Early in the 1820s David Napier conceived the
grand notion of the Firth of Clyde 'Watering-places'
which, for more than a century, were to occupy a
special affection in the hearts of Scots in general
and Clydesiders in particular, and the nostalgia
of the trips 'doon the watter' lingers on. At this
time Napier was the acknowledged genius of the
steamship constructors but was frustrated by the
reluctance of sailing ship owners and operators to
change, and by the temerity of potential passengers.
He had already resorted to ownership of vessels
which he had equipped with his steam engines and
set up a steam packet service between the Clyde and
Ulster. He then determined to create a market for
pleasure passengers and to introduce them to the
benefits and safety of steam navigation. His initial
venture was the construction of a pier at Kilmun
and the establishment of the first watering-place
there was the start of a more ambitious tourist
trail. He designed a small iron-hulled steamship,
the S.S. Aglaia, built her at his Lancefield yard and
transported the parts for assembly at the southern
end of Loch Eck; in all probability this was the
first steam propelled iron ship. There were overland
coach connections between Kilmun and the Loch,
then a similar link at the north to Strachur, and
a steamer connection was run across Loch Fyne
to Inveraray and other points. The Crinan Canal
was a later extension of this road to the Isles.
However, such initiatives seldom bring immediate
reward and, impatient with the lack of co-operation
locally, David Napier disposed of his interests in
Clyde shipping and in the early 1830s transferred
his activities to the Thames. Fortunately an even
more worthy successor was already emerging in
the person of his cousin (and brother-in-law),
Robert Napier, and over the next fifty years he
led Scotland's steam and iron shipbuilding to a
level of pre-eminence which was little short of
astounding. In voyaging to the four corners of
the world, these steamships were to carry Scots
engineers, their skills and their manufactures to
hitherto remote and unknown locations. After a
full century of dominance, steam was to give way to
the internal combustion engine and motor vehicles
were swiftly followed by aircraft. Locked into the
speed of progress, is the speed of obsolescence.
Even today one can see, deep in Africa, steamships
which had their origin, over a century ago,
on the Clyde. There is a dockyard equipped with
working machinery from that time and staffed by
Kenyan engineers who have had their skills handed
down to them from Scots shipbuilders. To some
extent this inland facility has been retained in a state
of suspended animation over the last few decades as
a result of politico-economic stagnation. For over
half a century the Lake Victoria Marine showed
the way, and hopefully the will is not entirely
lost.
Kisumu is an African watering-place, the provincial
centre of the vast Nyanza territories of western
Kenya, which at a guess supports something in
the region of a quarter of a million Kenyans, the
majority of Luo extraction and descendants of a
Nilotic people who first migrated to these lands
some three centuries ago by way of the Sudan.
However, until the advent of the Europeans, the
site of Kisumu was barren and uninhabited. It
owes its existence as a metropolis to steamships,
the railroad and a Scottish marine engineer who,
as it happens, was directly descended from the
Napiers of Dumbarton. Kisumu stands at the head
of the Winam (formerly Kavirondo) Gulf whose
map reference is on the Equator and between the
east meridians of 34 degrees and 35 degrees, six hundred miles
inland from the Indian Ocean. An appreciation of
scale may be derived from equating this gulf in
extent with the Firth of Clyde, whilst beyond its narrow entrance (say Arran and Kintyre) stretches
the great freshwater Lake Victoria, which in itself
would accommodate not only the Irish Sea but the
greater part of Ireland itself. With its surface at
3,700 feet above sea level it is an appropriate source
of the White Nile which carries its waters thousands
of miles across Africa before depositing them in
the Mediterranean. As yet Kisumu does not enjoy
the doubtful advantage of being included in the
packaged tours of the 'Safari Trail' but a countryside
with such mountains, lakes, rainfall and verdant
foliage has great geographical attraction, and it has
certainly outgrown the reputation, which it had in
its early days of settlement, of being a thoroughly
unhealthy spot.
In this area of East Africa recorded history
by European standards is but a century and a
half old. In this time men of Scots origin have
been surprisingly prominent; many gave their
lives and others the greater part of their working
lives to what was considered the improvement of
conditions under which the Africans then subsisted.
A backward glance of pride may be an indulgence,
but looking back in anger is usually a subterfuge
for escaping current responsibilities.
Dr David Livingstone was a legend in his
lifetime, but more importantly set an example
which many Scots were proud to follow. Dr
John Kirk (Forfarshire) accompanied Livingstone
on his Zambezi Expedition (1858-63) and soon
after became Surgeon and Political Agent to the
Sultanate of Zanzibar, remaining there for some
twenty years. He exercised a wide influence over
the mainland Tanganyika country, curtailing the
Arab slave-trade and cementing the initiatives of
the expeditions of explorers such as Burton, Speke,
Grant, Cameron and Stanley. It was with the facility
of the Zanzibar base and the Tanganyika route to
Lake Victoria that the age-old mystery of the source
of the White Nile was resolved. On this epic journey
in 1862 Speke was accompanied by James Augustus
Grant (Nairn), and thereafter Scottish and English
Missionary Societies were encouraged to send their
representatives to Uganda, hoping that from there
they would be able to suppress at least one major
source of the slave-trade. The most renowned of
the early missionaries, until his death after thirteen
years' service around Lake Victoria, was Alexander
Mackay. He was the son of a minister, born in an
Aberdeenshire manse. After graduating in engineering at Edinburgh, he joined the church missionary
service and died in similar circumstances to those of
his mentor, David Livingstone, some eighteen years
earlier on the shores of Lake Tanganyika farther
south. Five years after Mackay's arrival in Uganda
the hitherto unexplored route from Mombasa to
the northern shore of Lake Victoria was covered
by Joseph Thomson (Dumfriesshire), though he was
unable to progress through Usoga to Uganda, and
it was not until seven years later, in 1890, that this
direct route became known to Europeans. During
this interval East Africa (named Kenya 35 years
later) was tentatively explored and assessed by a
small company which had grudgingly been given
a charter by the British Government to implement
trading and administrative rights over the territories
inland from Mombasa which had been proffered by
the Sultan of Zanzibar. This was almost entirely
a Scottish initiative, advocated by John Kirk
and implemented by William Mackinnon, and
was similar to a previous venture which these
gentlemen had floated some years earlier. At that
time the territory was inland from Dar-es-Salaam to
Lake Tanganyika, but the British Government had
refused to support the proposals, though finance
was not a requirement. Imperial Germany was not
so reluctant. She sent in her emissaries and simply
took it over as German East Africa, regardless of the
objections of the Sultan of Zanzibar. This brought
home to the European governments a realisation
that some consensus of agreement on spheres of
influence in Africa had to be arrived at if wars
in these desolate regions were to be avoided. The
notorious partitioning by drawing lines across the
rudimentary maps of the continent was the result.
