The March to Coomassie ... Second edition

Front matter

BY G. A. HENTY, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT OF THE "STANDARD," AUTHOR OF "THE MARCH TO MAGDALA," "A SEARCH FOR A SECRET," ETC. SECO.XD EDITION. LONDON : TINSLEY BROTHERS, CATHERINE STREET, STRAND. 1874. LONDON I SWEETING AND CO., PRINTERS So, gray's inn road. INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. THE CAUSES OF THE WAR. When a war has ended well, people do not care to inquire captiously into its causes and origin. It is only after a defeat that men turn back to the despatches and documents, and see whom they can denounce as its author. Had Napoleon III. marched into Berlin, instead of the Prussians marching into Paris, we may be quite sure that the Radicals of France, who had been the foremost in urging the Government to war, would never have discovered that that war was unjust, impolitic, and suicidal. So, had Sir Garnet Wolseley and the little force under his command suffered a crushing disaster instead of achieving a brilliant success, the British public would have insisted on a searching inquiry into the causes, however remote, of the war; and would have probably made some one a scape goat to bear the weight of their indignation.

As all has ended well, it is needless here to enter at length into the causes of the war. At the same time, the history of the March to Coomassie could not be written without some re- B ference to the events which preceded the departure of Sir Garnet Wolseley for the Gold Coast. The greater part of the ensuing historical sketch is com piled from my notes of a lecture delivered on board the Ambris by Captain Brackenbury, giving us a resume 'of his study of all the blue books upon the subject. Those who desire a more thorough acquaintance with the subject can not do better than read the lecture (which has since been published) for themselves. There have, from the very commencement of the present century, been wars between the Fanti tribes upon the coast and Ashanti, and in these wars we have generally been mixed up.

Every four or five years Ashanti has, under some pretext or other, invaded the country south of the Prah — destroying its towns, dragging away its people into slavery, and carrying fire and sword up to the very walls of the English forts. Sometimes we confined ourselves to remonstrances, sometimes assisted the Fantis with an armed force — not always successfully, as the well-known instance of the defeat of Sir Charles Macarthy, the de struction of his force, and the death of all the white officers except three, sufficiently proves. However, in 1828 we aided the Fantis to defeat the Ashantis in a decisive battle, and the consequence was the signing of a treaty in 1831 by which the King of Ashanti recognized the independence of all the Fanti tribes. At this time there was nothin°* fc> resembling a Protectorate existing.

Chapter I. The Voyage To Cape Coast

On the 12th of September, 1873, the people of England were scarcely awake to the fact that we were engaged in another of those little wars on which our extensive colonial possessions from time to time oblige us to enter. With the exception of the Abyssinian Campaign — which, from the novelty and singularity of its character, and the great difficulties in the way of situation, climate, food and water supply, and transport, which it presented, excited lively interest not only in England, but through Europe — such little wars pass nearly unheeded at home. They cost much money, and frequently many valuable lives; but whether they occur in India, New Zealand, the Cape, or Canada, the geography is so little understood, the causes of the war so involved, the action generally so slow and tedious, the diffi culty of coming to close quarters with the natives so great, and the amount of glory to be gained so small, that people at home regard them with but languid interest, and scarcely read through the official despatches, printed in small type in some out of the way comer of the newspapers.

Few, then, of the general public had upon the 12th of September realized the fact that we were entering upon a war which was to rival, if not excel, that of Abyssinia in interest. The Ministers had, acting upon incorrect information from the officials in charge at Cape Coast, persistently pooh poohed the matter whenever it was brought forward in Parliament, and had, when their eyes were at last opened to the fact that our possessions on the coast were occupied by a hostile army, and our principal trading ports in imminent danger, hastily decided on sending out a force, without any consultation whatever with the representatives of the nation. Parliament had, however, gone down a few days only — if, indeed, the resolution had not been arrived at previous to the recess — when the Government found that they must either take decisive measures to defend Cape Coast, or submit to see the entire destruction of our towns upon the coast and the loss of every foot of land over which the British flag has waved for the last 200 years.

