The Court Treatt Expedition 1924-1926

Preparations for the Expedition

There had been earlier attempts to drive from Cape Town to Cairo but it is hard to find details. In 1903 Tom Silver left Cape Town on a Quadrant motor cycle and got as far as Sudan.  In 1913 Captain Raleigh Kelsey and five companions made an attempt in an Argyll car with sponsorship by the Daily Telegraph. They left Cape Town on August 29 and in spite of many breakdowns made good progress through Johannesburg and Bulawayo and on to Serenje in what is now Zambia. Here the expedition ended in disaster when on Easter Sunday (April 12, 1914) Kelsey went hunting and was attacked and severely wounded by a leopard and died of his wounds on May 28. The expedition was abandoned. There was a break during World War 1 and then in 1921 a Richard Oliver (or possibly Cliver) announced an attempt but did he ever set off?

The idea for the Court Treatt expedition seems to have started in 1922 or 1923 and preparations were rapidly put in place. To get the necessary authorisations the Court Treatts accompanied by Mrs Court Treatt's sister Grace and her husband Mr Herbert Cranko decided they had to go to London. Arriving in March 1924 and armed with a letter of introduction from General Smuts, at the time the Prime Minister of South Africa, they made contact with the British Colonial Office and the Secretary of State the Right Honourable J. H. Thomas provided them with letters asking all officials to give every assistance. The route was chosen to be "All Red", going exclusively through British colonial territory.

Roads through much of Africa at the time were non-existent but much mapping had been done in connection with the development of railways and the new air routes. Fuel and oil were going to be very hard to find so dumps of this with vehicle spares, food and other provisions were arranged at 27 points along the planned route .  Placing these was the cause of several minor expeditions in themselves; sometimes the railways could be used, in the Sudan camels were available, but in the more remote areas supplies had to be carried by porters for hundreds of miles. The locations of the dumps now seems to be lost but included Johannesburg, Nyamandhlovu (Zimbabwe), Mwaya Beach (Malawi), Nairobi and Khartoum.

Each of the two trucks could only carry about one ton and so personal possessions had to be kept to an absolute minimum and in view of the rough terrain anything fragile such as the cameras that would make a film of the journey had to be specially packed. Quite a lot of armaments seem to have been carried with a selection of rifles and shotguns, the intention of these was not so much for personal defence but to obtain game on the way to supplement the food carried.

The one luxury allowed was a wind up gramophone with a few records.

In case of emergencies Mrs Court Treatt would act as the expedition's medical person and did some basic first aid training including use of a hypodermic needle, wound dressing and nursing fever patients.

After eight months everything was ready and the Court Treatts with much of their expedition equipment, including the cars, left on the Union-Castle Line ship RMS Walmer Castle sailing from Southampton and arriving in Cape Town on the 15th September 1924.



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