THE RECONQUEST OF THE SOUDAN. 115 laid in 1896. A tew years ago the five days' journey to the Atbara would have cost as manyweeks.

less completely protected with shields,but they carried a heavier armament. The displacement of the Sultan class is 140 tons, that of the Wyvenhoe stern-wheelers only 128. Tfiey arc 140 feet long and 24 feet wide. The conning tower, fitted with an electric light, rose' thirtyfeet above the water. Just below it was the main battery,armed with one 12-pounder quickfirer and two 6-pounder quick-firers, with further aft a howitzer. There was a secondary battery of six Maxims. The hatches along the sides of the hull were made to open outwards, and when raised formed a loop-holed steel bulwark, with room behind for a hundred riflemen.

Three new gunboats had been conveyed to the upper river and put in sections by rail, put together on the Nile bank, and successfully launched. They represented a more powerful type of warship than had yet been seen on the Nile. The flotilla for the summer campaign, with this reinforcement, consisted of fourteen steamers.

First, there were the three new gunboats,the Sultan,the Sheikh, and the Melik (i.e. the King), built on the Thames, and sent out in sections toEgypt. They were sister ships, each 145 feet long and 28J wide, and with their full load drew only two feet of water. Their upper works werearmouredwith half-inch steelplates, impenetrable to any rifle-fire likely to be brought against them. Their armament was made up of two 12-pounder quick-firing guns and eight Maxims, and they were fitted with electric search-lights. The guns were carried high above the water on the upper deck, an important point on the Nile, where there is often a high bank to be fired over. There were steel shields for the guns and a steelarmouredconning tower for the steersman. All the other gunboats were stern-wheelers, but these had screw propellers fitted on a peculiar principle. The screw was not astern, but underneath the stern section of the boat. It was fixed in a hollow, which may be described bysaying that it was the shape of a spoon with the concave side downwards. When the boat was at rest half the screw was in the water, half in this spoon-shaped recess, but once the boat started, the water rose round the screw, and it was completely immersed. The great advantage of this method of propulsion was that, in the event of having to engage or run past guns mounted on theriver bank, the propeller wouldbe out of sight and quite safe from hostile sire, whilst the stem-wheel is necessarily a large mark, unless when the gunboats are fighting bow on. It was also hoped that this method of propulsion would be found to act better than the stern-wheel on the weed-encumbered reaches of the river above Khartoum.

There were four smaller stern-wheel gunboats built in 1884-85, and named after some of the battles of theSoudancampaigns. These werethe Abu Klea,Tamai,.Metemneh,andHafir. Theyare eighty feet long,with a Krupp or Armstrong gun mounted on the top of the deckhousebehind a shield,and one or twoNordenfeldtmachine guns mounted further astern. These gunboats were in action at Argin in i88q, and largely contributed to the victory. For sevenyears thev were employed in patrolling the river between thc-First and Second Cataracts. They were hauled up to the Dongola reach in 1896, and over the Monassir Cataracts in 1897. The Hafir had been known till lately as the El Tcb— her original name. On her way up to Dongola in 1896 she had stuck fast on a rock. Intheascent of the Monassir Cataracts in 1897 she had capsizedandnearly drownedher commander. The idea had spread among the Egyptians that she was an unlucky boat, so to start heron a new and more fortunate career she was renamed the Hafir.

Besides these ten gunboats there were four steamers,smallstern-wheelers,temporarily armed with Maxims. One of them was the Dervish steamer which had been sunk by theEgyptian artillery at Hafir in i8q6, which was floated and repaired in the following year.

The gunboats were manned by Egyptians, with a number of Royal Marine artillerymen to direct the guns. Each was in charge of a naval officer, the whole flotilla being under the orders of Commander Keppel,R.N., the son of Admiral Sir HenryKeppel. Keppel had scr\cd in the Nile expeditionof 1885,and was on board of Sir Charles Beresford's steamer at the fight with the Dervish battery at Wad Habeshi. He was wounded on this occasion. Beresford wrote of him in his official despatch,"Iconsider that The next three gunboats werepowerful sternwheelers of a new type,built by Messrs. Forrest, of Wyvenhoe, in Essex, in 1896. These were El Futtch (the Conqueror), ElZafir (the Victorious), and El Nasir (the Majestic). They were slightly smaller than the Sultan class.,and