It can be criticised on many counts but in the haste
and ignorance at that time, and distance, no better
way could be found.
When he embarked on this venture in East Africa,
William Mackinnon was already an old man with
little experience of Africa, but a long and successful
career east of Suez. He left Kintyre as a young man
and set up a shipping agency in India, from which he
expanded into ship-owning and founded the British
India Steamship Company, which was to become
the largest merchant fleet in the world. Apart from
considerable financial and practical support to the
British Missionary Societies he ploughed large sums into the fledgling Imperial British East Africa
Company, with very little prospect of commercial
gain but great confidence that, by creating arteries
of trade under stable administration, the oppression
by the slave-traders could be terminated. Accepting
that education was the sphere of the missionaries,
his experience told him that a swift improvement in
trade and communications could only be achieved
by the introduction of steam locomotion by rail
and ship. The railway was to prove a contentious,
costly and extremely difficult venture which did
not materialise in his lifetime -- or in that of the
Company, but in 1889 he ordered two steamships
for East Africa.
The first of these, ordered by the Company
from Kincaid & Co. of Greenock, a sternwheel
paddle-steamer named the Kenia, was dispatched
in knocked-down form to Mombasa. She was
assembled there and sent up the coast on a
precarious voyage to the mouth of the Tana
River which an early explorer had assessed and
advocated as a large waterway to the interior.
Unfortunately the river proved to be unnavigable
and pestilential, and the adventure foundered
on impracticability. The second vessel was a
70-ton single-screw steamer, specially designed
with overland transportation in mind, but it never
became practicable during the life of the Company
to effect her carriage to Lake Victoria. She remained
in Glasgow at the Pointhouse Yard of her builders,
A. & J. Inglis, for five years until offered for sale
by the liquidator of the now defunct company. She
was removed from her packing-cases, reassembled
on shore and purchased by the Crown Agents on
behalf of the Uganda Protectorate administration
who were by then desperately anxious to have this
facility on Lake Victoria. She was bought at her
original cost price of 4,456 pounds and reduced to some
3,000 parts and packages. 'Only two engine pieces
exceed the porter weight of 60 lbs., a marvel of
workmanship and a thoroughly good job in every
respect'. The name S.S. William Mackinnon was
retained and she was dismantled, re-marked, and
dispatched to Mombasa in 1895. There the real
problems began.
Transportation across six hundred miles of equatorial
Africa would be by ill-defined trails over
desert and tundra, down precipitous escarpments
to the Rift Valley, over 10,000-feet mountains
and along forest and river trails which as yet
had not even been explored. Getting the action
started was even more problematical. Most of the
packages comprised hull framing, plating, boiler,
propulsion machinery, auxiliaries and fittings, and
additionally there were the tools and equipment
essential to establishing a dockyard on a remote
and isolated lake shore. These latter were earmarked
for earliest dispatch, and some hundreds did, in the
course of the next three years, start on the precarious
up-country journey, but many of them stopped far
short of their final destination, relegated to corners
of grass huts when more vital supplies had to go
forward, or abandoned in bush or desert when
the human or animal bearers expired or deserted.
Some eventually reached Port Victoria, a grandly
named but now almost untraceable shore where the
Nzoia River enters the north of the lake, close to
the present boundary between Kenya and Uganda,
but the effort was overtaken by events.
The British Government, having been granted
the influential status over Uganda and the East
Africa territory, was at first noticeably reluctant
to become involved, either financially or
administratively. Whilst the Charter Company had
embarked on the concession, covering the country
between Mombasa and the Rift Valley, increasingly
pressure was placed on them to extend their
administrative and policing oversight right through
Uganda and as far as the Ruwenzori Mountains,
for the Foreign Office had no representation in
either of these territories. Surprisingly enough this
seemingly impossible task was accomplished by
the Company's officers, led by Frederick Jackson,
Frederick Lugard and his assistant William Grant,
but it was an intolerable strain on their limited
financial and staffing resources. The Company had
been led to understand that Treasury financing
would be made available for the construction of
a railway to Uganda if they would assist with this
administrative responsibility, but by 1892 no such
funds had been allocated. The Company had to
declare their intention to withdraw from Uganda
and the Foreign Office was forced to take it over
as a Protectorate. By 1895 there was still nothing
definite on the railway appropriations and, having
used up all their capital, the Company was forced
to go into liquidation, and Britain to declare a
Protectorate over British East Africa. At last, in August 1896 the Uganda Railway Bill was passed by
the British Parliament, the Empire had expanded,
and all credit went to the politicians.
Within the Protectorates responsibility still devolved
mainly on ex-officials of the Company, who
became District or Provincial Officers, which in
most cases proved beneficial for newly appointed
Commissioners; promoted from other colonial
spheres with established lines of administration,
they were often fish out of water in this essentially
new context. Foreign Office officials in Whitehall
set to with a will to exert their influence over these
new East African possessions. Urgent telegraphic
communications could be delivered to Mombasa
within a matter of days (the placing of the S.S.
