The Euphrates Expedition by John S. Guest

Author:John S. Guest [Guest, John S.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Middle East, Egypt
ISBN: 9780710304292
Google: SyyCAAAAIAAJ
Publisher: K. Paul International
Published: 1992-11-15T23:02:25.680229+00:00

The wreck of the Tigris (plan taken from Chesney’s Narrative of the Euphrates Expedition)

Suddenly, after twelve minutes of fury the storm abated and the sun came out again. The Tigris was nowhere to be seen.

Lynch was an experienced naval officer who had taken the Enterprize steamer back to Calcutta from Bombay. He knew at once that the Tigris, broadside to the gale, must quickly get her head to wind. The larboard (port) anchor was let go, but the vessel’s heel prevented the crew from getting out the starboard anchor, essential to bring her round.

In pitch darkness, almost on her beam ends, the Tigris drifted down the river with water pouring through the windows, which nobody could close. Lynch made one last vain attempt to bring her round before the boiler fires were extinguished. At that point the water-logged vessel began to right herself and started sinking at the bows. The engineer remained at his post and two other men struggled vainly with the windows, while the rest of the ship’s company gathered in silence on the after deck.

The vessel began to settle and with Chesney’s permission Lynch gave the order to abandon ship. At that moment a break in the clouds showed that they were drifting close to the left bank of the river. Hoping that the stern might run aground, Lynch ordered ‘Stand fast’.23 But the channel at this point was deep and most of those huddled together on the deck were unprepared when the Tigris suddenly went down in thirty feet of water.

Except for Cockburn – last seen holding on to a carronade gun24 – and some of the Arab workers, everyone on board the Tigris could swim. Andrew Staunton recalled ‘being balanced on the awning ropes, with a native holding my feet and screaming piteously’.25 Chesney and Lynch dived overboard when the water on the deck was up to their waists. Chesney was hurled ashore by the waves and landed in a corn field. Henry Lynch’s escape was more traumatic; a newspaper report of his letter home described how he and his brother went down together, ‘but in their struggles for life while in the water he shook his brother off and was saved.’26

Twenty of the thirty-seven persons on board were drowned – Robert Cockburn; Robert Lynch; John Struthers, the engineer from Lairds who had joined the expedition two weeks earlier at Beles; Yusuf Sadr, the interpreter from Aleppo; all five gunners; a sapper; five seamen; and five Arab workers.

(Yusuf Sadr had served as a courier between the expedition and its diplomatic and financial correspondents in Aleppo. On his last trip back from Aleppo he had reached Beles empty-handed, claiming that Arab robbers had taken the funds that were in his care. Ainsworth’s comment on this episode, written fifty years later, provides a sorry epitaph for Yusuf Sadr: ‘I fear he was not an honest man.’27)

Besides Chesney and Henry Lynch, the survivors included Eden, the two Stauntons and Thomson (the assistant surveyor), together with a sapper, four seamen (two volunteers from the Columbine and both of the Maltese cooks) and six Arabs.

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