Sudan 1885 Read online

  The Iberia, under Captain J.W. Shannon, was a 4701 tonne steamer. Shannon was allowed six days in Sydney to victual and load the ship, and if there were any delays he had to pay the government £250 a day. The voyage from Sydney to Suakin was not to take longer than 30 days. The £15,000 contract stipulated that the ship had to accommodate 26 officers, 600 men, 25 horses, food, water, ammunition and stores. Its water condenser had to be capable of producing 7273 litres of potable water a day, including 45 litres per day for each horse on board. Catering arrangements specified that the:

  mess for officers to consist of the usual meals – breakfast, luncheon, dinner and tea, with a suitable and well kept table, liberally supplied with articles of the best description and quality, equal at least to those provided on first-class steamers.

  The arrangements on the Australasian were similar. The daily ration per man aboard ship included:

  1½ pounds bread or 1 pound biscuit and 1 pound flour;

  1½ pounds fresh meat or 1 pound preserved meat;

  ½ ounce tea or coffee and 3 ounces sugar;

  ½ ounce salt, 1/36 ounce pepper, ¼ ounce mustard; and

  2 ounces rice, 1 ounce lime juice, 1/2 pound preserved vegetables.

  In addition, there was 1 pound of flour and 2 ounces of currants or raisins per week and (at the discretion of the officers) up to 1 gill (5 ounces or 142 millilitres) of rum daily.

  The daily horse ration was 12 pounds of hay, 10 pounds of oats and 33 pounds of bran.

  The British War Office paid most of the expenses of the New South Wales Contingent, and the colony showered it with gifts and supplies, matters that nowadays are the responsibility of the Australian Defence Force.

  “In marching order”, Cartoon, Bulletin, 7 March 1885. A satirical view of the departing soldier encumbered with gifts and necessities.

  Recruits, artillery etc in Victoria Barracks Sydney Victoria Barracks, Sydney. Source: Sydney Illustrated News, 1885.

  The Sydney community rose to the occasion, with donations that included crates of whiskey and wine, 20,000 cigarettes, herb extract for dysentery, soda water, tea, biscuits and musical instruments. There was even a private offer of a pension of twenty guineas a year for five years for any soldier awarded the Victoria Cross.

  Many of the processes then in place still apply today:

    •  selection of a commander;

    •  identifying the optimum mix of units and skills;

    •  refresher training;

    •  health checks; and

    •  the planning necessary to project the contingent half way around the world and feed and water them en route.

  Anti-war address by Sarah Parker, National Library Australia.

  The New South Wales Contingent’s overseas service set the pattern for almost all of Australia’s subsequent military commitments and deployments, as a junior coalition partner with little freedom to manoeuvre strategically.

  No effort was spared to ensure that when the Contingent departed, its send off would be a public relations extravaganza. Government offices and banks were shut, and school children were dragooned into cheer squads. The force, resplendent in blue and scarlet, made its triumphant way under brilliant sunshine from Sydney’s Victoria Barracks to Circular Quay. The crowds numbered tens of thousands.

  Departing troops NSW Source: Sydney Illustrated News.

  Departure of the NSW Contingent from Sydney’s Circular Quay. Contemporary lithograph. Source: National Library of Australia.

  The Contingent left Sydney on 3 March 1885 to join a British Expeditionary Force sent to the Sudan to avenge Gordon’s death. The force was part of a two-pronged advance on Khartoum. Two British columns under Wolseley were making their way south along the Nile, while another force commanded by Graham was to strike west from the port of Suakin on the Red Sea.

  Just after 1500 on 3 March the Iberia and Australasian made their way out towards Sydney Heads. The crowds cheered, as did sailors manning the rigging of navy vessels in port. Then several pleasure boats packed with spectators and relatives of the men on the troopships came alongside the Iberia. On the forward rail of one Mrs Sessel, wife of Private Edward Sessel of D Company, held up one of her three children to wave goodbye. Suddenly the two ships collided. Sessel’s wife and another woman were killed. Both troopships steamed on without stopping. Although he witnessed this event, it was not until the Iberia docked at Adelaide that Sessel was told the news and returned to Sydney.

