Explorers of the Nile: The Triumph and Tragedy of a Great Victorian Adventure

by Tim Jeal

  Pasley and his crew carried the princess and her servants by sea to the safety of the British colony of Aden. To ensure that no Muslim revenge attacks were made on Zanzibar’s European population, the Admiralty arranged for a British warship to be stationed in the harbour for several months. Princess Salme wrote to Captain Pasley the following summer, enclosing her photograph and telling him that she had received Christian instruction and been baptised in Aden, and, prior to her marriage to Ruete, given the Christian name of Emily. Her letter ended sadly. She had been ‘very much afflicted by the loss of little Henry [her baby], between Lyons and Paris’ on the way to Hamburg. But in that city, Herr and Frau Ruete would soon be the proud parents of a son, Rudolph, and two daughters, none of whom would have existed unless Captain Pasley had saved their mother’s life.8 From the time of the incident, the German government had recognised that the Ruete family might one day be of use and therefore made sure that Rudolph was suitably educated and that his family received support, especially after his father, Heinrich Ruete, was killed by a tram in Hamburg in 1870.

  SMS Adler.

  Almost two decades after Emily’s rescue, she and the fifteen-year-old Rudolph were conveyed to Zanzibar (as already mentioned) on board the German warship, the Adler, which was escorted by four equally imposing cruisers, including the Gneisenau and Prinz Adalbert. Rudolph’s presence in the harbour enabled Bismarck to warn the new Sultan that if he refused to cede his mainland empire – with the exception of a narrow coastal fringe – Germany would replace him with his sister’s son. So a British naval officer’s chivalrous act had inadvertently helped Germany to put pressure on his own country to yield the lion’s share of East Africa. But Captain Pasley (who, by chance, is my maternal great-grandfather) was spared the embarrassment of seeing this happen. In 1870, when recently returned to Britain from the Indian Ocean, he died from the after effects of malaria contracted during the years when he had been chasing slave dhows among the maze of coastal mangrove swamps and creeks between Kismayu and Kilwa. (During the nineteenth century, 17,000 members of the Royal Navy died as a result of their service with the West and East African Anti-Slave Trade Squadrons.)9

  Due to the threat to replace him with his half-German nephew, Sultan Barghash felt unable to oppose the German demand for a mainland protectorate. So the German battle squadron stood down its gun crews. Emily went ashore and asked to meet her brother, only to be told: ‘I have no sister, she died many years ago.’10 So, on 24 September, mission accomplished, the Adler and its escorting vessels raised steam in the harbour and very soon had dwindled to specks on the horizon.

  Where Stanley and Mackinnon had failed to persuade successive British governments to pursue a forward policy in East Africa, Karl Peters, Prince Bismarck, and indirectly young Rudolf Ruete, succeeded in propelling Britain into agreeing in October 1886, at Germany’s suggestion, that their two countries divide the mainland into two ‘spheres of influence’, with Germany taking the larger southern portion of the Sultan’s empire. This extended west from Usambara, just south of Mombasa, to Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika, and south to Lake Nyasa and the Rovuma. Britain took the northern sector, which stretched as far to the west as the eastern shore of Lake Victoria. This Anglo-German agreement was made almost exactly a year after the five German warships had sailed away. Uganda, ‘the pearl of Africa’, and Equatoria, had not been included in this Anglo-German agreement. So Stanley and Mackinnon still feared that Peters might try to sign a treaty with Mwanga of Buganda before any British representative was in a position to do so. And if Peters reached Emin Pasha before Stanley, he might end up adding Equatoria, and not just Uganda, to his country’s already substantial East African portfolio.11

  Bismarck’s acquisition of the huge country that would become Tanganyika (modern Tanzania) horrified Mackinnon, who in the same year failed to persuade the British government to back his project of building a railway from Tanga on the coast to Mount Kilimanjaro. But, in May 1886, the Prime Minister approved the granting of a royal charter to Mackinnon’s Imperial British East Africa Company, in line with the government’s policy of ‘encouraging private enterprise to peg out claims in regions of East Africa where the Germans were likely to be active’.12 But the self-made shipping millionaire was not deterred by his knowledge that he was being used. This former grocer’s boy was a Scottish Presbyterian idealist, whose yacht, grouse moors and famous friends did not give him nearly as much pleasure as the prospect of saving Equatoria and Uganda for Christianity, free trade and British rule.