William Mackinnon on Lake Victoria was one of
their higher priorities) but at first they were unable
to comprehend that their messages might take
six further months to reach Kampala, and as long
for a reply. The British supply route started with
a sharp rise from Mombasa to a table-land and a
hundred-mile crossing of the parched Taru Desert,
then as many miles over the arid plains of
Ukamba, until rising to the more pleasant hill
station at Machakos. It then returned to the flatter
plains and the next station at Fort Smith (near the
present city of Nairobi) before a further rise to
the top of the Kikuyu Escarpment, followed by a
steep 2,000-foot descent to the floor of the Rift
Valley and, as earlier termed, Masailand. A further
hundred miles across the scorching valley and past
the alkali lakes of Elementitia and Nakuru, then a
sharper rise to Ravine and a trail between the Mau
and Kamasia Mountains, lifted the traveller up to
the Uasin Gishu Plains, avoiding a more dangerous
trail through Nandi country, to the Mumias station.
The country from Ravine onward was, until 1902,
administered by the Uganda Protectorate, though
that amounted to little more than guarding caravans
on the so-called 'Road'. There then followed two,
often precarious, river crossings of the Nazoia and
Sio and on to Usoga country and Lubwa's which
was a lightly fortified administrative post. It was
then necessary to make a crossing of the Napoleon
Gulf, as the outfalls of the Nile from the lake via the
Ripon Falls were virtually impassable, and native
canoes were employed for the purpose. At last the
traveller arrived in Uganda proper, though very
many did not survive to see it.
Only one of the artisans sent out with the
cargo of the steamship parts was retained. He
accompanied a caravan, carrying some of the first
dockyard equipment, which was deposited at Port
Victoria. Pending further deliveries this engineer,
William Scott, went on to Kampala where he was
required to fit up and commission the steam engine
of a small launch which had been sailed and towed
by dhow from the southern end of Lake Victoria.
This had been wheeled and carted over the longer
but well-established route through what was now
German East Africa, and there was a number of
quite efficient private contractors operating their
transport services. Indeed, the Uganda Protectorate
had for many years to rely on them for supplies, as
had the missionary stations in Uganda. Scott put
the steam engine in working order and took the
launch 'Victoria' on her maiden voyage to the fort
at Lubwa's. Unwittingly he sailed into an ambush,
was taken captive with the British District Officer
and the Garrison Commander, and later all three
were murdered by their Sudanese militiamen. The
rebels vandalised the engines and boiler of the
launch, and though she remained afloat it was
some two years before replacement parts could
be obtained and fitted. More seriously, this event,
in October 1897, marked the commencement of
what was known as the Sudanese Mutiny, and had
serious repercussions on the administrations of both
Protectorates, rendering the transportation services
almost impotent.
In deference to Whitehall instructions, the new
B.E.A. Commissioner had, in 1895, set up a transport
service which was to be under the charge of the
experienced Captain Sclater, then working up-country
on road improvements. Unfortunately, on his
return to the coast he died of blackwater fever. Soon
after, word came from the Rift Valley that one of
their caravans, under the charge of an experienced
Swahili leader, had been attacked and that the whole
complement of 1,200 men had been killed. It later
emerged that there had been provocation, but that
was small comfort. Months passed before further
journeys could safely be considered. By then Dr
Archie Mackinnon, a long-serving officer with the
former Company, returned from leave and was put
in charge of the transport service. In the interval,
agreements had been entered into with private
contractors, who brought pack animals, such as donkeys, mules and camels, from Somalia and
Egypt, confident in their ability to carry supplies
the apparently modest distance of some 800 miles
to Uganda. Unfortunately their arrival coincided
with a plague of rinderpest disease which swept
across Africa and virtually decimated the pack
animals. Furthermore, a failure of the seasonal
rains for two years, combined with the disease,
eliminated much of the game which roamed the
plains and was an important source of food to
both the travellers and the natives. The effect on
the Masai, a nomadic people whose economy was
largely dependent on their large herds of cattle,
was salutary. For the future, and until the mythical
railway was completed, the transport service was
forced to rely almost entirely on human porterage
as the last resort. It was unsatisfactory, uneconomic,
unhealthy and dehumanising for everyone involved.
Those porters who were sufficiently experienced
and willing to lend their services for a wage were
mostly of Zanzibari origin, but the officials of the
German East African territories did everything to
obstruct the migration of these men to the British
sphere, which was an understandably protectionist
attitude for the preservation of their Tanganyika
route to Uganda and the dues which they could levy
on cargoes. The logistics of porter transportation
were the allocation of a 60 to 70 lb load per
experienced carrier, but transporting 300 loads
almost invariably demanded a caravan of some
1,000 persons, and any more than that was no
longer viable as regard protection and progress. The
European leaders seldom numbered more than two
or three, though each might have a cook, steward,
gun-bearer and private porter. There was then the
Swahili or Arabic caravan-master with his headmen,
largely responsible for recruiting and controlling
the men, each of whom had their own servants.
The Askari guards, mostly of Somali or Sudanese
origin, reported to the European leader, and each
of them would have their own entourage. There
were then miscellaneous carriers of food, water and
supplies for the sustenance of the assembly, together
with an assortment of women and children who,
ving regard to an up-country absence of perhaps
months, could not be entirely eliminated.
Getting the show on the road was incredibly
frustrating, but once going a steady progression
as achieved, though possibly more in the interests of self-preservation than co-operation.
Late in 1897 and early 1898 further strains
were placed on the already sorely pressed transport
service. The first was the arrival at Mombasa of
a considerable party of military surveyors under
Capt. J .R.L. Macdonald, on an expedition to
Lake Rudolph where they hoped to locate the
source of the Juba River which flowed into the
sea on the Somali coast. The hope, which proved
to be a forlorn one, was that this would provide
an alternative supply route to the southern Sudan
where Kitchener had recently relieved Khartoum
and was casting around for some feasible method of
exercising control over that barren and inhospitable
land. Macdonald and his party were, on arrival in
the Rift Valley, to make an unfortunate contribution
to the events which caused the Sudanese militiamen
in Uganda to mutiny. That in turn led to a call
for reinforcements to be sent from India, and
in February 1898 a thousand infantrymen of
the 27th Baluchi Regiment arrived at Mombasa.
Fortunately, by this time the railway line had been
laid across the formidable Taru Desert to Voi, which
was about one hundred miles inland. But for the
next eighteen months getting them to Uganda and
maintaining them in supplies was almost beyond
the capabilities of the transport services.