  Private Hamilton St. Clair Dick wrote that the:

  first few days after we left Sydney were mournful in the extreme. The majority of the men had not quite got over their home sickness and to a mental anguish was added the discomforts of mal de mere. Officers and men alike were prostrated by this fearful sickness.

  Life aboard the Iberia Contemporary lithograph Sydney Mail, 9 May 1885.

  Sergeant Butler of A Company wrote in his diary:

  At sea Friday 20 March. Regimental Order that men were to have their hair cut short to the head before disembarking and part shaving except wearing moustache to be discontinued.

  After a stopover at Colombo (Sri Lanka), both troopships proceeded to their next stop, coaling in Aden, before proceeding north up the Red Sea.

  Tween decks on the voyage out The Sydney Illustrated News, 14 March 1885.

  Chapter 3

  OPERATIONS IN THE SUDAN 1881-1884

  1881-1882

  A general insurrection across the Sudan began in August 1881, after Muhammad Ahmad proclaimed himself the Mahdi. Several attempts were made by the Egyptian government and local authorities in Khartoum to arrest him, but government forces were defeated in August and December by tribes loyal to Ahmed. The local administrator of Fashoda identified what he thought was an opportunity to attack Mahdist forces, and in December 1881 marched out of that city, only to be defeated. The enemy collected large quantities of rifles and stores from the rout.

  Other provinces joined the Mahdi’s banner in 1882. To put down the widening rebellion, the Egyptian Governor of Khartoum, Abd el Kader, despatched a force of 4000 troops to the Shilluk country (in the south of the Sudan, centred on Fashoda). Another revolt loomed there after the local emir was killed during the Fashoda debacle. In March 1882, while in the town of Kawa, one of the Mahdi’s relatives unsuccessfully laid siege to the town of Sennar, and was then pursued into the hills. Government forces then enjoyed two rare victories, the first on 3 May near Abu Haras on the Nile, and the second at Sennat on 25 May.

  The Mahdi then concentrated a large force of over 6000 tribesmen near El Obeid. An Egyptian force again left Kawa, and advanced southwest to the outskirts of El Obeid. It made contact with the Mahdists near Jebl Gedir on 7 June, and was completely destroyed. A series of minor skirmishes followed, with victories and losses on both sides. At the end of September the Mahdi personally took the field, and inflicted a defeat on the Egyptians near Bara.

  Abd el Kader then requested immediate reinforcements from Cairo. The British were in control there, as part of what was supposed to be a temporary occupation of the country. Wanting to avoid a civil war, they approved the request, and a force of 10,000 troops was deployed to the Sudan via the port of Suakin. While this force was concentrating in Khartoum, however, after a long siege El Obeid fell to the Mahdi on 18 January 1883.

  1883

  Disobeying orders from the Khedive in Cairo to wait for British-officered troops to arrive, Abd el Kader left Kawa on 13 February. His force gained a decisive victory over an enemy force of 12,000 near Sennar, which they were besieging for a second time. The remaining enemy force split into three groups and fled east. Abd el Kader was then superseded by Hicks Pasha (a retired British officer of the Bombay Staff Corps), who held the rank of major general in the Egyptian army. After arriving in Khartoum on 3 March, he spent a few weeks trying to train his poorly equipped and led force before deploying to Kawa on

  3 April.

  The force had be
en instructed in the basics of drill but little else. It consisted of:

    •  five and half battalions of regular Egyptian infantry;

    •  a half battalion of African soldiers;

    •  five field guns;

    •  two Nordenfelt guns; and

    •  some support troops.

  Approaching the region of Marabieh on 29 May, Hicks’ troops defeated a force of over 5000 Mahdists. He was determined to subjugate all of Kordofan, and destroy enemy forces in the region. Returning to Khartoum, he cabled the new Commander-in-Chief of the Egyptian army in Cairo, Major General Sir Evelyn Wood, for 6000 reinforcements.

  With a larger force (which included many unwilling conscripts) of over 7000 infantry, 500 cavalry, and artillery, Hicks left Khartoum on 9 September. On 24 September an advance party seized the wells at Shatt, beyond which little was known of the country or its water supply. His force soon ran out of water, and was forced to make camp while efforts were made to find local wells, but the enemy had planted two of its own men among Hicks scouts.