  Mackinnon and Stanley felt passionately about Uganda because of Britain’s long association with that country, firstly through Speke and Grant and then through Stanley himself and Mackay. Furthermore, Bishop Hannington had been martyred trying to open the direct road from the coast, and a young British explorer, Joseph Thomson, had subsequently pioneered it. The two friends felt the same way about Equatoria, which had been given its name by Baker and then administered by Gordon and later by Emin Pasha, who though German had been employed by Britain and Egypt. If Germany’s explorers had done as much as Britain’s to explore the Nile and reveal its mysteries, then Stanley and Mackinnon might not have felt betrayed. But betrayed or not, Stanley was prepared to cancel an American lecture series and lose £10,000 thereby in order to lead the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition.13

  Mackinnon viewed the despatch of the expedition with acute anxiety as well as with excitement. If Stanley were to arrive too late to save Emin and the missionaries, Peters would reach Uganda first; and then the sources of the Nile, and Equatoria, could be lost to Britain forever.

  THIRTY

  ‘Saving’ Emin Pasha and Uganda

  Emin Pasha.

  In August 1887 Stanley was on the southern shores of the Pool with just under 800 men, two tons of gunpowder, 100,000 rounds of Remington ammunition, 350,000 percussion caps, 50,000 rounds of Winchester ammunition and a Maxim gun, all to be handed over to the beleaguered Emin Pasha, providing he was still alive and could be found. Because King Leopold was still paying Stanley a retainer under their old contract, his former Chief Agent had been obliged to agree to travel to Lake Albert (where the Pasha was believed to be) along the Congo, rather than by the shorter overland route through East Africa. The Belgian king wanted Stanley to approach Lake Albert from the west because from that direction he would be able to extend the boundaries of his Congo Free State by pioneering a route to the lake through the unexplored Ituri Forest in eastern Congo. As an inducement the king had offered Stanley the use of all his steamships currently on the Upper Congo.1 Stanley would then be able to transport his men, and the supplies intended for Emin, by water for a thousand miles upstream to the east, meaning that his porters would then only have to carry their loads overland for 400 miles to Lake Albert.

  Stanley knew that Leopold also expected him to lure Emin Pasha away from the service of the Cairo-based Anglo-Egyptian government with the offer of a huge salary. Equatoria could then (hoped Leopold) be swallowed up by his already bloated Congo Free State. But Stanley had no intention of allowing this to happen. The plan he had hatched with Mackinnon was that Emin and his 3,000 soldiers should be persuaded to relocate, beyond the reach of the Mahdi’s Sudanese jihadists, in a region just to the east of Buganda where they would be well-placed to take control of that country and stop the Germans making it their colony.

  However, Stanley’s plan depended upon his managing to reach Emin first – before the Mahdi’s forces could kill him, and (if he survived that fate) before Karl Peters could persuade the German-born Pasha to throw in his lot with his fellow-countrymen and hand Equatoria and Buganda to the Kaiser.

  At this early stage it was essential that Stanley manage to keep his force together so that by the time he had rescued Emin, and reached the missionaries in Buganda, he would still have enough men to be able to act independently on Mackay’s behalf, should the need arise. So when, on arrival at Stanley Pool, he learned that three of the king’s four steamers were dama
ged or irreparable, and that the largest one, the Stanley, was currently being repaired, he was devastated.2 Even if he could persuade the two largest missionary societies in the country to lend him their steamers, he would now be delayed for months and would probably reach Emin too late to save him.

  Stanley knew that his namesake steamer, the Stanley, once repaired, would have to make several trips towing barges back and forth along the Congo before all his 800 men could be disembarked nearly a thousand miles upstream. Even with borrowed steamships a minimum of two trips from west to east would have to be made. So to have any chance of arriving in time to save Emin, he would have to split his expedition into two contingents and set up a base camp a thousand miles away to the east. A Rear Column of several hundred men would then be left behind to look after the bulk of the expedition’s stores, while a fast-moving, lightly equipped Advance Column marched eastwards to find Emin Pasha and deliver enough guns and ammunition to enable him to fight off his enemies.

  Steamship on the Upper Congo.