In Britain the Foreign Office officials appear
to have been blissfully unaware of these problems,
for they engaged three shipbuilders from
the Clyde and sent them to Mombasa. They
were under contract to the Uganda Protectorate
for the purpose of 'putting together' the S.S. William Mackinnon on Lake Victoria, and on
disembarking at Mombasa in March 1898 the
improbability of their commission became only too
obvious. The senior engineer was Richard (Dick)
Grant an able and experienced manager,
and his assistants were Robert Brownlee, ironfitter,
and John MacMillan, carpenter. The local
administrators were able to direct them to the
objects of their employment - decomposing heaps
of steamer parts where they lay in leaky grass huts
at Kilindini and the even less welcome intelligence
that a further unknown number was scattered along
the interminable road to Uganda. Nothing daunted,
Dick set his assistants to the work of examining,
restoring where possible and checking every one
of the stored loads against the inventory, whilst he himself set off up-country to locate as many
as possible of the loads which had been sent off
during the previous three years, and make his
own assessment of the proposed launching site at
Port Victoria. He was fortunate to join a caravan
led by Dr Archie Mackinnon, who was reviewing the
state of the transportation service, and in the
company of his fellow Scot he gained invaluable
knowledge and experience of the country, its perils
and its possibilities. On leaving school Dick had
spent two years as a medical student at Glasgow
University until a defect in his vision enforced a
change to a shipbuilding apprenticeship, and this
forged an additional bond between the two men.
At the time, tropical medicine was very much in
its infancy, there was little authentic knowledge
of the causes of the multitudes of fevers and
endemic diseases, and quinine was the only and
often ineffective palliative. Whilst Dr Mackinnon
had been engaged as a medical officer, the unsettled
state of the country had so far prevented him from
establishing a formal medical service, but after ten
years in the environment his findings and advice
had significantly improved the health and life
expectancy of incomers and inhabitants.
Some nine years earlier, Dr Mackinnon had accompanied
Frederick Jackson on an expedition of
exploration for the Charter Company, and their
route to the lake had taken them round the southern
end of the Mau Range and over the flat lands at the
base of the Nandi Escarpment, though at that time
there was no reason or opportunity to explore the
potential of the Kavirondo Gulf, which appeared to
all intents to be just another inland lake. However,
he appreciated that Dick's primary consideration,
if, as seemed increasingly likely, the steamer loads
had to be carried by porter, was to establish a
dockyard and slipway at the most easterly point
on Lake Victoria. He already knew, and Dick
was soon to find out, that Port Victoria did not
measure up to that criterion, and, in the course of
the journey the question was raised and discussed
with various long-serving officers and others who
knew something of the country. At Fort Smith they
met Blacket, who was in charge of the advance
railway survey section, and when informed that
there was a possible, but as yet unexplored route
over a saddle to the north of the Mau he undertook
to raise the matter with his chief engineer, George
Whitehouse, as an alternative railway route. Blacket
was soon instructed to investigate the possibility
and reported a likely reduction of at least a
hundred miles of railway, but the difficulties in
construction were formidable. Some six months
later Whitehouse inspected the area and was able
to sail from Port Victoria, down the coast, through
the narrow Rusinga Channel into the Kavirondo
Gulf, and establish that Kisumu Bay was at the
eastern extremity of Lake Victoria. The north side
of the Bay, accessible from the flatlands of the Kano
Plains, appeared to be a practicable location for the
end of the rail line and he named it Port Florence
after his wife who had bravely accompanied the
chief engineer's caravan.
During this time Dick had returned to Mombasa,
reconciled his inventories and ordered the considerable
number of replacement parts from the builders,
A. & J. Inglis, in Glasgow. Inevitably these were a
long time in arriving. Mackinnon had to advise the
Commissioner that it was impossible to ascertain
when, if ever, his transport service could undertake
the delivery of the steamship parts, as at least ten
special caravans would be needed for that purpose
alone. Dick kept his options open by offering their
services to the railway constructors, who were
delighted to accept, as they were also experiencing
dire staffing problems. Brownlee and MacMillan
were seconded to the locomotive workshops at
Kilindini and Dick undertook the overhaul of
their steam traction engines. These huge road vehicles had been brought over from India where
they had already seen considerable service, but in
Africa had fallen into disuse because of a lack of
skilled maintenance and supervision in operation.
This involved a considerable amount of time spent
at the railhead, two hundred miles inland at Tsavo,
and their re-commissioning greatly assisted the
work of the rail-layers. Tsavo was, however,
just entering a prolonged period during which
the workers were terrorised and reduced to near
panic by the attentions of man-eating lions, and it
became a wild-west-style stockaded encampment.
Apart from the fear engendered by the lions, the
cramped conditions which the Indian coolies sought
for self-protection made it a singularly unhealthy
station, and Dick was delighted to return to the
coast at the request of George Whitehouse.
By virtue of the Parliamentary Bill the Uganda
Railway had an autonomy of its own, controlled
by a committee in London and exercised in the
territory by the chief engineer. They were given
full administrative and policing authority over a
two-mile-wide corridor along the length of the
line, wherever that might be, and operated entirely
independently as regards staffing, construction and
law-making. The engineers mostly had previous
experience in British India and , as it was virtually impossible to recruit labourers locally, most of these
had to be brought over from the sub-continent,
with resultant variations in race, religion, ethics
and language. Internal and external frictions were
inevitable in spite of genuine efforts at a higher
level of co-operation between railway staff and
administrators. A particular difficulty was in swift
communication, where the railway had the advantage
of the telegraph whose line followed theirs and
sometimes was in advance of the plate-layers, whilst
the administration could only consign confidential
reports to mail runners or caravan leaders.
