Overall: 38.1cm (15in) x 53.3cm (21in)
Oil on canvas. ‘The stern-wheel gunboats Tamai, Abu Klea & Metemmeh, bombarding Hafir with rockets and shellfire, 18th September, 1896’. Signed and dated lower right ‘W.L. Wyllie 1899’. Canvas: 29.2cm (11.5in) x 43.8cm (17in).
The Nile gunboats Abu Klea, Metemmeh and Tamai were built on the Clyde and sent out to Egypt to join the expedition that failed to relieve General Gordon besieged in Khartoum in 1885. They were of later value in Kitchener’s campaign to reconquer the Sudan in 1896-98. Flagged with the Ottoman-Egyptian ensign, each a stern-wheeler was about 90 feet in length and armed with a Krupp gun forward in addition to two heavy machine guns in an upper battery. Each was commanded by a British officer, who was either loaned from the Royal Navy or the Royal Engineers. The machine-guns and artillery pieces were commanded by Royal Marine NCOs, with a team of Egyptian gunners. The boats themselves were operated by a mixture of senior RN ratings, and civilian engineers with locals working as firemen for the boilers. The civilians were a mixed bag of many nationalities including Armenians, Egyptians, Greeks, Maltese as well as British. During the bombardment of Hafir, on 18 September 1896, Abu Klea was commanded by Lieutenant (later Admiral of the Fleet) David (1st Earl) Beatty RN.
At the advance of Kitchener’s Anglo-Egyptian army along the Nile’s east bank in 1896 the Mahdist commander transferred his entire force to the prepared positions at Hafir on the west bank. Kitchener’s infantry had no means of crossing the river in large numbers, and were thus spared the severe casualties inherent in an opposed river crossing. The gunboats spotted the dervish entrenchments and gunpits concealed in the palm groves of Hafir, and opened the engagement with salvos from their Krupps and Maxim-Nordenfeldts, accompanied by long bursts from the Maxim machine-guns. Simultaneously the Egyptian artillery came into action from the comparative safety of the east bank, almost out of range of their unwilling compatriots manning the dervish cannon. However, the gunboats, reaching the narrows opposite the village, came under fierce and unusually accurate fire. On the flotilla leader's vessel, the Tamai, the ‘admiral’ himself, Commander the Hon S.G. Colville, was hit in the wrist and Armourer-Sergeant Richardson, blazing away with a Maxim, was killed.
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William Lionel Wyllie RA, RBA, NEAC (1851-1931) was the son of minor-genre painter living in London and northern France, by his wife Katherine Benham (1813–1872), a singer. Before marrying W.M. Wyllie, she had had three illegitimate children by the disgraced diplomat 6th Viscount Stangford, one of whom, Lionel Smythe, also became a noted artist. Wyllie was given a thorough artistic education; first at the Heatherley School of Fine Art (1865) and at the Royal Academy Schools (1866-69) under Edwin Henry Landseer, John Everett Millais and Frederic Leighton. He won the Turner Medal with ‘Dawn after the storm’ in his final year. He also made a study of the history of shipbuilding to help him with his paintings. Wyllie worked initially as a marine illustrator for The Graphic (1870-90), and from 1883 produced etchings for Robert Dunthorne of the Rembrandt Gallery. His work is in the Tate, the Royal Academy, the Imperial War Museum, the National Maritime Museum, the National Museum of the Royal Navy, and many other institutions around the world.