The Gordon Relief Expedition
First Ride of the British Camel Regiment
In 1885, General Lord Wolseley led a desperate race across the Sudan, in order to try and save General Gordon and the city of Khartoum.
In 1881 the Egyptian province of Sudan rose up in rebellion under the leadership of a man called the Mahdi, an Islamic religious leader. In a short time, the Mahdi's force swelled from a few hundred to nearly 40,000 and slaughtered several Egyptian military columns.
General Gordon in Khartoum
Although, at this time, Egypt was a province of the failing Ottoman Empire, it was more or less controlled by Britain. Since Britain could see no advantage to holding the Sudan, it made plans to evacuate the area. Those plans consisted of sending one man, General Charles Gordon, to the Sudanese capital city Khartoum in order to evacuate all foreigners and Egyptian military. On his arrival in 1884, Gordon quickly realized the situation was much worse than Britain had realized. Evacuation was impossible without military intervention.
The Gordon Relief Expedition of General Lord Wolseley
The decision to send Gordon cost the British Government dearly. A hero from his days fighting in the Taiping rebellion, "Chinese" Gordon, was a popular figure and a there was a huge outcry came from the British public to send an expedition to his aid. Soon, the British government gave in and tasked General Lord Wolseley to mount the expedition it had tried so hard to avoid.
The First British Camel Regiment
With a force of around 7,000 men, Lord Wolseley devised a complicated plan that included dividing his forces into two groups. The first half, the river column, would boat down the river Nile in an armada of small wooden craft piloted by men specially brought over from Canada. The other half, the desert column, would cross the desert. As part of this column, Wolseley organized a specialist force, taken from the best soldiers of fourteen regiments. It was one of the first special-forces assemblies in British military history. These men would be mounted on camels. Unfortunately, almost no-one in the British army had ever ridden a camel, which would hamper the expedition the whole time.
The Fall of Khartoum 1885
As it turned out, the river column played no part in the battles of 1884/5. The Desert column on the other hand fought two major engagements first at Abu Klea then Abu Kru. In both case, the British formed giant squares and were just able to hold off the vastly numerically superior enemy. Battered from their battles, and now under command of Colonel Sir Charles Wilson who had never previously held a field command, the column fought its way to the Nile. There, they encountered a pair of steamers, sent up from Khartoum by General Gordon. Taking just twenty redcoats with him, Colonel Wilson boarded the steamers and set off for Khartoum. They arrived at the city on January 29, 1885. Khartoum had fallen the day before. General Gordon was dead.
Sources:
Asher, Michael. Khartoum: The Ultimate Imperial Adventure. Penguin. London. 2005.
Featherstone, Donald. Khartoum 1885: General Gordon's Last Stand. Osprey. Oxford. 1993