In February 1899 the chief engineer received
instructions to assume responsibility for transportation
of the steamer to the lake. It was politic
to accept, as he was endeavouring to convince
his committee, that the new-found shorter route
should be adopted, and it was already becoming
clear that the authorised expenditure of 3 million pounds
would soon be exceeded. Having had no concern
with the steamer up to this time he called in
Richard Grant for a briefing and was relieved to learn that he was already assisting his locomotive
department. The up shot was that Dick would lead
a caravan, which the Railway would endeavour to
assemble at railhead, to transport the equipment
needed to set up the building and launching facility
at Kisumu Bay, and the balance of the
loads would follow as soon as practicable. By the
end of the month Dick, accompanied by Brownlee
and MacMillan, set off for Tsavo, though from
then on he had to rely on his own devices to
raise the necessary porterage. This would have
been virtually impossible without the assistance
of his friend Mackinnon, John Ainsworth, the
District Officer at Machakos, and Frank Hall
at Fort Smith. It was at this point that Dick
had his first meeting with his clansman, William
Grant, then District Officer in charge of Usoga.
Ten years earlier he had left his native Kintyre to
join the Charter Company. He was Capt. Lugard's
right-hand man during his two years in Uganda,
and continued in the administration there for many
years. At the time of the meeting he was engaged
on the least pleasant assignment of his career. On
instructions from the Uganda Commissioner he had
assembled 3,700 men in Usoga, few of whom had
ever ventured far from their fertile district, to
transport the equipment, supplies and infantrymen
of the Baluchi Regiment back to railhead after
the suppression of the mutiny. The Busoga had
suffered terribly under this unaccustomed work
and hostile climate; dysentery and fevers were spreading alarmingly and many had already been
left along the way. There was little relief for them
even at railhead, and their return journey back to
Usoga compounded the disaster, as it was thought
that fewer than a quarter survived to see their
homeland.
In the course of the journey Dick had ensured
that the parts which he had located at various
isolated points during his earlier trip were uplifted
and, when they could not be accommodated in the
caravan, concentrated at a few central stations from
which they could be brought on by subsequent
railway caravans. Finally they reached Nakuru, a
desolate outpost where the far advanced railway
surveyors had stopped, as there had been no
firm decision on the farther routing. The original
proposal would have taken the line north to Ravine
and over the Uasin Gishu, but this was the turning
off point to the west, should the new route over
the Mau and down the Nyando Valley be chosen.
For Dick the latter was the only choice, and as his
was the first caravan to venture down this route to
Kisumu (the previous railway expedition having
wended its way up from the Lake), it called for
careful consideration. Nothing would induce the
Kamba and Kikuyu tribemen to venture into this
unknown country. The Masai had no such fears,
but as they always confined themselves to a guiding
and guarding role, the load-bearing element was
reduced to the seasoned Zanzibari and Swahili, the
latter being largely the men selected to remain at
Kisumu and to become involved in the shipbuilding
operations. The slimmed down caravan advanced
up the steep 2,000 feet to Mau Summit and was
launched into the dense Mau forest. For what
seemed an interminable number of days and
freezing nights they hacked their way through
dense jungle, dank rain forest, up and down
precipitous ravines and across raging streams,
until at last the trail opened out on the fertile
Lumbwa plains. Added to the ever-present hordes
of flying and crawling insects was the often heard,
though unseen, presence of wild animals, such as
leopards and elephants, and the forest dwellers
of the Dorobo tribe, reputedly highly efficient
with bows and poisoned arrows. The Lumbwa
peoples, though surprised at the travellers, were
co-operative in bartering very welcome supplies
of food and giving directions as to the best route
down the Nyando River valley to reach the plains
and the lake shore. Overall the descent was 4,000
feet and after the cold and damp mountain the
burning heat of the plains, though familiar, was
little comfort to the fatigued walkers who would
have disputed the measurement of 120 miles from
the Summit. Their arrival at Kisumu Bay on 1
May 1899 introduced them to an uninhabited
and inhospitable flat shoreline, papyrus-clad, and
adjacent to a reed-filled swamp which should have
been the outflow of the Nyando to the head of the
Bay, but the waters appeared to merge across a
huge area of flat land. It was in fact a magnificent
breeding ground for the mosquito and tsetse fly
and some decades were to elapse before adequate
draining and treatment effectively controlled these
pests.
The site on the northern shore of the bay,
which Whitehouse had selected and named Port
Florence, may have been a suitable railhead but
Dick could find nothing to recommend it as a
launching place or port. He quickly ascertained
that the southern shore suggested deeper water,
as it lay below a clearly defined ridge of higher
ground. That in itself held better prospects for
a camp and for the later development of more
permanent housing on higher ground, which might
mitigate the voracious attentions of the mosquito.
It was their good fortune to receive a friendly and
co-operative welcome from the Luo chief of the
nearest village. He put his fishermen and their
canoes at Dick's disposal. With this facility they
were able to take soundings around the bay, and
were shown a route through the marshy ground
of the headwaters which could be made up to an
acceptably firm causeway. The Luo people assisted
with the erection of grass and mud huts, a site for
the launching way was selected, and Brownlee and
MacMillan were left in charge of laying out the
dockyard site, whilst Dick set out on a further
hazardous journey with his porters.
With the help of Luo guides they set off through
what was then termed Kavirondo country, entirely
unexplored by the Europeans in the administration,
their destination being the Protectorate Station at
Mumias where it was hoped assistance would be
given to transport the steamship loads which
were collected at Port Victoria. On arrival he
encountered a surprised and unhelpful district officer, Charles Hobley, whom Dick knew from his
previous visit, and who had been less than pleased
when the latter made his way back to the coast,
insisting that his objective would be better served
in doing so and re-ordering replacements from
the U.K., rather than follow Hobley's suggestion
that he proceed to Kampala and report to the
Commissioner, which would have meant a further
unnecessary delay of at least a couple of months.
He found Hobley labouring under severe difficulties
with the transportation problems, particularly with
the distressed Busoga men from William Grant's
column endeavouring to return to their country.
Dick's intimation of his intention of setting up
the shipyard at the hitherto unknown Kisumu
and transferring the equipment from Port Victoria
was entirely new to him; moreover, the likelihood
of the railway line being diverted to that area
was bound to undermine the status of Mumias
which, over the years, had been raised to an
established and reasonably comfortable billet. He
was aware of Dick's contractual obligation to the
Uganda Protectorate, the consignees of the S.S.
William Mackinnon and endeavoured
to pull rank and withhold his permission until
confirmation could be obtained from Kampala.
