Indian river tugs and gunboats (or Nile)

[ray dillon]

Hi,Does any body know if there are any plans that exist re.the early river paddlers of the East India co. that sailed the rivers of India and the middle east?Or plans of the Nile gunboats?Ray

[RickF]

Ray,
I have quite a lot of info on the Nile gunboats - currently building (slowly!) El Teb at 1:32, for which I have drawings. Happy to share - get in touch.
Rick

[AlistairD]

Rick
What information do you have on IBIS and sisters ships built in 1885 by John Elder & Co, (later Fairfields) in Govan.
She still exists, and Bill W took photos for me a few years ago of her laid up in Cairo.

[RickF]

TAMAI class:

Ordered in June 1885 as an Army contract and designed by Yarrow; TAMAI and EL TEB were both built by Elder, Glasgow (yard numbers 307, 308) and ABU KLEA and METEMMEH were by  Yarrow at Poplar.
73,5 tons (displacement) 90ft x 18ft x 2.5ft deep
148 hp engines - 9 knots, fired by wood / coal
armed - 1 x 90mm Krupp (9 pounder); 2 x 0.45 Nordenfelt guns; Abu Klea had a 12pdr Krupp by 1896.

Abu Klea - rebuilt at Khartoum 1921; discarded in the '30s
Tamai - fate uncertain; poss re-erected on the Red Sea?
El Teb - renamed HAFIR in 1897; later converted to a passenger vessel;
rebuilt 1925. Sunk at Bah-al-Zaraf in 1941
Metemmeh - rebuilt 1911 and again 1925; discarded 1952 but still afloat in
1964 when used a University club house

I have some Elder drawings for these. which have been scanned as JPG at 1:32 scale. Send me a PM and I'll sort something out for you. Very interested in a copy of any photos you have, which are presumably of what was Metemmeh, one of the Yarrow boats, if the above is to be believed.
Rick

[AlistairD]

This was IBIS, which appears in the Fairfield yard list in the Mitchell Library and on the Clydebuilt Ships Database at www.clydesite.co.uk/clydebuilt
Later used by Sudan railways on the Wadi Halfa-Aswan service
Built 1885, for Thomas Cook as part of a fleet for Wolseley's expedition to rescue Gordon from Khartoum
Taken over by the Steamers and Boats Dept. of the Sudan Government in 1890 and by Sudan railways in 1903
Believed to have been used in the film The Four Feathers in 1938.
http://www.clydesite.co.uk/clydebuilt/viewship.asp?id=666 has a photo
Bill W saw her in Cairo in 1996 and took photos, I have slides but they are lost somewhere in the midst of a 50,000 slide collection.

[RickF]

Thanks Alistair - bit of confusion there on my part. All the information I have is on "warships". The only vessel I know that definitely appeared in "Four Feathers" is the screw gunboat "Melik" (also still in existence, beached at  Khartoum) but I seem to remember there were paddlers in the film so there is every likelihood that "Ibis" was one of them.
Rick