Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Tibet 1903-04, no clasp (Boatman Abdul Kadir, Tibet Misn. Force) nearly very fine and extremely rare £500-600

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals formed by the late Alan Wolfe.

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A small number of Indus River boatmen were recruited at Attock to accompany the Tibet Mission Force, which was equipped with four collapsible Berthon boats. These boats were made in sections, each of which, being too heavy for mules, had to be carried by coolies, slowly and laboriously, all the way from India. Standing in the way of the final advance on Lhasa was the mighty Tsanpo river which, at the Chaksam Ferry, narrowed to a mere 100 to 150 yards in spite of the current information that it was up to 1,000 yards wide. At Chaksam two large Tibetan ferry-boats were moored on the opposite bank, having just delivered the last load of Khampa warriors from the retreating army. In addition, there were a few small skin-boats, 200 yards of 1-in. steel cable and a traveller, and 640 lbs. of 2-in. and 1.5-in. manilla rope.

With this meagre equipment the Sappers had to transport across the torrent a total of 3,500 men and 3,500 animals with 350 tons of stores. The crossing began at midday on July 25th by rowing the ferry boats and Berthon boats (the latter made up into rafts), but this method was painfully slow. The unwieldy ferry-boats were swept far downstream on each trip and had to be towed up again; and after a Berthon raft had foundered in a whirlpool and Major G. H. Bretherton of the Supply and Transport Corps and two sepoys had been drowned in attempting to swim ashore, the use of Berthon boats for rafting was abandoned. On July 26th, several attempts were made to get a line across for the establishment of a flying bridge, but they were unsuccessful and rowing was resumed. The river had risen and only fourteen boatloads made the journey in twelve hours. At such a rate, a fortnight would have been required for the passage of the whole force, and accordingly on July 27th Sheppard resumed his efforts to connect the banks by a line and after two failures succeeded in doing so.

Berthon boats were anchored far out from each bank and the boats connected by a line. Other Berthon boats then brought out lines and the crews threw the ends to the men in the anchored boats who caught them and joined them to the connecting line. The 1-in. steel cable was next hauled across by the now continuous line. It was made fast to the high promontory on the right bank and having been passed over a tripod to an anchorage on the sand-bank, the traveller was slung on it. The large Tibetan boats were employed as ferries by using the traveller to carry across one end of a 2-in. rope and then attaching the end of the rope to a boat and allowing the boat to be swung across the river assisted by rowing and hauling. The boats were then unloaded, towed upstream and rowed back empty. By this method the rate of crossing was increased to forty boat loads a day and the whole operation was completed in five and a half days. A small flying bridge of skin-boats sufficed for the narrow channel beyond the sand-bank, and thus the Tibet Mission and its escort were landed safely on the northern shore.