Dick was equally adamant that his commission was
to put the steamship on Lake Victoria, regardless
of actual location, and he was about to collect
the parts from Port Victoria, with or without his
assistance. Hobley established quite a reputation
for never letting himself in for anything, and it was
a policy which did him no apparent harm during
the course of some thirty years of service in East
Africa administration. By doing absolutely nothing
in this eventuality he did nothing to hinder his
promotion to Provincial Commissioner of Nyanza,
when a year later he was instructed to transfer his
headquarters to Port Florence. It is unlikely that
he forgave Dick, for, in writing many years later of
this removal, he fails to give the shipbuilding establishment
a mention, other than that he launched the
'William Mackinnon' on arrival, and his
arms-length association with the ship and railway
constructors clearly contributed to the mistake of
setting the headquarters of the administration on the
low-lying and very unhealthy north-shore flats.
In order to minimise the transportation distance Dick had once again to traverse unknown country
by journeying directly east from Port Victoria, until
they could rejoin the trail taken earlier to reach
Mumias, passing through elephant grass often head
high, in which restricted environment, heat and
limited visibility led to worrying disorientation.
One compensation was finding a small steel boat,
with some of its crew, at Port Victoria. It had been
left there by Commander Benjamin Whitehouse,
who had accompanied his brother George when
they visited some six months earlier. Whitehouse
had intended to carry out a marine survey of the
lake, but after three weeks he had become so ill
that he had had to return to the coast. The boat
had been loaded with some of the heavier items,
including sheets of corrugated iron for sheds, and
instructed to sail round the coast to Kisumu. It
was to prove a useful asset during the launching
and fitting out of the steamer. On his return he
was to find that both Brownlee and MacMillan had
experienced severe bouts of malaria and dysentery;
indeed everyone was ill and debilitated to some
degree, medical stores were alarmingly reduced
and there was no sign of another caravan with
loads and stores. Dick assembled the more able
of the men and set off again up the Nyando to
Nakuru. On arrival he was greatly relieved to find
that the railway transport department had become
organised and was preparing a caravan to take
further loads over the Mau. A surveyor named
Barton-Wright had been detailed to this duty and
Dick was delighted to have his company on the
return journey and to be able to introduce him to
the niceties of the trail. Unfortunately, on arrival
at Kisumu they were to learn that MacMillan had
died two weeks previously, and Brownlee was so
ill and distressed that he had to be carried away
in Barton-Wright's returning caravan.
Though far from well himself, Dick remained
to continue the work of preparation, but after
a couple of months, dysentery, combined with
malaria, reduced him to an almost comatose state.
His life was undoubtedly saved by the action of
his faithful servants who proceeded to implement
his earlier instructions against this eventuality. He
was placed in a litter and carried across the
plains and up the escarpment to the district
officer at the recently built Nandi station. He
was cared for there until the next government
caravan bound for Nairobi passed through. It was
a long uncomfortable journey, of which he knew
little and was seldom conscious, but as the railway
had now reached Nairobi he was swiftly conveyed
to the coast. A sea voyage was at the time regarded
as a universal cure-all, and he was placed aboard the
first departing steamship, as it happened bound for
Bombay. Few had expectations that the emaciated
body would return. Surprisingly, when the ship
berthed again at Mombasa in November Dick was
fully restored to health and willing to return to the
work at Kisumu.
Whitehouse had requested replacement engineers
to be sent out from Britain, but the news of the
deaths of Scott and MacMillan and the illnesses
of Brownlee and Grant had circulated in Glasgow,
and the employment held no attractions. He did,
however, detail a dozen of his Indian artisans from
the locomotive workshops at Kilindini to be sent up
as required. More acceptable was the recruitment of
an English engineer named Cowham in Zanzibar.
He had just returned there from Lake Victoria
where he had been employed by a private firm,
Boustead and Ridley, to operate a small steam
launch for the Church Missionary Society. Cowham
had found it an extremely hazardous engagement.
The attentions of unfriendly natives in their war
canoes, the vast expanse of water, prone to sudden
and violent storms, and the stark isolation made the
job highly undesirable. Soon after his departure the launch ran up on the rocks at Davera Island and
was declared a total loss. She carried the name
'Ruwenzori' when owned by the C.M.S. but was
salvaged in 1902, taken to Kisumu and overhauled,
then recommissioned as the 'Kampala' and operated
for some years by a trader named Clarke. Cowham
was willing to accept more stable employment with
the Uganda Marine Service and to assist with the
assembly of the 'S.S. William Mackinnon' and her
future navigation in waters where he was one of
the few Europeans who had had experience.
Nairobi was by then being developed as the
railway marshalling centre from which the precipitous
descent of the Kikuyu Escarpment could be
attacked. It required eighteen months to complete
the permanent way, though a temporary
system of cable-operated inclines permitted the
continuation of the line across the Rift. On
arrival at the end of 1899 the transport service
was still involved in human porterage from Nairobi
to Nakuru, and Dick joined up again with
Barton-Wright and learned that he had only been
able to complete one journey during his absence.
That caravan had been afflicted with an outbreak
of smallpox resulting in the deaths of thirty-six men,
and although they had endeavoured to isolate the
personnel from those at Kisumu, they would have
to wait until their return before learning whether
or not the disease had spread. In the event it was a
healthy and delighted crew which welcomed Dick,
having been convinced that they would never see
him again.
Little progress had been made during his absence.
However, the deliveries had been well stored and guarded, and the work of construction then
progressed at a good pace. By the end of March
the final steamship loads were brought down, the
steelwork of the hull assembled and riveted together,
the boiler and larger propulsion machinery
installed, and the S.S. William Mackinnon was
safely launched on 4 June 1900. Unfortunately,
prior to this it was found that a number of vital
parts of engine machinery had not arrived, but
since George Whitehouse was visiting Kisumu on
a tour of inspection at the time, Dick furnished
him with detailed drawings and was assured that
these would be taken back to Kilindini and made
up at the loco workshops, the only place in the
territory with machining equipment. No serious
delay was anticipated as there was always a month
or so required for fitting-out after launch.
