An officer of the regiment thus records his reminiscences of the boat work on the Nile—
“Greatcoats and nothing else was the favourite kit with the men of my boat, who prided themselves on their dress and were anxious to save one good suit of khaki in which, they said, they would march into Khartoum. It was a handy costume when you stuck on a sandbank or struck upon a rock, as you could be overboard in a second to shove the boat off. Very often my men used to row in their ‘birth-day suits’! Just before we started up the Nile I had been transferred to a new company, and my skipper[259] left the detailing of the crews of the boats to the Colour-Sergeant, who took advantage of my youth and innocence (?) to put into my boat ten of the biggest blackguards in the company, and a really good corporal of the old stamp (Corporal George M‘Kee). Though I was new to the company, my future boat’s crew were well known to me by name and sight as being constant attenders at the Orderly Room, so I thought a ‘few kind words’ would do them no harm, and consequently informed them that I knew them well, but that we were going to have no d——d nonsense in my boat, or out of it they would go to sink or swim! A grin of amusement was all the answer I got to my short speech.
“When we started off the Corporal and I were the only two men who had ever handled an oar in their lives. Luckily the Corporal was a good tough nut, and had been stroke in the regimental boat some years previously when we were in Malta. That first day’s row is still a nightmare to me. We left Sarras at 12 noon, the Corporal and I doing the rowing, while the remainder did their best to imitate us, but only succeeded for the most part in ‘catching crabs.’ The current for the Nile was slight—but except quite close in-shore it ran at about 3 miles an hour. Unfortunately our Cox, never having handled a tiller before, kept alternately running us out into the stream or into the banks. The distance from Sarras to Gemai was only 12 or 14 miles, but we did not get there till 8 P.M., and I thought we should never get there. I was more dead-beat than I have ever been before or since, and once I had thrown myself on to the sand when we eventually reached Gemai, I could not have gone another yard. However, youth and a sound sleep worked wonders, and next morning I was as fit as a fiddle, and started loading up the food stuff—a job requiring a lot of time and care, as each box had to be fitted into its place like blocks in a Chinese puzzle. With the stores, we also took in one or two Canadian voyageurs per company. My company had two. Regiments who had preceded us had had a voyageur for each boat, but a good many of them had become ‘fed up’ and had gone home or to Hospital, and by the time the Royal Irish went up the river, the supply only ran to about one or two for every 10 or 12 boats.
“I was given a French Canadian, and the company tool chest, and told to bring up the rear—a pleasant task which meant I had to go to the assistance of any boat in difficulties on a rock or sandbank, come last into the night’s halting-place, and when there sit up most of the night mending the ‘lame ducks’ of the fleet. The actual mending did not take so long, as we soon learnt to patch up holes and tears, but the repairs usually involved the unloading of the boat, and fitting together the ‘Chinese puzzle’ of boxes in the dark was an operation that took two or three hours.
“My Canadian was a very fine specimen of his class, and had a flow of bad language—both French and English—that I have seldom heard surpassed or even equalled. Owing to my being able to talk a certain amount of French, we became very good friends, and under his instruction I became an expert voyageur both at the helm and with the pole in the bows, and could have taken a boat up any of the rapids. Though we were such good friends, it did not prevent him ‘doing me in the eye.’ Each boat had a box labelled ‘Medical comforts,’ which was on no account to be opened. Very foolishly the authorities had a printed label on the box showing its contents, which in addition to beef-tea, arrowroot, &c., also consisted of 2 bottles of brandy and two of port wine. It had been reported that no box of medical comforts had reached its destination intact. I determined that my boat should be the exception, so the box was put in the stern of the boat, so that I could keep my eye on it during the day while I pulled stroke, and at night I slept on it in the boat. Never did it go out of my sight except at the portages, when my friend George, the Canadian, volunteered to carry it for safety’s (?) sake. I drew the line at carrying boxes at portages, and trusted George. When, however, my box was examined on arrival at Korti, though it appeared quite untouched, the liquor was all gone, the arrowroot, &c., were, however, quite complete; George had no use for them!
“It was marvellous how quickly the men took to rowing. In a few days they were pulling powerful if not stylish oars, and they certainly put their hearts and their backs into it. My crew of blackguards were simply splendid, and we never had any difference of opinion. On one occasion we came to a very stiff bit of water, and I turned round and said, ‘Now, boys, we’ll have to pull here,’ and the man behind—one of the biggest and sturdiest scamps in the battalion, said, ‘Begorra, sir, we’ll pull to hell wid you,’ and a voice from the bows added, ‘and out the other side, sir.’
“The Nile sores were the things that troubled us most; any scratches or in many cases ordinary rowing blisters, turned into festering sores which nothing could cure so long as we remained on the river. I took the skin off my ankle shoving the boat off a rock, and tho’ I kept it perfectly clean, and put vaseline on it, it would not heal. The strange thing was that once we got into the desert, tho’ we could not wash, these sores all began to heal at once.
