THE NILE EXPEDITION:
FROM GEMAI TO KORTI IN A WHALER.
"Put your helm down," cried the quasi nautical military captain, "hard down." Obedient Atkins, with becoming promptitude, unshipped the tiller, and flinging it in the bottom of his boat, awaited orders.
The incident may briefly convey to the reader the average amount of boat-lore with which the leading companies of Lord Wolseley's first whaler-embarked battalion touched the waters of the Nile at Gemai, and may be an excuse for offering the following details of the river-march from thence to Korti.
When the boat is the practical unit, and one boat as like another as the number of firms employed could make them, it will perhaps suffice to describe the heroine of the present chronicle, and let No. 44 stand for one and all. Of the ordinary whaler shape – pointed stem and stern, carrying two masts and rather inadequate lug-sails – No. 44 has a length of 32 feet 3½ inches, a beam of 6 feet 11½ inches, and a draught of 2½ feet.
On starting from Gemai the boat was equipped in accordance with the subjoined list,[1] showing her to be well found: but the oars were ill balanced, and too long for the double-banked rowing to which, when the stores were taken in, it was found necessary to resort; the rudder was too small and too weak (it split in my hands at Semneh); and the stem, too fine for the strain imposed upon it in hauling through the cataracts, gaped ominously in the rush at Ambigol. The keel might well have been dispensed with, and a flat double-bottom substituted, the boat being frequently held among the rocks by the keel alone.
According to the strength of companies, the boats' crews varied in number, running nine to eleven (in no case exceeding twelve) men per boat – this including the Canadian voyageurs, of whom one (in the case of the captain, two) was told off to each as far as Dal: south of Dal, and to Aboo Fatmeh, one voyageur was considered sufficient for a company, and had his place assigned him in the leading boat; while for the remaining distance, the boats proceeded in charge of troop-crews alone.
Up a falling Nile, the progress of light and of laden boats affords no parallel; yet the difference between the time taken by Colonel Alleyne in his trip to Dal with boats manned by voyageurs, and that taken by our boats troop-manned, is so marked as to invite notice.
The Nile perpetually changes; the channel useful to-day may to-morrow be useless: there is no light in the water. To this, as much as to their greater weight and less practised handling, is due the apparently disproportionate difference in the time taken by the experimental party and by the troops who followed them. It should be mentioned, also, that the course of these boats has been in a great measure guess-work: a whole company occasionally following its leader on the wrong road, has lost five or six hours. One reliable native guide per company would have been invaluable.
- ↑ See post, pp. 183, 184.
