Railway Empire

by Anthony Burton

  Every detail had been arranged the day before; but the Swahili porter, as long as he is within reach of the drink-shops of the coast, is a mortal on whose action no reliable forecast can be based. A good many men were absent, and others paraded late; some objected to their loads, while others energetically seized a box or a bale and vanished into the surrounding jungle. Ultimately, after much noise and not a little unparliamentary language, the division marched off.

  Having got the men started on their way to ford the narrow strip of water that created the island of Mombasa, the donkeys decided it was their turn to create trouble. At first none would move, then perversely all went at once and dashed at the narrow trail where an instant bottleneck was formed and in the mêlée half the loads were shed. Once order had been resumed and the convoy eventually set off again it was only to find that the tide had risen to cover the ford. They turned round and went home again. On Christmas Eve 1891 they finally left Mombasa. They encountered all the dangers and difficulties that might have been expected on such an expedition. The river route proved particularly gruelling, involving passing through mangrove swamps where the men at times had to wade chest deep. It was an impossible route for a railway: at its best the track was scarcely wide enough for the porters and their loads (the donkeys proved quite useless and had to be sent back to Mombasa). Where there was space to pitch a camp, it provided little comfort; one site was invaded by peculiarly vicious ants which bit the travellers so hard that the only remedy was to tear off the bodies and then extricate the still tightly embedded heads with knife or needle. But the greatest danger of all came from what must have been just about the last thing they expected – bees.

  The articulated Beyer-Garrett locomotive – in effect a conventional locomotive, with a second power unit at the front – seen here on the Benguela Railway in Africa in the 1900s.

  At the first attack by a swarm the porters fled in all directions, many badly stung. The bees were only driven off by heaping green wood on the fire to smoke them out. A second attack followed and once again there was general panic. This time one of the porters was stung so badly that he died. There was to be a third encounter. Macdonald had decided to climb the 5000-foot-high Nzoi peak. He and his party made their way up a narrow, steep ledge and discovered a nest close by the only route. They tried to creep past in their stockinged feet but the bees were disturbed – half the party turned and fled back down the path, the rest raced on up. All got away unscathed, but those who got to the summit discovered the unpleasant truth that the only way down was past the dreaded bees. They waited for nightfall and tiptoed down in the dark, with the unappealing prospect of bees on one side and a precipice on the other.

  The expedition moved on and spent a good deal of time annihilating the local wildlife. One rhinoceros did its best to even the score by attacking the attackers, ‘making for us like an express train.’ Macdonald opted for the better part of valour and ran. They eventually succeeded in finding a likely route up the Kikuyu escarpment and this brought them into contact for the first time with the warlike Masai. On an earlier expedition, led by Smith and Martin, one of Smith’s assistants had clashed with the Masai and thirty of his party of a hundred had been killed. Macdonald’s experience was a good deal less terrifying. Two porters had been dispatched to try and buy milk but had been chased off by warriors. They raced back to camp and now the Masai found themselves faced by an armed force and it was their turn to decamp, dropping two spears as they went. Macdonald recalled:

  An Orange Free State 6-class locomotive

  Matters then adjusted themselves, and an amicable arrangement was made, by which they bound themselves to refrain from such national amusements as frightening porters, and we returned the spears to their owners.

  Rather more dangerous attacks threatened the camp, but by using a portable searchlight and firing off powerful signal rockets, their nights were kept, if not quiet, at least safe.

  At the end of it all, Macdonald, instead of having a peaceful time to write up his reports and prepare his maps, was called back to active service. He handed his notes and papers over to Pringle and went. Reading his account, written in the throwaway style of a laconic English gentleman, it is easy to be lulled into the impression that this is a typical Victorian or Edwardian adventure story. Yet this was a real expedition into virtually unknown, and certainly unmapped territory, with dangers from a hostile environment, disease, wild animals and a warlike population that did not take kindly to intruders. These men were not explorers setting off on some personal whim to uncover the secrets of the Dark Continent, but professional military engineers struggling to find a railway route where not even a road existed before.