Some weeks prior to the launch Cowham was
sent to Nakuru to collect and check the made-up
parts and other shipyard stores which had
been ordered. Throughout the first year of its
existence the shipbuilding operation had, apart
from the intermittent caravan visits, operated in
splendid isolation and remote from the human
and political factions which were developing in
the wake of what some labelled as the 'lunatic
line'. It snaked its way across six hundred miles
of virgin territory, apparently completely devoid
of commercial or economic potential, with the sole
justification of rapid communication between the
coast and Uganda -- and certainly that necessity
could have owed little to sound reasoning. With
the reality of the steamship and the possibility of the new railway alignment Kisumu had taken on
a sudden significance to local administrators and
distant directors, and inevitably created a profusion
of plans, most of them conflicting. Whilst pursuing
his own objective, difficult enough in itself, Dick's
efforts became increasingly affected by events over
which he had no control.
The Uganda administrators to the north were
experiencing great difficulty in keeping the 'road'
open as a result of increasingly frequent attacks on
their caravans by the warriors of the Nandi tribe. It
had already been decided to mobilise a large force
and mount a punitive expedition which would
penetrate to the heart of the country and subdue the
rebels in their villages. The general concept of the
rail and ship terminus at Kisumu, and the shorter
and so far undisturbed Nyando/Mau trail, made
this an appropriate military marshalling point from
which to mount an attack from the south -- hence the
transfer of the provincial headquarters to Kisumu
Bay. At the same time it was planned to enter the
Nandi country from the east, where Frederick
Jackson was in charge at Ravine in the upper
Rift Valley; but the tribesmen were forewarned
by this visible activity and redoubled their guerilla
activities, particularly on the vulnerable Nyando
route. The unfortunate caravan which Cowham
was conducting back to Kisumu suffered the first
major attack. A number of porters were killed and
their loads lost, and the other parts were buried
in the forest as the survivors made a hasty dash
for the nearest defended encampment. Cowham
was instructed by the officer-in-charge to remain
there, but after three weeks, and desperately short
of food, he took his men back to the location of
the ambush, where they recovered such loads as
they could find and made their way to Kisumu.
There it was discovered that the vital engine parts
were amongst those that had been lost. Further
disasters at this time included the loss of a column
of twenty-five mail runners and their guards with
the reports, mails etc. scattered to the winds. An
Indian army unit was attacked in their overnight
camp and the British officer and doctor killed.
Dick did manage to get a message to Nakuru
to repeat the order for the machined parts, but
the mounting of the military offensive had to
be delayed until fortified posts could be set up
and manned along the supply route. From June
onwards Sub-commissioner Hobley and Col. Evatt,
military commander, were laying out headquarter
buildings and living quarters, initially grass and
mud huts, on the unhealthy north shore where
they suffered infinitely more than their men at
the hands of the Nandi. Dick fitted out the
steamship as far as possible and found time to
overhaul and re-commission the launch Victoria,
which had been sailed and towed round the coast.
In September he set off on a further crossing of the
Mau to ensure that the long-awaited parts were to
specification and safely escorted. A base had been
established at Molo, near the Mau Summit, and the
telegraph lines went back to Nakuru, then all the
way to the coast. He was asked to take his column
down to Nakuru and join up with Chief Engineer Whitehouse and a senior delegation of the Railway
Committee who had come out from England to
investigate the practicalities of the proposed new
railway alignment. The leader was Sir Clement Hill,
a member of the Committee and Under-Secretary
at the Foreign Office with responsibility for East
Africa. He was not at all happy with the train
of events as they unfolded. Dick's review of the
position along the Nyando route and at Kisumu
did little to alleviate his gloom, except in so far as
Whitehouse had the essential parts, and the 'William
Mackinnon' would be operational within a few weeks
of their return. It was a substantial and well-guarded
caravan which conducted this important party down
to Kisumu. However, they had plenty of time to
assimilate the precariousness of the situation and
the likely ineffectiveness of the proposed punitive
measures. Clement Hill ordered the officials to suspend
all expeditionary preparations and concentrate
their forces on protecting the route and the future
operations of the railway surveyors and plate-layers,
whilst he embarked on the launch Victoria and
made the precarious voyage to Kampala. There he
reviewed the situation with the recently installed
Special Commissioner, Sir Harry Johnstone; a few
weeks later they were delighted by the arrival of the
'S.S. William Mackinnon' which Dick had brought in
to Entebbe on her maiden voyage. Though by no
means large and less than sumptuously equipped,
this vessel did bring a new dimension of speed
and ease of transport, covering some 250 miles in
a couple of days, where previously a month's hard
marching would have been necessary. In monetary
terms all the effort of getting her there was little
more than 20,000 pounds, whereas the appropriation of
3 million pounds had barely covered the cost of bringing
the railway the 450 miles to the base of the Mau,
and its final cost nearly doubled.
To Dick this was the culmination of his contract
and he looked forward to returning to Scotland.
However, the white knights were envisaging a fleet
of bigger and better steamships connecting with the
Uganda Railway and developing the only highway of
trade which at that time seemed probable. Appreciative
of Dick's valuable service, they pressed him to
remain and advise on the requirements for berthing
and jetties at Entebbe and Jinja and, on his return
to the UK he would be given the responsibility of
overseeing the construction of two 500-ton ships,
already authorised; but placing of orders would
have to await the final arrival of the railway on
the shore of Lake Victoria. Transportation of the
large sections left no other option.
By the spring of 1901 Dick was, after three years
in Africa, home in Glasgow on a well-earned leave.
Having reported to Sir Clement Hill at the Foreign
Office, as requested, he was introduced to Sir E. J.
Reed, the naval architect responsible for the design
and specification of the new steamers, which were
sister ships named the 'Winifred' and the 'Sybil'. The
order for their construction had been won by the
Paisley shipbuilders, Bow, McLachlan & Co., who,
after various consultations and modifications, had
the contract confirmed in September. The Railway
Committee were confident of transportation over
the full length of the line by the time the knocked down
parts arrived at Mombasa. Dick was also given
the opportunity to meet and select a team of artisans
in Glasgow who would accompany the shipment to
East Africa and assist him with the construction
work. From their number he was subsequently able
to form the core of the Marine Engineering Section
of the East African Railways & Harbours Board.
