For week of Dec. 21-25
Canadians took part in the 1884 British Nile Expedition to provide relief to General C.G. Gordon who had been sent to Khartoum in January to oversee evacuation of Egyptians during the Mahdi Revolt in the Sudan. By March he had been cut off from the outside world and ended up trying to defend the town from massacre.
The British mounted an expedition to relieve Gordon, and Prime Minister John A. Macdonald gave permission to recruit Canadian voyageurs to help guide British soldiers up the Nile River. A total of 392 Canadians, including 56 Mohawks from Quebec and 30 Ojibwa from Manitoba and Northern Ontario, signed six-month contracts. Less than a quarter were there at the end of the mission—the others refused a second contract.
Under Lieutenant-General Sir Garnet Wolseley, who led the 1870 Red River Campaign in Canada, the boatmen took six months to cover the 19,000-kilometre voyage in whaler boats, negotiating 14 challenging cataracts.
Gordon’s last entry in his journal, dated December 14, 1884, noted that if relief did not arrive in 10 days, the town would fall “and I have done my best for the honour of our country. Good bye.” The Expeditionary Force arrived two days after Gordon and his troops were killed on Jan. 26, 1885. The last of the Canadians sailed home in April.
The 16 Canadians who died on the expedition are memorialized in the Peace Tower in Ottawa. A grateful British Commons and House of Lords passed a vote of thanks for the Canadians’ service. All volunteers received a special medal commemorating the expedition, with a Kirbekan bar for those who reached Khartoum. In Canada, many people have never heard of the Nile Expedition and Canada’s role in it. Do you think we as Canadians need to familiarize ourselves more with Canadian military history? We’d love to include your comments on our blog.
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I am completing my Ph D thesis on this topic so watch for a new book on the subject in the next little while. Meanwhile, you can read an article I published on the Nile Voyageurs in the journal “Social History.” (click on the link) I have much more data than I will be able to fit in a publication including information about individual members of the contingent, so if you have a relative who participated in the expedition please find me via the google and we can share information!
Anthony P. Michel
I am doing research on my family history and found my grandmothers uncle served with Canadian Voyagers on the Nile Expedition . Fred Barnes born june 17/1858 at Rockport New Brunswick . HE died Aug11/1957 at my grandmothers home in Debert Nova Scotia . He lived most of his life in Enderby B.C. where he worked as a contractor and builder . He served as major for Enderby 1913-1914 and also 1919-1921.He must have been a strong and healthy man as he built his own house at age 88 .Anything you could add to his life story would be appreciate . thanks