  As he had no reliable troops to garrison rear posts, Hicks had no line of communication to Khartoum. Despite hundreds of his men dying of thirst, Hicks reached a place called Kasghil, southwest of El Obeid, where he was attacked in force (the Mahdi had concentrated 30,000 men there) and routed. British intelligence estimates put the number of rifles and artillery captured up to and including the destruction of Hicks’ force, at 20,290 rifles and 19 guns.

  Hicks’ defeat made the Mahdi the undisputed master of Kordofan and Sennar. Panic ensued on news of the disaster, and the British insisted that the Egyptian government should evacuate those parts of the Sudan it still controlled. For its part, Britain was keen to retain control of Red Sea ports such as Suakin for their longer term strategic and commercial value.

  NORDENFELT GUN

  Nordenfelt Gun. Image courtesy the Australian Army Infantry Museum.

  First patented in 1873, a Nordenfelt gun could fire 3000 rounds of rifle ammunition in just over three minutes, but it often jammed in the sandy conditions of the Sudan.

  The immediate action for a jam was to gently move the handle backward and forwards twice to clear the obstruction. The weapon’s other weakness was that the round extractors could break; rendering it useless.

  Indicative specifications (based on a British service Mk III 4-barrel version):

  Weight: 447 pounds/203 kg

  Barrel: 35.48 inches/901 mm

  Calibre: 1 inch/25.4mm

  Muzzle Velocity: 1,464 feet per second/446 m/s

  Hicks Pasha (Major General), 1830–1883, Commander of the Egyptian Army destroyed on 5 November 1883. Source: Wikipedia Commons.

  SUAKIN

  Contemporary bird’s eye view of Suakin. Source: The Illustrated London News, 1885.

  Suakin had a few principal buildings (many of which survived intact until the 1930s), including a mosque. It was connected to the mainland by a causeway about 90 metres long and 36 metres wide. Access to the town was through a huge arched gateway. It possessed a good harbour, and was well defended.

  The area around Suakin witnessed three disasters for the Egyptian army. On 6 November 1883, an Egyptian force of 500, which included the British consul (Lynedoch Moncrieff), marching to relieve the nearby town of Tokar was annihilated at El Teb by a force of only 200 Hadendowa warriors. A month later a battalion despatched from Suakin to relieve the garrison of Sinkat was slaughtered; then a force under Valentine Baker Pasha, younger brother of the explorer Sir Samuel Baker Pasha, was defeated on 4 February 1884, just southwest of Trinkitat.

  Suakin, el-Geyf_mosque in modern day Sawakin (Suakin). Source: Wikipedia Commons.

  The security situation in the Sudan continued to deteriorate, particularly in the east of the country. There Osman Digna, who had been ruined by the suppression of the slave trade under Gordon, started to harass Suakin and Sinkat, both important towns on the Red Sea coast. Osman Digna’s headquarters was the well-watered village of Tamai, 32 kilometres southwest of Suakin.

  In response the Egyptian government deployed to Suakin a mainly infantry force under Valentine Baker. This port was almost 1600 kilometres from Cairo and 1200 kilometres north of the port of Aden. Baker arrived on 23 December 1883, determined to re-establish Egyptian control.

  1884

  In London, Gladstone’s government could not decide on the best policy to pursue. It was under pressure from manipulative newspaper editors, its political enemies, and a jingoist public. Therefore, in early January 1884, in what was seen even then as a highly risky move, Gordon (a previous governor of the Sudan) was sent to advise how best to extricate the remaining Egyptian forces there. The decision was risky because Gordon was a somewhat unstable, albeit charismatic, character who shared similar personality traits with his enemy, the wily Mahdi. Despite being the darling of the British public, Gordon’s appointment was not wholeheartedly supported by British government officials in Cairo.

  Accompanied by his deputy adjutant-general, Lieutenant Colonel John Stewart, Gordon arrived in Khartoum on 18 February 1884. It was a city of almost 30,000 people with a garrison of 7000 troops. Khartoum was fortified and provisioned to stand a siege of several months, and its armoury was stocked with millions of rounds of ammunition.