  By 1895 the days when private interests could control vast tracts of African land were coming to an end. The East African Company was disbanded and control passed to the government in London. Imperialism was at its zenith, but there was no lack of voices raised against further colonial expansion, and that included expansion via railway building. The opposition in the House of Commons in London was led by Henry Labouchere who saw the railway as a hopeless waste of money and a mere extension of colonialism, where there was nothing to be gained other than an enlarged red patch on the world map. He put his views bluntly: ‘I trust there will remain Members of this House who will never bow the knee to King Jingo.’ To the argument put forward by one of the railway’s enthusiastic supporters that it offered great commercial opportunities, he had nothing but scorn. The only evidence he put forward, said Labouchere, was ‘that some chief asked him when he left to be good enough to send him some opera glasses and white donkeys.’ In spite of the biting rhetoric, the expansionists won the day, but the battle never ended: throughout the long and difficult years of construction the builders worked against a background of criticism from London and every request for funds brought a fresh bout of skirmishes. The Act was passed in 1896 and work on the Uganda Railway could officially begin.

  The first necessity was a large workforce. Sir John Kirk, the vice-chairman, wrote,

  We began by trying native labour, but we found we could not get enough of it to begin with, and then it would not go on continuously; that the natives, when the rains began, had to go back to their own gardens for the purpose of cultivation. Then came a time of famine owing to want of rain, and labour was almost impossible to get.

  The company turned to India, but the Indian government laid down strict conditions: the men were to be paid proper wages and not on a piece-work basis, and at the end of the three-year contract they were to have a choice: to renew their contracts, to be sent home with all expenses paid or to remain as settlers. At first they were recruited by private firms in India, but later an official recruitment agency was set up in Bombay, the British East Africa and Nyasaland Agency. The first batch of 350 arrived in Mombasa in 1897 and by the time the line was finished, the records showed over 30,000 Indians had arrived to work on the railway. Labouchere’s King Jingo certainly strutted these railway tracks. All Indians were known as coolies, whether they were unskilled or skilled, navvies or masons, clerks, surveyors or draughtsmen. As more men crowded in, the insanitary camps and bazaars spread, looked upon with contempt by European observers. Sir Frederick Jackson described the camps in the Nyando valley:

  They were the most astounding examples of incompetence on the part of those responsible for their conduct, and for maintaining even a mild form of discipline. There were two in particular that I knew well, as they were more or less standing camps, between Lumbwa Station and the tunnel, and there was another near Fort Ternan. I passed them on foot, and that was enough: I never had the courage to walk through one. It was quite sufficient to view them from the line, well above, and only a few hundred yards away from them. Apart from the squalor, they were crowded with prostitutes, small boys and other accessories to the bestial vices so commonly practised by the Orientals. Complaints by the Nandi and Lumbwa natives were frequent, also by District Officers, but it was nobody’s job to tack
le the matter, until there were rumours of the Lumbwa becoming restive on account of so many of their young women being inveigled away from their homes, and harboured in these sinks of iniquity; then someone had the courage to clear out all the unattached hangers-on.

  The account is not dissimilar to those written about the British navvies at work in England half a century earlier, but with the addition of racial prejudice. It is interesting to note that Sir Frederick was able to state quite clearly that all the women in the camp were prostitutes, when viewing them from ‘a few hundred yards’ away. That there was filth and disease in the camps is beyond dispute: the figures tell a tragic story. Of the 31,983 workers, 6454 had to be repatriated as invalids and 2943 died. The official reports also describe their work as ‘most satisfactory’ and no one ever questioned the view that without the ‘coolies’ the line could never have been built.