Dick returned to East Africa in November to put
in hand the preparations for the rail transportation
of what would be some very large and awkwardly
shaped steamship sections, and their delivery to
a new deep-water slipway at Kisumu. This was
unwelcome news for George Whitehouse, already
working under extreme pressure to complete the
long-delayed arrival of the rail lines at the shores of
Lake Victoria, which was achieved on 20 December
1901. But the final couple of hundred miles were
only completed with the aid of numerous spurs,
diversions, temporary bridging and every avoidance
of obstructions which might delay plate-laying and,
as it transpired, fully two years were to elapse before
the railway could be turned over as completed
to the Protectorate Administration. Even on the
comparatively established length from Mombasa
to Nakuru all sorts of structures such as water
towers, station buildings and platform overhangs,
bridge railings, rock and earth cuttings etc. might
be scythed by a large three-bladed propeller. One
rail traveller described the effect as reminiscent of a
tornado which had swept the length of the line. The
weight factor on the temporary bridges, the often
unballasted sleepers and the cotton undersoil when these had to sustain long periods of tropical rain was
alarming. The original slipway for the launch of the
William Mackinnon had been extended and built up
as the berthing pier for the ship, and the only option
was to construct two new launching ways farther
west for deeper water. Of necessity the point on
the north shores of the bay reached by the line
was abandoned as the site of Port Florence Station.
Considerable drainage and infilling were necessary
to divert the line around the head of the bay and
bring it in on the south side where the station was
established at the pier-head, with a spur to the
shipyard further on. This left the administration's
headquarters a couple of miles away from the
action, and an irritated Hobley had to effect another
removal, though all concerned were relieved to be
resettled on the healthier Kisumu 'hill'. Among
other administrative developments in 1902-3 were
the establishment of the Uganda boundary along the
line of the Sio River. Thus Kisumu and all the other
country west of the Rift Valley were incorporated
into the British East Africa Protectorate as a more
workable administrative arrangement.
Though nothing would have been termed easy
in equatorial Africa when hard physical effort was
called for, the shipbuilding progressed favourably
with the launching and commissioning of the S.S.
Winifred in February 1903, followed by the S.S.
Sybil a year later,. They were handsome vessels with comfortable cabins for a
dozen first-class passengers, large cool saloons and
dining rooms, electric light, awnings and mosquito
screens, and excursions on the lake became a highly
desirable diversion. The steam engines and twin
screws produced a speed of 10 knots, but cargo
capacity was restricted by the requirement to
carry large quantities of wood-fuel. This was
cheap and in apparent abundance locally, and
until just before the First World War steamships
and railway locomotives were fired by that method
exclusively.
On completion of the building contract Dick
was asked to join the staff of the railway, now part
of the Protectorate Government under the Colonial
Office, which incorporated the two recently added
steamers, with the title of Marine Engineering
Superintendent. For the next decade the railway
had to look chiefly to trade with Uganda to justify
itself as a commercially viable proposition and, in
spite of an increasingly ambitious programme of
shipbuilding, it never quite kept up with demand
for cargo and passenger space. At Kilindini deepwater
berthage had been constructed. The steam
tug, Percy Anderson, and her lighters, which had
done sterling service since 1895, off-loading railway
cargoes from ships anchored in the bay, were surplus
to requirements. Dick had these dismantled,
transported by rail and reassembled at Kisumu
whilst awaiting the arrival of a further much larger
steamer which had been ordered from Paisley. As
ske was of 1,100 deadweight tons the Traffic
department were expecting a welcome increase
in cargo capability but the 'S.S. Clement Hill' bore
the unmistakable stamp of Whitehall and glorious
Empire. Her cargo capacity was even
less than that of Winifred or Sybil, but she was a
fine ship, as attested by Winston S. Churchill when
he sailed on her in 1908 in his capacity as visiting
Secretary of State for the Colonies:
'I woke the next morning to find myself afloat
on a magnificent ship. Its long and spacious
decks are as snowy as those of a pleasure yacht.
It is equipped with baths, electric light, and all
modern necessities. There is an excellent table,
also a well-selected library. Smart blue-jackets with
ebony faces are polishing the brasswork, dapper
white-clad British naval officers pace the bridge.
We are steaming at ten knots across an immense
sea of fresh water as big as Scotland, lifted higher
than the summit of Ben Nevis. At times we are a
complete circle of lake and sky, without a sign of
land . . . the air is cool and fresh and the scenery
splendid, and yet our route crosses the equator.'
In the course of the next five years Dick completed
a further three ships, each exceeding 1,000 tons --
the 'Nyanza', the 'Usoga' and the 'Rusinga', with better
cargo capacity. The first two are still afloat at Kisumu.
In addition there were tugs, lighters, dredgers
and the infinitely more difficult tasks of carting and
assembling the parts of stern-wheel paddle steamers
to the Nile lakes of Kioga, Kiwana and Albert.
The Uganda Protectorate named their craft after the famous explorers of the country, Lake Albert
having the 'Samuel Baker', and Lake Kioga the
'Speke', 'Stanley' and 'Grant'. The last of these had the
distinction of hosting a clan gathering in the heart
of Africa, being named after James Augustus Grant,
assisted overland by the Provincial Commissioner of
Usoga, William Grant, and assembled and handed
over by Richard Grant. It is not on record that
the occasion was toasted in a bottle of 'Standfast'
but certainly a Scotch libation would have been
taken.
Around 1913 a programme of conversion of
all the steamers to oil firing was undertaken, and
then the start of the War called for the arming of a
number of the vessels. There was to be but one naval
encounter with the sole German steamer so far to be
assembled on Lake Victoria, after which the S.S.
Mwanza was withdrawn to their most southerly port
where she remained for the duration. The fleet was
very actively employed throughout the four years of
the East African campaign, though staffing of the
Marine became increasingly difficult as many of the
European engineers and deck officers departed for
Britain to join the colours. Much had to be settled
after the armistice in implementing administration
over the new British Protectorate of Tanganyika,
and the Lake Victoria shores were now all under
one flag. Dick remained at Kisumu till late in 1921
then took his overdue retirement.
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