  When setting up his relief expedition, Stanley had for the first time in his life decided to employ gentlemen as colleagues, rather than working-class men, as on his previous journeys. Almost from the beginning, he regretted the change. Major Edmund Barttelot, whose father was a baronet, and who had come highly recommended by senior army officers, turned out to be shorttempered and inclined to lash out at Africans for no good reason with a metal-tipped stick. Though Stanley had grave doubts about entrusting the Rear Column to him, he knew that, as second-in-command of the expedition, the major could not be expected to serve in a detached contingent under anyone’s orders but his commanding officer’s. It reassured Stanley somewhat to know that Barttelot’s closest friend on the expedition would be left behind with him. This popular sportsman and ethnographer, James Sligo Jameson, was a member of the Irish whiskey family, and his cheerful presence seemed to exert an influence on his colleagues that was almost as soothing as the drink that had made him rich. Barttelot would have 260 Africans under him, mainly Wangwana and Sudanese, to guard the expedition’s heavy stores. Stanley supervised the construction of a stockade and ditch around their camp, and told Barttelot that if Tippu Tip kept his promise to provide him with 600 carriers, the Rear Column would soon be marching eastwards in the footsteps of the Advance Column. If porters could not be obtained, then Barttelot must either stay where he was until Stanley could return for him, or he should weed his stores and march with as many porters as he could lay his hands on.3 Barttelot’s camp was just outside a village called Yambuya on the Aruwimi river. Inside his stockade there was plenty of food, both preserved and fresh.

  Lieutenant Stairs hit by an arrow.

  On 28 June 1887 Stanley marched eastwards from Yambuya at the head of 389 men, less than half the number he had brought to Stanley Pool. Ahead lay hundreds of miles of unexplored jungle inhabited by villagers whose only encounter with outsiders had been with Arab-Swahili slave traders. To protect them from the slavers, cunningly disguised pits had been dug in the path, and small sharpened sticks with poisoned tips had been stuck in the ground. Anyone injured by these spikes would die within days.4 Shortly after encountering these traps, Stanley and his men found the way ahead blocked by 300 warriors with drawn bows. They stood at the end of a section of path that had been widened and sewn with scores of tiny poisoned skewers, concealed beneath a carpet of leaves. While these barbs were being carefully pulled up, a hail of arrows fell on Stanley’s waiting men, who fired back with their rifles. Now there would be no hope of buying food for many miles to come.5

  In mid-August, Stanley’s most talented young officer, Lieutenant William Stairs, was struck by an arrow just below the heart. Dr Thomas Parke, the expedition’s medical officer, found Stairs in shock, blood pouring from his chest. All around he could hear the ‘pit, pit, pit’ of arrows dropping into the undergrowth. After injecting water into the wound, Parke bravely sucked out the poison. Stairs survived, but two other men hit at the same time died horribly from lockjaw.6 By the end of the month Stanley’s carriers were eating nothing but green bananas and plantains – a wholly inadequate diet for men carrying heavy loads. In seven days, the expedition had lost thirty porters through death and desertion. As he marched beside the Aruwimi river, Stanley shot a man in a canoe as he was in the act of firing an arrow. In this man’s boat, the explorer found a dozen freshly poisoned arrows and a bundle of cooked slugs. This was an indication of how little game there was in the forest.7 Men began to starve, and Captain Nelson, one of Stanley’s officers, had to be left behind in a temporary camp with fifty-two Africans who were incapable of walking any further. Their chances of surviving appeared to be very slight.8

  Stanley emerged from the forest a hundred miles from Lake Albert, with the Advance Column reduced to 175 men. This was 214 less than the 389 who had marched out of Yambuya four months earlier. On 14 April 1888, several days march from Lake Albert, Stanley heard from members of the Zamboni people that ‘Malleju’ (‘the Bearded One’) had recently been sailing on the lake ‘in a big canoe, all of iron’.9 Two weeks later, the Pasha’s steamship anchored just below Stanley’s camp. Emin turned out to be a small, slim man in a red fez and a well-ironed white linen suit. He was bearded, bespectacled, and his face looked, thought Stanley, Spanish or Italian rather than German. Emin was said to command the loyalty of about 3,000 men, and to have fought off the Mahdi and his followers, unlike poor Gordon. But at their first meeting Stanley could detect ‘not a trace of ill-health or anxiety’ in his demeanour, and this worried him.10 According to the Pasha’s own version of events, mailed to friends in Britain two years earlier, he and his men had survived a period of intense jihadist pressure.