  The difficulties were immense, and began as soon as work commenced. The first task was that of getting in supplies from Britain – 200,000 rails and a million sleepers together with their associated ironmongery. Supply trucks and locomotives arrived, the latter a disreputable array of pensioned-off old crocks from India of which the 0-6-0 F class were to prove the most reliable. In order to get them in at all, there had to be a major building programme to improve Mombasa harbour. It was a nightmare for the leading engineers, George Whitehouse, H. Patterson and Ronald Preston, who had to cope with the difficult terrain, atrocious climate, the ravages of disease and attacks by natives. Astonishingly, Preston’s wife Florence came with him all the way, placidly embroidering and knitting at the entrance to her tent, and was to be rewarded by having the new terminus named in her honour, Port Florence. Perhaps she shared her husband’s awe of the land through which they travelled. He wrote,

  To describe what we saw in the way of game would be put down as exaggeration … it was nothing but a mass of hartebeeste, wildbeeste, zebra and the smaller antelope. The clang of rails and steel sleepers would frighten the game within about five hundred yards radius so as to make the number greater and denser at the edge of the circle.

  A Garrett heads a goods train near Cape Town

  Preston was in charge of the plate-laying gangs. The difficulties began straight away, as the annual report for 1896-7 makes clear:

  Immediately on crossing the creek which divides Mombasa Island from the mainland, an abrupt rise begins. Range on range of low, thickly wooded hills succeed one another, and in the course of 15 miles the country rises 560 feet. From this point the country has proved to be more undulating than was expected. The thickness of the scrub continues and adds to the cost and time of completing the line. It is necessary to cut through miles of jungle, so heavy that it is often found impossible to do more than a quarter of a mile a day.

  The monthly reports are a mixture of success and disaster.

  October 1896 – Plate-laying was stopped until the viaduct could be crossed. It was completed on October 20th in twenty-five working days, a wonderfully expeditious performance … The total number of coolies was 2,689.

  Nov 1896 – 27 1/2 inches of rain fell during the month, and for twenty-two days no plate-laying was possible.

  Dec 1896 – The rain was not so heavy, but a quarter of the coolies were in hospital …

  Jan 1897 – Half the coolies were on the sick list.

  One of the major problems, and one which contributed a great deal to the catalogue of sickness and disease, was the lack of fresh drinking water. The solutions sometimes proved worse than the problem. Water holes were choked with vegetation and slime. Preston’s Indian servant suggested ‘straining it through the end of his turban, saying they always did that with the water they drank, but I did not appreciate the turban filter.’ His own preferred method was to add Eno’s Fruit Salts, when the water would ‘fizz up in hundreds of green bubbles, which on settling down left a thick green scum on top.’ All he did then was to scoop off the scum and drink the water.

  Problems were exacerbated by the lack of knowledge of the country among the senior engineers, and the general unhelpfulness of a system whereby the railway administrator had very little contact with the civil administrator. It was not unlike the system operated in the early years of Indian railways where ultimate decisions were in the hands of gentlemen in London, with the Secretary of State as the ultimate arbiter. Sir Charles Eliot, Commissioner of the East Africa Protectorate, saw the faults clearly.

  The construction was supervised by a committee sitting in the Foreign Office, composed of distinguished gentlemen of wide experience, but in most cases that experience did not embrace railway work. Now, as one who has had an official connection with the Uganda Railway, I will venture to say that I have never known any class of questions as to which a man without technical knowledge is more hopelessly at sea than those presented by engineering and railway management.