It is easy to imagine the reluctance with which the Cabi net of Mr. Gladstone accepted the alternative of war; but the temper of the British nation, irritated by a long scries of diplomatic defects and national humiliation abroad, was in no humour to submit to any fresh disgrace. War was accordingly decided upon ; and once decided upon, it must in justice be owned that no pains were spared, no expense shrunk from — with the exception of seeing that fast and regular means of communication were established — to carry out the wishes of the General to whom the conduct of the expedition was entrusted, and to enable him to bring it to a successful issue. In one respect, however, they failed; and this failure entailed a great loss of time, protracted the campaign at least six weeks beyond the time when it would have been otherwise concluded, and placed Sir Garnet Wolseley — as he declared in his despatches — in a humiliating position.

They determined, in the first place, to send out the General and a body of officers alone to organize a native army, and not to despatch white soldiers un less he should write home to say that they were necessary. As I shall have occasion, in the course of my narrative of the war, to speak strongly of the inconvenience and diffi culty caused by this decision, it is useless to advert more fully to it at present. At the end of August, it became known that Sir Garnet Wolseley was to be sent out to take command of the Gold Coast, and that he was to be accompanied by a body of officers to raise and drill native levies. It was also stated that white troops would, if necessary, go out later. This announcement was followed by the appearance of a number of letters in the papers by gentlemen who knew, or believed they knew, all about the coast; and a host of prophecies of evil, similar to those which preceded the expedition to Abyssinia, were freely indulged in.

The alarmists were, however, flatly and vigorously contradicted by other correspondents, who asserted that the dangers of climate had been enormously overrated, and that if the troops were properly cared for and looked after the Gold Coast presented little more danger and inconvenience than Dartmoor or Salisbury ; and that it was, in short, a sort of earthly paradise. Among the public at large, however, the question excited but little interest; and the fact that Sir Garnet Wolseley and the officers of the expedition had passed the previous night at the North -Western Hotel, and were to embark in the African Mail Company's steamer Ambriz for Cape Coast, was not known to one in a hundred of the good people of Liverpool, and excited no shade of interest or enthusiasm on the part of the few who were cognizant of the fact.

The mayor did, indeed, present an address of vale diction to Sir Garnet; but by the general public the event passed unheeded, and no single cheer, even from a street boy, greeted the future captor of Coomassie as he drove through the streets to the Prince's landing-place. Prince's landing-stage presented an appearance more resembling that of Southampton during the time of the Indian mutiny than its abnormal state. No one could fail to notice the difference between the group of active young men, with their unmistakably military bearing, and the crowd of English and American speculators, commercial travellers, and tourists, who form the bulk of the ordinary passengers from Liverpool. A glance at the luggage would tell the same tale. The tin boxes, sword cases, and small portmanteaus, and the utter absence of those vast boxes containing female gear with which it is the habit of American ladies to travel, would have shown that the passengers of the Ambriz differed entirely from the ordinary complement of the ships that sail from Liverpool. ' It was not that the baggage was not bulky and abundant, for it may be considered as certain that no equal number of men ever started upon a warlike expedition with so immense a train of impedimenta.

Officers had been warned that nothing was obtainable upon the coast, and that they would have to feed themselves; consequently, every one took out preserved provisions, soups, wines, and stores of all sorts. But all these had been sent on board ship upon the previous day. Twice the tender made the passage off to the Ambriz, which was lying in mid-stream, bringing, upon the second trip, Sir Garnet and his personal staff, who had been detained rather beyond the time named for the start C for the ceremonial of the valedictory address. Steam was up ; and a few minutes after Sir Garnet's arrival the bell rang, the friends who had come down to see us off took their places on the tender, and, led by Mr. Swanzy, a director of the company to whom she belonged, and the principal merchant upon the coast, who had come down to see for himself that all was in order, gave us three hearty cheers as our screw turned and we steamed slowly down the river.

