Colin Archer and the Blue Nile

Clare McComb on the failed first descent that produced Archer’s most unusual design

Clare McComb

Despite our take on these things today, expeditions of Victorian and Edwardian times were in their day celebrated as brave missions to thrust forward the frontiers of mighty Empires across the globe. Two fascinating examples are Northrop Mcmillan’s Blue Nile explorations of 1903 and 1905, where the very best of British marine engineering failed spectacularly, resulting in probably Colin Archer’s strangest commissions ever!

At 6ft 3 and 20 stone, American explorer William Northrup McMillan was a giant of his era, who apparently thought nothing of polishing off two whole shoulders of mutton, washed down with bottles of champagne and vodka. He inherited his wealth aged just 29 and moved, with his wife Lucy, to London in 1898.

After a hunting trip to Ethiopia in 1902, Northrup was soon was planning his first expedition, nominally a first descent of the Blue Nile from its source in Lake Tsana, 300 miles north of Addis Adaba, to its junction with the White Nile at Khartoum. It was a hugely costly venture, publicised in America as much as Britain. He employed a Norwegian engineer, BH Jesson to design boats to tackle the ferocious rapids that had so far prevented a first descent.