  There were men with local expertise. Ronald Hardy in researching his book on the Uganda Railway, The Iron Snake, unearthed the diary of Robert Turk, caravan leader, gunsmith and adventurer on whom Whitehouse came to rely for local knowledge. Up ahead lay one of the worst areas on the entire route: the Taru Desert. Water supply was the crucial factor, and Whitehouse proposed building a sea-water distillation plant at Mombasa and sending out water-supply trains to the advancing railhead. Turk was not impressed: ‘God help him if his precious trains were late.’ In the meantime, Turk agreed to lead the advance survey party across the desert. Walter Hearne, the surveyor, not only appeared incompetent but also clearly loathed and feared the African countryside. A missionary heading for the interior joined them. Things went wrong from the first. At the edge of the desert, six Wasoga bearers deserted taking water, food and a length of copper wire. Turk took a tracker and set off after them: he returned with four. He had shot the other two dead and now proceeded to have the unhappy quartet of survivors flogged and turned out of the camp. The episode did nothing to lift the gloom. Hearne now became ill. and in his delirious state wandered off into the desert. Turk, despite having been able to locate the six Wasoga, declared that there was no way of finding him. The missionary pleaded, but Turk remained obdurate. Finally the angry missionary set off on his own. When he failed to return, Turk was forced to set out at last to look for him. He found the missionary’s dead body -but Hearne was never seen again.

  This line in Ghana has now so little traffic that traders are happy to set up their stalls on the tracks. Behind them are

  An articulated Garrett in Kenya

  Every element seemed to combine to slow up the crossing of the desert by the main platelaying gangs. Storms hit the region, undermining the little track that had been built. Whitehouse decided to withdraw in order to consolidate the line, thereby ensuring no further interruption in supplies. Turk was to push on and establish a semi-permanent camp site at Tsavo where there was to be a big viaduct across the river, and where the river itself would act as a supply of clean water. Whitehouse declared that he would reach Tsavo in about three weeks. Time passed and no one appeared, so Turk went back to the desert to investigate. The situation was desperate. Water courses were completely dry; the water trains were not getting through, and real disaster struck when an embankment collapsed under a train killing twenty people. The desperate men went to the one known water hole, a former volcanic crater, but all it contained was the body of a leper floating in a sea of green slime. Hundreds of Indians joined Turk on the trek to Tsavo and water; seven died on the journey.

  On the footplate of an African Garrett.

  Everything about the desert was a nightmare. The area was covered with spiny shrubs that cut deep gashes in the Indians’ bare legs. Flies laid eggs in the open wounds, which grew into blisters from which a huge maggot had to be squeezed out. The truck of the water train had no taps, so water had to be bailed out by the coolies, who paddled around, their ulcerated legs contaminating the water. The heat was intense. The wooden sleepers oozed hot creosote onto unprotected skin; the steel sleepers were so hot th
at bare feet became blistered. If the humans suffered, the pack animals fared even worse. This was tsetse fly country, and the mortality rate was appalling: 63 camels – all dead; 350 mules – 128 dead; 639 bullocks – 579 dead; 800 donkeys – 774 dead. It should have been an immense relief to reach the camp at Tsavo, but there a brand new terror awaited the men.

  Lieutenant Colonel J.H. Patterson had come to Kenya specifically to oversee work on the bridge, though first he had to experience at first hand, as the other engineers on the route had done, the special character of the land through which this line was to pass. He records:

  My first impression on coming out of my hut was that I was hemmed in on all sides by a dense growth of impenetrable jungle: and on scrambling to the top of a little hill close at hand, I found that the whole country as far as I could see was covered with low, stunted trees, thick undergrowth and ‘wait-a-bit’ thorns. The only clearing, indeed, appeared to be where the narrow track for the railway had been cut. This interminable nyika, or wilderness of whitish and leafless trees, presented a ghastly and sun-stricken appearance; and here and there a ridge of dark-red heat-blistered rock jutted out above the jungle, and added by its rugged barrenness to the dreariness of the picture. Away to the north-east stretched the unbroken line of the N’dungu Escarpment, while far off to the south I could just catch a glimpse of the snowcapped top of towering Kilima N’jaro.

  Soon, however, work began on the bridge.

  In a short time workmen and supplies came pouring in, and the noise of hammers and sledges, drilling and blasting, echoed merrily through the district.

  A typical mine scene, not in Britain but South Africa and they are mining gold not coal. The locomotive was supplied by Dubs.

  A powerful North British 4-8-0 hard at work at South African colliery