The A mbriz carried only two or three passengers in addition to those connected with the expedition. As it was to this little party of officers that the success of the expedition is to a great extent due, as they bore the whole brunt of the preparatory campaign which resulted in the expulsion of the Ashantis from the Protectorate, and made everything so smooth and easy for the white troops that their march, until within twenty-five miles of Coomassie, resembled a great picnic rather than a military expedition, I give their names in full: — Colonel McNeill, Chief of the Staff; Lieutenant-Colonel Evelyn Wood, 90th Regiment; Major T. D. Baker, 18th Regiment; Major B. C. Russell, 13th Hussars; Major Home, R.E.; Captain Rait, R.A.; Captain Godwin, 103rd Regiment; Captain Bromhead, 24th Regiment; Captain Furze, 42nd Regiment; Captain Huyshe, Rifle Brigade; Captain Buller,6oth Rifles; Captain McCalmont, 7th Hussars; Lieutenant Gordon, 93rd Regi ment; Lieutenant Maurice, R.A.; Lieutenant Saunders, R.A.; Lieutenant Hart, 31st Regiment; Lieutenant Dooner, 27th Regiment; Lieutenant Woodgate, 4th Regiment; Lieutenant Townsend, 16th Regiment; Lieutenant Wilmot, RA. ; Lieutenant Hon. A. W. Charteris, Coldstream Guards; Lieutenant Lord Gifford, 24th Regiment* Lieutenant Richmond, 50th Regiment; Lieutenant Eyre, 90th Regiment; Lieutenant Graves, 18th Regiment; Lieutenant Bolton, 1st West Indian Regiment; Deputy-Controller Irvine, Commissary O'Connor, Commissary Ravenscroft, Deputy-Commissary Walsh, Assistant-Commissary Fitz- Stubbs, Deputy-Paymaster Potter, Assistant -Paymaster Ward, Surgeon-Major Jackson, Staff-Surgeon Irvine — in all thirty-five officers.

Besides these officers were the special correspondent of the Times and myself. Some of these were upon Sir Garnet Wolseley's personal staff; others were to form and drill our Houssa and Fanti contingents; others, again, to be in charge of the transport, manage the food supplies, or doctor us when we were sick — which, by the way, we had the fullest intention not to be. The whole of the officers on board were volunteers for the service, and had been selected by Sir Garnet Wolseley out of many hundreds whose names were sent in to the War Office. Many of their names were already well known to the public, and there could be no question that all which skill, prudence, and pluck could do to carry out the expedition to a successful end would be done. Our voyage was not marked by any very striking incident.

We had a sharp gale in the Bay of Biscay. This began in the south and veered round to the north-west, raising a very heavy sea, which tossed us about in a lively way. The Ambriz was, however, a good sea boat, and behaved well in this particular. In some other respects the voyage was not a comfortable one. The African mail ships generally cany some four or five passengers, ten constitute a full ship ; consequently, the task of carrying and providing for forty tried them to the utmost— it may C be said, indeed, rather beyond their utmost. The Ambriz was a fine steamer, just purchased from the White Star line, and in many respects well fitted for the African service. Unfortunately, however, she was bought too shortly before the start to enable her to be properly fitted; the cabins, which were newly erected, were painted only the day before the start, and the smell of paint was extremely unpleasant, and affected the health of several of our party.

There was not time to recaulk the decks, consequently many of our cabins were deluged with water for the first four days. Lastly, the stewards were, for the most part, mere boys, wholly unaccustomed to the sea, and the head steward was especially incompetent and uncivil. The consequences were, as might be expected, a complete breakdown of the victualling department, and general disgust. Altogether, the ship, from the position of the cooking gal leys and the insufficiency of the stewards' department, was wholly unfit to carry her present large number of passengers; and as most, if not every one, of us were accustomed when at sea to the comforts of the P. and O. and of the Cunard line, the comparisons drawn between this and former voyages were very far from flattering. A more cheery lot of men than the passengers of the Ambriz were, however, never gathered together, and the mishaps and misfortunes only served to give rise to a great deal of general amusement; such piteous complaints as, "By Jove, the water has been running straight on my head all night," or " My gun case was absolutely covered by the water in my cabin," being received by unsympathetic laughter.

