It was at that point the voyageurs began to test the capabilities of their boats in rougher waters, at first without soldiers or cargoes, by ferrying one hundred of them south to a Royal Navy camp through a five-kilometre section of the sixteen-kilometre maze of rapids and waterfall that made up the Second Cataract.9 (Before the voyageurs had arrived, the first whaleboat to move through the Second Cataract had done so on September 25, and Arab labourers carried out much of the work of transporting the whaleboats through or around the cataract.) Originally, the army had expected to use a short pre-existing railway line to bypass that part of the river altogether, which would have put the Canadians farther upriver for their first posting, but its deteriorated rolling stock and poor condition meant that a large portion of the Gordon Relief Expedition’s men, equipment, and supplies had to travel through the difficult cataract until the railway’s capacity could be improved, which caused considerable disappointment because of the loss of critical time in moving toward Khartoum. An officer from the Royal Navy mitigated the problem as best he could by building a 2,300-metre portage around part of the cataract where men pushed boats along with rollers and levers, although the work was very hard and heavy. However, once engineers completed their improvements, the railway could transport over one hundred tonnes of supplies per day, exclusive of passengers.10
“The Canadian voyageurs’ first touch of the Nile.” The report that accompanied this illustration captured some of the naive enthusiasm of the period’s press coverage: “there are not many feathers and beads about our Red Indian volunteers, and they look very slovenly in their suit of woollen tweed, half moccasins, and regulation white helmet, but strong, sturdy looking fellows they are, and when in their blue flannel shirts, with sleeves tucked up, they look good enough for any boating requirements.”
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The design of the expedition’s watercraft had been inspired from various models, but mainly by double-bowed Royal Navy whaleboats (or “whalers” as contemporaries tended to call them). The navy’s design had been modified to address Sudanese conditions, on the recommendation of Colonel William Butler and Lieutenant-Colonel James Alleyne, both of whom based their views on their experiences on the Red River Expedition. Butler took overall charge of designing the vessels, procuring them, and then managing them during the campaign. As also influenced by his memories of 1870, as we saw above, he assumed they would be piloted by boatmen from Canada, having suggested the idea to Wolseley as early as April 1884. Each vessel could carry three or more tonnes of supplies, personal equipment, and up to a dozen soldiers, although usually there were fewer men on board. The whalers were ordered in August 1884 from several dozen manufacturers in the United Kingdom, who had to work swiftly to fulfil the army’s specifications, and naturally, given the pressing circumstances, the watercraft varied somewhat in size and their component parts were not always interchangeable. The 789 whaleboats acquired were somewhat more than nine metres long and two wide, and drew less than sixty centimetres of water. They weighed about 450 kilograms, which was much less than the standard Royal Navy whaler because Colonel Butler believed they had to be as light as possible in order to be portaged easily. Each boat had an awning to protect the men from the sun, and came with a removable rudder, two masts, lug sails, twelve oars, two boat hooks, six pushing poles, rope for tracking, towing and other needs, two grapnel anchors, and other necessities. A quantity of spare parts, materials for repairs, and tools were brought along. For instance, every whaler had a sheet of lead, pitch, paint, canvas, and other supplies, while every eighth boat had a tool chest along with additional supplies, and every twentieth vessel carried a grindstone, nails, and replacement tackle. For crew and passengers, each whaleboat had a bell tent, waterproof bags with blankets and other accoutrements, various tools (such as axes and spades), a portable stove with fuel and cooking equipment (including a water filter and fishing gear), dishes and cutlery, a lamp, cleaning supplies, and other articles. Items were designed to nest within each other or otherwise take up as little space as possible. Beyond these supplies, each vessel held six boxes of ammunition and enough rations to feed twelve men for one hundred days (beyond the small quantities of fresh food that the army purchased as it made its way upriver and the rations that it supplied en route in order to preserve the hundred-day store for the hard campaigning that lay ahead). An important idea behind the design of the boats and their allocations of equipment and supplies was to make each whaler and its men as self-contained and self-sufficient as possible.
When travelling, their crews employed whatever means of propulsion or combination of methods best suited the conditions they encountered. Poles, for example, were good in shallow water, but when the depth of the river was too great and the current too swift, track-lines could be used to haul the vessels from the riverbank. Once the voyageurs had gained some experience on the Nile, they came to the conclusion that the boats tended to sail best in groups of about ten. Such a number ensured that there were would be enough pilots from Canada to handle them, as not every vessel could have one or two of these boatmen on board, and therefore travelling in groups allowed the steersmen to move from boat to boat once each craft passed through a challenging stretch of water. As well, this number reduced the risk of collisions that might occur with a greater number of whalers in circumstances when the river caught the boats up and swept them along at high speeds.11
The New York Times, basing a story on the words of some non-Mohawk voyageurs who returned to Canada in 1885 via New York, reported that the whalers “were poorly built and unsuitable.”12 Louis Jackson, however, disagreed, declaring that the Mohawks were “pleased” with their boats, and stated that they were appropriate for their designated tasks. They were robust enough to take a fair amount of abuse, but were light enough to bring ashore and turn over without difficulty for repairs or to portage around impassable parts of the river. It was their light construction that seems to have been the main point of disagreement between those who liked the vessels and those who did not. However necessary it was to reduce the weight of the whalers, Butler’s design presumed that the men who would pilot them would be highly skilled — as the Mohawks, Ojibways, and some of the others were — but the majority of the Canadian contingent, including reasonably good pilots who made up the bulk of the boatmen, were not as proficient as the peculiar construction of the boats demanded. That fact suggests that the authorities in Canada ought to have been more aggressive in fulfilling London’s request to engage a force primarily composed of highly qualified native steersmen. Jackson’s only complaint about the vessels was the presence of keels on them, which he found unsuitable for navigating in fast-moving water at times, although he acknowledged that they had their value when the men had to tow the whalers through rapids from shore. (Another foreman, Alexander Morrison, noted that flat-bottomed boats would not have been able to carry as much cargo or make as much speed in smooth waters as did the whaleboats with keels.) Jackson conceded that other voyageurs had differing opinions about the watercraft, yet affirmed that the Mohawk crews thought they “could not be improved upon for the Nile service.” He liked the sails well enough that he brought one of them back to Kahnawake.13
In addition to the whaleboats, the army utilized steamers, barges (which brought many of the whalers from Cairo to Wadi Halfa), and indigenous Nile watercraft, along with sending men and supplies along Egyptian railway lines whenever possible. The Canadians also brought along two canoes, one for Colonel Denison and one to present to Lord Wolseley, which delighted him.14 Beyond the voyageur contingent and soldier crews who pulled the oars, over two thousand other people performed boat work on a regular basis, including sailors from the Royal Navy, soldiers from the Egyptian army, locally hired civilians, labourers supplied by contractors such as Thomas Cook, and West African “kroomen.” This last group, comprising 266 black pilots and two white officers, had been recruited in August 1884 as a result of Wolseley’s experience in the Ashanti War, where members of his Ring came to admire the Africans’ boating skills. (Wolseley felt that the kroomen were “admirable boatmen,” noting, with some patronization, that they were “a cheery lot and real Neptunes in the water” while other officers praised these steersmen for their contributions to the campaign.)15