  Gordon at Khartoum

  Gordon’s brief as governor general of the Sudan was to arrange the withdrawal of the Egyptian civil and military population. The operational environment in which he found himself was daunting. Three of the remaining Egyptian army garrisons in the Sudan were besieged, while forces loyal to the Mahdi largely controlled the countryside. Despite his orders, Gordon believed that if the Sudan was handed to the Mahdi, then Egypt itself would be threatened. With less justification he decided to force the Mahdi’s hand, and effectively reignited the war.

  To smooth the way for the withdrawal of the Egyptian garrisons and civilians, Gordon issued proclamations announcing that the suppression of the slave trade was abandoned, that the Mahdi was sultan of Kordofan, and that the Sudan was independent of Egypt. Despite these sweeteners, Gordon soon struggled to maintain control. It was not long before the Mahdi laid siege to Khartoum, and cut it off from outside help. The British public demanded that an army be sent to extract Gordon.

  A contemporary drawing of Khartoum 1885, the star-shaped earthworks in the distance were actually several hundred meters to the right. Gordon’s palace which looked onto the Blue Nile is in the foreground. It has a flag pole on the roof. The White Nile is in the distance. Source: The Graphic, February 1885.

  Eventually, on 28 September, Gladstone ordered Wolseley, then serving as adjutant-general in the War Office, to organise and deploy a relief expedition to sail up the Nile to Khartoum. While the aim of Wolseley’s advance was to rescue Gordon, it was only a phase in the Sudan War, which began in 1881, and would not end until 1898. The underlying aim was to secure the Sudan for Britain, and to protect Egypt’s southern borders and the strategically vital passage through the Red Sea and the Suez Canal.

  Suakin and its surrounds

  The territory around Suakin had been the scene of a series of bloody encounters between British, Egyptian and Mahdist forces over several months in 1883. After unsuccessfully demanding the surrender of Suakin and Sinkat in August 1883, Osman Digna besieged both places, only to be wounded and driven off. He attacked Sinkat again on 18 October, killing 156 Egyptian reinforcements being rushed there from Suakin. His forces then besieged the fort of Tokar.

  Spearmen. Art by Jeff Isaacs.

  Valentine Baker. Source: John Grant, Cassell’s History of the War in the Soudan, Volume V, Cassell, London, 1885, p. 85.

  Shortly after, on 5 November the British consul in Suakin and 500 Egyptian soldiers were massacred near the wells at El Teb, on their way to assist the garrison at Tokar. El Teb was a collection of water wells about 24 kilometres south of the port of Trinkitat on the Red Sea, and 130 kilometres southeast from Suakin.
The Egyptian government then sent an expeditionary force to Suakin under Valentine Baker, who arrived there on 23 December 1883. His mission was to pacify the country around Suakin and Berber, and to raise the siege of Tokar.

  Baker and his force of 3656 Egyptian, Ottoman and African cavalry and other troops landed at Trinkitat on 28 January 1884 (by February 1884 the Trinkitat garrison numbered 3970 British soldiers, engineers, sailors and marines). From there, his troops advanced to relieve the besieged fort at Tokar. At this time, however, unconfirmed news arrived that Tokar had fallen.

  On 4 February 1884, after a march of fewer than five kilometres, the enemy were seen. A cavalry charge was ordered, but it was turned, and the horsemen rushed back in confusion to the main body. Three artillery rounds dispersed a large group of Mahdists, but it was clear they were determined to attack from all sides. This occurred at about 0930.

  The ensuing panic was so great that Baker’s men could not even form a square, and the Egyptian cavalry were the first to flee. An enemy force of 1200 then fell on the defenders and butchered most. Baker and his officers tried to rally the cavalry for a charge, but were unsuccessful. The survivors, Baker among them, later managed to reach Trinkitat alive.

  The Egyptian loss at what was called the first battle of El Teb was 12 officers and 2250 men killed and wounded, besides the capture of two Gatling guns, four 80 mm Krupp guns, and 3000 rifles. The garrison at Tokar, which had not actually fallen, remained under siege. On 8 February, the Egyptian commander at Sinkat, which was running out of supplies, attempted to withdraw to Suakin, but he and over 400 troops, women, and children, were either killed or captured almost as soon as they left the town.