Upon the nights of the gale the vessel was tossed about like a cork, and as there was a general neglect of lashing, the smashing of china and the crashing of furniture were tremendous. One or two of these grand concussions were so loud that there was a general idea that the cabin skylights had been washed in, and a scrambling out of berths to see what was the extent of the calamity. One scene which met our eyes will give an idea of the manner in which we were pitched about. The cabin table, a large and heavy one, had broken from its lashings, and had turned actually topsy-turvy, lying with its legs in the air in precisely the same place which it occupied in its normal position. How this was done was a mystery to us ail. The rest of the furniture — the benches, boxes, and other loose odds and ends — were all piled up in one corner of the cabin, blockading the door of one of the cabins occupied by a coloured gentleman, who was trying vainly to open his door far enough to see what was the nature of the catastrophe which had taken place.

As to wetting, we were all accustomed to it. The Ambriz had no solid bulwarks, consequently every wave a little higher than ordinary deluged her decks and those who happened to be upon them; and one night a party at whist in the cabin on deck were nearly washed out of it by an encroaching wave. All these things caused great fun, and helped to keep us lively and amused. In other respects, the routine of the day differed in no way from the ordinary life on board ship. First, a general turning out for a bath under the hose, then a walk up and down until breakfast; after that a good deal of reading, a good deal of talking, a little walk ing about, two more meals, and some matches at quoits, take us on until dusk ; then we had whist, a final smoke, and then to bed. Reading was, of course, our great resource; and although reading at sea is hard work, we were so interested in the subjects upon which most of the literature on board treated, that we really studied hard.

Dupuis and Bowditch, both of whom visited Coomassie half a century ago, were the most valued authorities, as they gave minute details of the route, and of the Ashanti capital and customs. Long as is the time since they wrote, no better account has been published ; and the maps published by the War Office and by Wylde are based almost entirely upon them. In the fifty years which have elapsed, very many of the places mentioned have disappeared altogether, others have sprung up, some have changed their site, others their name; but the maps were accurate enough to give us great assistance, and the books, of which we had several on board, were always in hand. Besides a variety of other books on the subject, we had numbers of blue books, heavy in every sense of the word, and a mass of medical reports and other official papers; so that by the time we arrived upon the coast we were thoroughly up in the politics, geo graphy, customs, and manners of the Gold Coast and the Ashantis.

We were, however, impelled irresistibly to the belief that we might, as far as useful information as to our future course as to health, diet, and mode of living was concerned, as well have left the whole matter alone, and proceeded only according to the lights of nature and common sense. No two authorities agreed. Some con sidered that the climate was really not bad, others pro nounced it to be deadly. Some warmly advocated a moderate use of spirits, others denounced all stimulants whatever. One man advised that all exercise should be taken at from five to seven in the morning; another warned you upon no account to stir out till the sun had been up for an hour, according to which we should not at this time of year go out until half-past seven. One said take exercise and excite perspiration ; another urged us by all means to avoid any bodily exertion.

One consistent gen tleman, after having written papers strongly advocating the use of white troops upon the coast instead of West Indian Regiments, when written to by Sir Garnet Wolseley for his advice as to articles of outfit, replied that the only article which he could strongly recommend would be that each officer took out his coffin. With all this, need it be said that we were fairly puzzled? The real truth, however, appeared, by the evidence of most of those who had been stationed there — some of them for many years — to be that the climate of the Gold Coast during the six winter months was by no means as black as it has been painted by some who have paid it short visits, and who have written books exaggerating the dangers of climate and of travel through which they have passed. The conclusion to which we arrived was that, with a good constitution, plenty of quinine, moderation in food and drink, and good animal spirits, a man might have reasonable expectations of , getting through the dry season with but slight inconvenience.