“Other regiments suffered terribly from lice, but so far as I know we had none in the Royal Irish. I certainly had none in my company. I attribute this to the fact that our men were always in the water to shove the boat off if she stuck on a sandbank or rock, while I noticed other regiments seemed to dislike getting into the water, and used to try to shove off a boat that stuck with poles and oars, and much bad language. The day’s work did not vary much: we awoke at the first streak of dawn—had some tea or coffee and biscuit—bully beef if you cared for it, and then used to sail if the wind was really strong—which to us seemed very seldom,—to sail and row, if the wind was only moderate. If there was no wind, or an adverse one, it was a case of rowing, or towing if the bank was favourable, the latter being a quicker mode of progression than rowing against the strong current. If we had a really good sailing breeze, we didn’t like to waste it, and had cold bully beef and biscuit at about midday as we sailed along, but if we had had a tough morning’s row or two, we used to halt for about an hour to have a hot meal. At about sunset the leading boat of the company would halt for the night at some suitable spot, and the others if possible closed up. This often was not possible, owing to the numerous mishaps that were always taking place from bumps on rocks and sandbanks. The boats, when the Royal Irish took them over, had done several trips already, and were for the most part in a pretty rotten condition, and the materials for repairing them had run out, so that we had to use any expedients such as biscuit tins, &c., to patch them up. I thought myself lucky if on arrival at the night halting-place there was no damaged boat to mend, and that in consequence I could get a full night’s sleep—such a splendid sleep it was, too, under the clear sky of the Soudan winter! The ordinary monotony of the journey was broken at places like Dal, where one had to pull for four solid hours up a gigantic mill-stream, sometimes only gaining a few feet after half an hour’s pull, when one’s muscles felt as if they would crack. At Dal we took out the rifles and ammunition and a few of the boxes out of each boat, took a picked crew of eight men, and had two half-breed Indians in the boat, one at the helm, the other in the bows with a pole. It was most exciting work, and at first the task looked an impossible one, but the skill with which the voyageurs took advantage of every back water, and shot past the most dangerous-looking places was perfectly marvellous. Most of us officers learnt the trick before we reached Korti, and could have qualified as voyageurs. Amongst the voyageurs I should tell you, there were some who had not much claim to the title, and hardly knew the stern of a boat from the bow. They had come out for a picnic, but when they saw the Cataracts they ‘went sick’! One of the so-called voyageurs was a man who had been in the Royal Irish a short time before we went to Egypt. He was a smart, plucky fellow, who soon learnt the tricks of the trade, and by the time the regiment came up he was quite an expert, and went by the name of ‘Dare-Devil Dick.’ Some of the voyageurs were an insubordinate lot, and gave a good deal of trouble—especially in wanting to halt, and as they were not subject to military law it was difficult to know what to do with them on these occasions. One gentleman, however, met his match, after he had been particularly abusive to an officer who was well known in the service for his handiness with his fists. The voyageur, amongst other things, said that he was not going to obey any one’s orders, and that he was as good a man as any officer, so the officer told his men to row ashore, which they did; he then took off his coat and said, ‘You said you were as good a man as I am, take off your coat and I’ll show you whether you are or not.’ The Canadian looked at him for a moment, and then said, quite quietly, ‘No, boss, I guess not.’ ‘All right,’ said the officer, ‘you will obey my orders in future, or out of the boat you go, neck and crop.’ After that there was no further trouble.
“Pipes, or rather a lack of pipes, were soon a matter of great difficulty. The old soldier had not acquired the modern habit of cigarette smoking, and clay pipes were practically the only kind the men ever smoked. In the rough work of the Nile boat the supply of these soon gave out, and in my boat after about a week there was only one stump of a ‘dhudheen’ left amongst the twelve of us. This was passed round, each man getting ‘two or three draws and a spit’ out of it. I had started with three or four briar pipes, but they all disappeared—appropriated, I regret to say, by officers. As I did not care to share the dirty little stump that did duty for a pipe in my boat, I had to devise something as a substitute for my beloved briars. A broken oar-handle for the bowl, a boat’s auger, and a hollow reed for the stem soon provided me with the means of making quite a serviceable article. As the ash of the oar got very charred, the bowl had to be lined with a bit of biscuit tin. My patent was soon copied, and in a few days, as far as my crew was concerned, it was a case of ‘one man one pipe.’ My pipe did me yeoman’s service till after the return of the battalion from Metemmeh, when, amongst other luxuries in the shape of jam and sardines, an enterprising Greek brought up a store of wooden pipes which he sold at fabulous prices.”
The only amusement on the voyage was to watch the wild geese and pelicans which abounded in some parts of the river, to look for traces of the hippopotami, much disturbed by the long procession of whale-boats through the upper part of the river, and to take “pot-shots” at the crocodiles. The old ones were wary, and offered but indifferent targets for the officers’ revolvers; the young ones, less used to the ways of mankind, were slower in taking to the water. One, indeed, remained so long on an overhanging bank that when a party of the Royal Irish approached him his only means of escape was by taking a header into the water, right over a man who was standing on the edge of the river.