  Deprived of the most necessary things, for a long time without pay, my men fought valiantly, and when at last hunger weakened them, when after nineteen days of incredible privation and suffering, their strength was exhausted, and when the last leather of the last boot had been eaten, then they cut a way through the midst of their enemies and succeeded in saving themselves.11

  Yet, now, Emin and his officers appeared to be fit and well – a condition far removed from the traumatised state in which Stanley and his men found themselves. The Pasha seemed to have lied about his true situation. But when he responded enthusiastically to Mackinnon’s plan to resettle him and his men in the district just north-east of Lake Victoria, Stanley and his officers were able to feel that their sufferings had not been pointless. It now seemed likely to Stanley that he would soon be making a treaty with Kabaka Mwanga on behalf of Mackinnon’s company, before Karl Peters could enter Buganda.12

  Unaccountably, during the coming weeks, the Pasha failed to confide to Stanley any of the secret fears that were tormenting him – the worst being that the Mahdi’s jihadist followers had already infiltrated his two regiments, making mass mutiny a terrifying possibility. Instead, Emin pretended that his position was stable enough for Stanley to feel secure about marching east to make contact with his Rear Column, while Emin travelled to Wadelai, north of Lake Albert, to ballot his men on whether they wished to relocate. Stanley had become increasingly worried about Barttelot and Jameson and was delighted that a suitable moment seemed to have arrived for him to find out if they were all right. Having lost so many men, he badly needed the services of the Wangwana who had been left behind with the Rear Column. Without an increase in his numbers, his opportunities for independent action in Buganda would be severely limited.

  Stanley reached the Aruwimi after two months and found to his horror that the Rear Column had only managed to drag itself to Banlaya, a mere ninety-five miles to the east of Yambuya, before finally collapsing. But where were all the men he had last seen in June 1887? The only people he could see walking about, or lying on the ground, resembled living skeletons. Some were also suffering from ulcers the size of plates. Of the original officers, not one was here to greet him, only Sergeant Bonny, the column’s medical orderly. Within half-an-hour Bonny had revealed to Stanley
‘one of the most harrowing chapters of disastrous and fatal incidents that I ever heard attending the movements of an expedition in Africa’.13 Less than a hundred of the 271 people who had been left behind at Yambuya were still alive. Stanley scribbled into his diary some of the unbelievable things which Bonny told him:

  The major caused John Henry, a mission boy, to be flogged 300 lashes. He died that night. Ward [another officer] caused a mutineer to be flogged at Bolobo so severely that he also died within a few hours … The major kicked his little boy Sudi – a boy of 13 years old – in the shin with an ulcer 2 by 3 inches unable to move. The major caused a Sudanese to be shot by a platoon of his comrades for stealing a piece of meat. William Bonny relates that the least thing caused the major to behave like a fiend. He had a steel pointed cypress walking staff with which he dealt severe wounds. One man, a Manyema, he stabbed 17 times with the steel point … The major would walk up and down the camp with his large white teeth set firm & exposed … At such times he would dash at people right & left – as though he were running amuck.14

  It came as little surprise to Stanley to learn that Major Barrtelot had eventually been murdered by a Manyema porter. He was angry and bewildered that Barttelot’s officers had not stood up to him when he had ordered the execution of a hungry man for stealing a piece of meat; and it appalled him that none had objected to a sentence of 300 lashes with a whip of twisted hippopotamus hide for an equally trivial ‘crime’. A man would be insensible after fifty strokes and rarely lived through more than a hundred. Stanley nursed the boy, Sudi, in his own tent until his death six days later.15 Most of the Wangwana who had died had been starved to death or poisoned. Yambuya was rich in nutritive manioc tubers, but Barttelot had worked the Wangwana so hard that they had never had time to soak the tubers in water and then leave them in the sun for several days in order to leech out the natural cyanide. In consequence, ‘to satisfy their raging hunger they ate the raw poisonous stuff’. In Stanley’s eyes this failure to care for the Wangwana was murder. Yet even this was not the most grotesque crime he heard about.