With a long residence the powers of resistance to the effects of the climate rapidly decrease, and the danger becomes greater. During the wet season the risk is vastly increased, and the new-comer would probably have first attack of fever within a fortnight of his first putting his foot on shore. As to diet and drink, the golden mean seemed the right thing on the Gold Coast as elsewhere. Our talk turned almost wholly on the Gold Coast. Some of us had been there before, and now spoke autho ritatively to the neophytes; others had been in other hot and unhealthy climes, and their experience was valuable. The pros and cons of all sorts of impossible plans were discussed eagerly, and it may be safely said that never were a body of men so thoroughly interested in and so well up in all the particulars of an expedition.

There was one subject upon which immense and very just indignation was felt by almost every officer on board. This was the course pursued by the insurance companies. These companies, with one or two honourable exceptions, appeared to look upon this expedition as an occasion for making money from their unfortunate clients. They pursued exactly the same course in the Abyssinian campaign, by which they must have profited, at the expense of the officers composing the expedition, to a very large amount. Although we were only to be ashore for about five months, and those months the most healthy in the year, although we should have hospital ships lying in the roads ready to receive us, and every advantage which care and skill could provide for us, the insurance companies charged from ten to twenty per cent, upon the amount insured in addition to the ordinary rate of insurance.

Now, that a man who has for years insured for £2,000 for the benefit of his wife and family is to pay from £200 to £400 down, in addition to his usual premium, before starting for an expedition of five months, is simply monstrous; and the proceeding was freely characterized on board as a downright swindle. It was, indeed, a cruel tax upon men who, as a whole, are little able to afford to pay down a lump sum of this kind ; and yet the option was between that and forfeiture of the policy for the usual sum of a third of the premium paid. That the sums charged, amounting altogether to from forty to fifty per cent, per annum, are utterly preposterous none can doubt; but if the insurance companies choose to charge so oppressive a premium, they should at least have said to the unfortunate men insured in their offices, " We consider that in justice to ourselves we must charge this enormous premium; but, as we do not want to make money out of you upon an occasion of this kind, we will, if you cannot pay it, return to you all the money which you have paid in the shape of premium."

Had this been the offer, men might have felt the position to be a hard one, but they could not have complained of the insurance companies; whereas, as the case stands, they have the most legitimate ground for complaint. Some have abandoned all or a part of the sums insured, some have with difficulty managed to pay the insurance; but upon the part of all there is a very bitter feeling that they have been cruelly and hardly treated, and a hearty wish that they had been insured in the " Positive" or some other of the offices which have charged no extra premium whatever. Officers in her Majesty's service are, upon occasions of this sort, at the mercy of insurance companies, and the offices use the advantage to the utmost. It may be said that no company can afford to allow its clients to go to unhealthy climates without charging large extra premia, and no doubt no company would accept for the first time an offer by a person about to proceed to such a locality.

In point of fact, however, the number of English men who go to the few really unhealthy climates is so small that the per centage amounts to nothing on the whole number. An office insuring 10,000 lives could reckon with safety that not more than ten of its clients would ever have occasion to visit the few very unhealthy places, and this extra risk run by one in a thousand would make no appre ciable difference in their general balance sheet. Taking the Abyssinian and Ashanti campaigns together, the number of officers engaged were seven or eight hundred, the deaths in the war about twenty, or slightly over two per cent. ; and yet upon these expeditions the companies mulcted the officers to the extent of twenty per cent., in addition to ordinary insurance. The grievance is a real and tangible one, and many of those who went out, both in the Ambriz and afterwards, were compelled to give up their insurances, and thus had the anxiety of knowing that, in case of their death in the service of their country, the loved ones at home would lose all the benefit of the pro vision which they had for years been carefully and painfully making for them.

