Gunboat Melik

The MELIK, a guide-blade gunboat, was ordered by the Admiralty for service with the Egyptian Army in 1896, from the Chiswick shipyard of John I Thornycroft. Construction was rapid, and she was delivered the following year, with two sisters, the SHEIKH and SULTAN, built by Yarrow’s at Poplar, also on the Thames.

All three ran contractor’s trials in Britain, and were then dismantled into carefully marked sections and shipped to Ismailia in Egypt. From there the sections were shipped up the Ismailia Canal to the Nile and then southward to Wadi Halfa on the Sudan frontier. There they were loaded onto railway wagons and conveyed across the Nubian Desert on the newly built Desert Railway to Abu Hamed. In the summer or 1898 they finally reached the point or re-assembly at Abadieh, near Berber. Under the supervision on Major W. S “Monkey” Gordon (a nephew of General Gordon) they were finally re-assembled and launched on the Nile.

The new gunboats joined a flotilla of seven older gunboats, but their formidable firepower gave them a great advantage: 12-pounder (76mm) guns, 5-inch (127mm) howitzers and rifle-calibre Maxim guns. These were manned by NCOs of the Royal Marines and Egyptian Army gunners, but the crews were a remarkable mixture of naval and civilian personnel, including Sudanese, Egyptian, Maltese, Greek and British. The flotilla was commended by a British naval officer, Commander C Keppel RN, while six of the remaining gunboats were commanded by lieutenants, and three by Royal Engineer officers attached to the Egyptian Army. No fewer than three future flag officers commanded Nile gunboats, of which one, David Beatty, became C-in-C Grand Fleet and ultimately First Sea Lord.

Keppel’s gunboat, the ZAFIR, foundered while attempting to ascend the Shabluka Gorge, but the rest of the flotilla passed through the last Cataract and kept pace with the Anglo-Egyptian Army right up to the battle of Omdurman on 2nd September 1898.

The MELIK was almost certainly the first warship to carry a cine-camera in action. It was brought on board by the correspondent of the Illustrated London News, Frederick Villiers, but it broke down, so no cine-film of the battle was shot.

Two days after the battle, on Sunday 4th September, the MELIK transported Kitchener and his staff form Omdurman to the ruined Governor’s Palace in Khartoum.

Melik Specification

Type:
t.s.s. River Gunboat, guide blade twin-screw for Egypt via Royal Navy.

Builder:
John I Thornycroft and Co. at Chiswick

Completed:
1897

Specification:
Length: 145ft
Draft: 2ft
Beam: 24ft – 6ins
Displacement: 134 tons
Speed: 12 knots