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 a
Captain Kelsey made an attempt by car but this ended in disaster when
he was attacked and
killed by a leopard in Rhodesia. There was a break during World War 1
and then in 1921 a Richard Oliver (Cliver?) announced an attempt
but did he ever set off?
The idea for
this 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.
RETURN
TO COURT TREATT INDEX
© Malcolm
Asquith 2009