Personally I know nothing whatever of the "Positive." I am neither a shareholder nor insured; but, after listening to the stories of many of those who had suffered thus in one or other of these expeditions, I would say to every officer in the army or navy, " Before you insure your life, examine carefully into the terms offered by this company, which will not take advantage of your necessity to compel you to pay a ruinous extra insurance under pain of forfeiture of your policy." Five days took us to Madeira, most charming of rest ing places, but so well known that a description of it here would be out of place. Intensely we enjoyed that day there, and were more like a pack of school-boys than a body of men en route for a desperate expedition. Some of us rode, some went in the bullock sleighs up to the church on the hill, and all came down in the hand sleighs, which, if not quite as fast, are fully as exciting as the ice sleighs in Russia, while the descent lasts ten minutes instead of as many seconds.

Here we divided into two parties, and dined at the principal hotels. Here, too, purchases were made of articles forgotten at starting; and every one pro vided himself with a Madeira wicker chair, with which, by the way, the deck of the Ambriz was so littered up that locomotion became henceforth almost impossible. The most interesting event, however, at Madeira was the receipt of news from the coast, telling us that the boats of the squadron had been attacked, that Commodore Com merell was badly wounded, together with other officers and many of the seamen of the Argus. This afforded us great matter for talk and reflection. That we had a for midable foe to deal with, we had never doubted. The annihilation of Sir Charles Macarthy's force, and the fear they excited among the other tribes, were proofs that the Ashantis were brave and determined; but this sudden and well-planned attack upon our boats proved that they were skilful and energetic, and meant fighting the white man to the last.

We had every confidence in our chief, but none in the Fantis ; and there was a general agreement that we were going to have some tough work, as well as a general satisfaction that it was so. We knew, too, that this news would, when it arrived in England, excite an interest and an earnestness in the war that it lacked before ; that the nation would insist that the Ashantis must now be finally put down ; and that the violent opposition of one or two news papers to the expedition would cease. Above all, we felt that the Government would be forced to prosecute the war vigorously, and to give Sir Garnet Wolseley what men and material he demanded. That both would be needed, and that speedily, was evident. As in Abyssinia, there were only a certain number of months to carry on the war, do all that we had to do, and leave the country.

The Ashantis are a more formidable foe than we had met with in the troops of Theodore, and the country was so much in their favour that they were not to be beaten by a handful of men, even if those men were Englishmen armed with breech-loaders. In the open we could defeat them as easily as we crushed the Abyssinians at Arogee, but there was scarcely a patch of open country between Cape Coast and Coomassie. Old Indian sportsmen will say that a steady hand and a heavy rifle make short work of a tiger in the open, but that it is a fearful danger to follow a wounded tiger into a thick jungle. It was through a thick jungle that we were going to hunt this Ashanti tiger, and we knew that if we did so with insufficient force, it might be that the sport would end by the tiger becom ing in turn the hunter.

We stopped for an hour or two at Grand Canary, but, being in quarantine — no one knew why— could not land. The quarantine laws of the Spanish and Portuguese are a perfect nuisance, and, in these days of commerce and travel, a disgrace to civilization. The whole of the islands off the African coast belong to them ; and lying— as St. Vincent, the Canaries, and Madeira do— in the track of the whole African, South American, West Indian, Cape, and Austra lian trade, it is monstrous that they should thus isolate themselves, and shut their doors to the trade of the world. Nor is there any reason whatever in their procedure. Madeira opened its doors to us because we had come from Liverpool; Canary closed hers because we had come from Liverpool. Canary, St. Vincent, and Madeira alike quarantined us at Cape Coast, although we had no sort of fever there; while, on my return home in the Pacific mail, Lisbon quarantined us because the ship had come from South America, although we had been three weeks upon the passage, and not a soul on board had been ill.