocks or upon inflated skins. (From a sketch by Lieutenant N. M. Smyth, Queen’s Bays, Illustrated London News, 19 September 1896)
Lieutenant C M Staveley commanded Hafir at Omdurman. He never reached flag rank, but in 1915 as a captain, he was responsible for organising and supervising the evacuation of the troops from the Dardanelles beach-heads. Some 80,000 men with their guns and draft animals were successfully spirited away under the noses of the unsuspecting Turks, losing only one man – a notable achievement by Staveley and his staff bearing in mind the human carnage of that disastrous expedition.
Lieutenant H F Tailbot was commander of Tamai on the Nile. No further records found.
El Zafir Class
One of three large stern-wheelers El Zafir, El Nasir and El Fateh built in Britain and sent out to the Nile in sections, for carriage by the desert railway to Kosheh between the Second and Third Cataracts, where they were reassembled.
Commander Colin Richard Keppel had participated in the attempt to save Gordon, being with Beresford on the Safia when they rescued Wilson and his men from Mernat Island. During the Dongola campaign, Keppel took over command of the gunboat flotilla when Colville was wounded. On 28 March 1898 his flagship El Zafir sprang a leak and sank near Metemmeh, attempting the passage of the Shabluka Gorge. She was later salvaged. The remaining ships of the flotilla passed through the final Cataract safely. For his services on the Nile, Keppel received the thanks of Parliament and was promoted to captain. Continuing to pursue a successful career, he retired as a vice admiral in 1913, but was promoted to full admiral in 1917.
El Fateh, the third gunboat commanded by David Beatty. (Page from the Forrestt Catalogue, courtesy of John Collins
Colin Richard Keppel.
Lieutenant the Hon. H A Hood.
Lieutenant the Hon Horace Lambert Alexander Hood had survived the Apia cyclone in Samoa of 1887 aboard the Calliope, the only ship to make it out to sea. On the Nile he commanded the El Nasir, and zwas promoted to commander, a jump of two ranks. In 1904 Captain Hood engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the Dervishes of Somaliland. In 1907 he was naval attaché in Washington. In 1913 he was promoted to rear admiral. Hood commanded the three river gunboats of the Humber Class bombarding the Belgian coast in 1914, and was later given command of the 3rd Battle-cruiser Squadron, raising his flag on HMS Invincible. At the Battle of Jutland Hood’s aggressive actions saved HMS Chester, fatally damaged the cruiser Weisenbaden and severely damaged the battlecruiser Lützow, but in engaging against the latter and the Derfflinger, HMS Invincible took a fatal hit and exploded, killing
The powerful 12-pounder QF gun: one was mounted on the El Zafir class and two on the Sultan class.
Hood and 1,014 of her crew.
Launched:
1896 by Forrestt & Co., Wivenhoe Shipyard.
Dimensions:
Displ: 128 tons; L: 42.7m/140ft; B: 7.3m/24ft; D: 0.76m/2ft 6in.
Power/Speed:
Stern paddle wheel; steam engine, 90ihp/11 knots.
Guns/Armour:
1 × 12-pounder QF; 2 × 6-pounder Hotchkiss QF; 2 or 4 × .303in Maxim MG. Electric searchlight/Bulletproof superstructure and gun shields.
Fate:
To Sudan Government Department of Steamers & Boats 1899. Broken up: El Nasir 1932, El Fateh 1953, El Zafir 1964.
Melik
Melik was described as a ‘guide-blade’ gunboat. The guide-blade was a ring into which the propeller blades fitted inside the tunnels in the hull, and in which they rotated. She appears never to have been fitted with a leeboard.
After builder’s trials on the Thames she was broken down into numbered sections for shipping to Ismailia. From there the sections travelled via the Sweet Water Canal to the Nile, and as far as Wadi Halfa on the border with the Sudan. There they were loaded onto wagons of the Military Railway and carried to Abadieh, where General Gordon’s nephew ‘Monkey’ Gordon and Lieutenant Gorrringe RE supervised their launching and reassembly. W S Gordon RE himself commanded the Melik during Kitchener’s campaign. Two days after the Battle of Omdurman, she carried Kitchener and his staff to Gordon’s ruined Governor’s Palace in Khartoum for the memorial service, in which Melik fired the gun salutes (See APPENDIX 1: RIVER AND LAKE GUNBOATS IN POPULAR CULTURE). Melik was retired from government service in 1926 and leased to the Blue Nile Sailing Club as their clubhouse. In 1939 she was pulled from retirement to take a starring role in Alexander Korda’s film The Four Feathers (See APPENDIX 1: RIVER AND LAKE GUNBOATS IN POPULAR CULTURE). Then after further military use, she was returned to the Sailing Club.
Profile and main deck plan of Melik. (Drawing David Hathaway, papershipwright.co.uk)
In addition to
her 12-pounders and Maxims, Melik also carried an Army 5in howitzer, tied down on her aft deck. This was useful when firing into the mud-wall fortifications erected by the Mahdists. Note the two recoil cylinders mounted one each side of the short barrel.
By the 1980s it was proving difficult to keep her afloat, but providentially a flood in 1987 washed her up onto the river bank, where she remains at the time of writing. One of her 12-pounder guns was dismounted from her upper gun deck and remounted on the bows, and at some time in her Egyptian service she was fitted with ornate bow scrolls. The Melik Society was founded with the specific view of preserving her. However, compared to Bordein, which for a time was in the service of the Mahdi and then the Khalifa, Melik is a pure warship which represents the era of colonial expansion, so her future is far from certain.
Launched:
1897 by Thornycroft, Chiswick.
Dimensions:
Displ: 134 tons; L: 44.1m/145ft; B: 7.47m/24ft 6in; D: 0.61m/2ft.
Crew:
30.
Power/Speed:
Twin screws, guide-blades in tunnels; VTE steam engines, 200ihp/12 knots.
Guns/Armour:
2 × 12-pounder QF; 1 × 5in Army howitzer; 6 × .303in Maxim MG/Bulletproof superstructure and gun shields.
Fate:
Ashore at Khartoum 2017 awaiting restoration.
A photo which has often been altered. Here is one of the Sultan class on trials on the Thames, at Greenwich.