Emin Pasha Relief Expedition - Fate of The Rear Column

Fate of The Rear Column

On 16 June, Stanley left the fort in search of the Rear Column; no word of them or from them had been received in a long time. Finally, on 17 August at Banalya, 90 miles upstream from Yambuya, Stanley found Bonny the sole European left in charge of the Column, along with a handful of starving carriers. Barttelot had been shot in a dispute, Jameson was at Bangala dying of a fever, Troup had been invalided home, and Herbert Ward had gone back down the Congo a second time to telegraph the Relief Committee in London for further instructions (the Column had not heard from Stanley in over a year). The original purpose of the Rear Column — to wait for the additional carriers from Tippu Tib — had not been accomplished, since without the ammunition supplied by the expedition, Tippu Tib had nothing with which to recruit. After several side trips, Barttelot decided to send Troup and others on the sick list down the Congo, and 11 June 1888, after the arrival of a group of Manyema bringing Barttelot's total to 560, set off in search of Stanley.

But the march soon disintegrated into chaos, with large-scale desertion and multiple trips to try to bring up stores; then on 19 July Barttelot was shot while trying to interfere with a Manyema festival. Jameson decided to go down to Bangala to bring up extra loads and left on 9 August, shortly before Stanley's arrival. Stanley was incensed at the state of the Rear Column, blaming them for lack of motion despite his previous orders that they wait for him at Yambuya. After the dispatch of a number of letters down-Congo, the expedition returned to Fort Bodo, taking a different route that proved no better for food supply, and it reached the Fort on 20 December, now reduced to 412 men, of whom 124 were too ill to carry any loads.

On 16 January 1889, near Lake Albert, Stanley received letters from Emin and Jephson, who had been made prisoner by Emin's officers for several months, while at the same time the Mahdists had been capturing additional stations of Equatoria. Since Stanley's arrival, numerous rumors had gone around about Emin's intentions and the likely fate of the soldiers, and in August of the previous year matters had come to a head; a number of officers rebelled, deposed Emin as governor, and kept him and Jephson under a sort of house arrest in Dufile until November. Even so, Emin was still reluctant to abandon the province.