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The Race for Timbuktu

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

On May 9, 1825, in the silver half-light of dawn, HM Brig Gannet sailed at six knots into the southern Mediterranean port of Tripoli, all but her foresail furled to reduce her speed in the propelling breeze. Having navigated the rocks at the bay's seaward end, she passed the dour battlements of the "Old Castle," the crenellated fortress that served as palace and principal residence of Tripoli's bashaw or ruler, before steering for the central harbor and the deep anchorage reserved for her. Whirlpooling zephyrs kept her circling for a half hour before she could position herself to drop anchor. The British naval vessel had made the journey from Malta in a leisurely six days.

On the bridge with Captain Bruce stood the only debarking passenger, a tall, trimly built man in his thirties who carried himself with the self-assurance of a military officer, though he was dressed in civilian clothes. A Scotsman, Major Alexander Gordon Laing was en route from England.

He surveyed the harbor and coastline with alert interest as the square-rigged vessel's anchor chain rumbled from its hawsehole. The Gannet's prow swung slowly into the wind, now a soft south breeze laden with the smells of land.

On shore, a half mile from the ship, the gray stenciled silhouette of the Moorish fortress broke the center of the city's skyline. Slender minarets, flat housetops, and sturdy battlements flanked it in a crescent westward. The delicate palm fringe of an oasis dimmed to the east. Green-topped minarets caught the sun's orange-gold light in a cloudless sky. The white-walled city shimmered through the curtain of changing light.

Captain Bruce told Major Laing he could expect a warm welcome from the British consul, Colonel Warrington, "a lovable John Bull of a man, well known to half the admirals and captains in the Royal Navy." Indeed, Laing had already heard a great deal about Warrington in London.

He commented to Captain Bruce on the size of the desert city; he had expected a much smaller place. Tripoli was isolated, five hundred miles from the main highways of sea travel. He saw it now as a metropolis larger than he had imagined, though certainly a city much alone -- the edges of the desert plainly visible to the east and west: Tripoli, the white-burnoused city, pulsating in its oasis on the edge of the desert.

As the Gannet's hands secured the vessel, the adan -- the Muslim call to prayer -- drifted over town and harbor. The Gannet's first mate reported he had ordered the vessel's longboat put alongside to take Laing ashore, but before it could be lowered, dozens of slim pirogues crowded the brig. These encircled the ship, their owners outshouting each other, naming the services and wares each was eager to hawk to the men on board -- transport to shore, fresh fruit, potable water, leather goods. . . . Larger craft quickly followed, battling the pirogues to attach themselves to the Gannet's hull. These were cargo lighters and flimsy dugouts manned by boatmen who wore loincloths and seemed engaged in a shrieking contest. Their job was to take cargo ashore and restock the hold. By 2 p.m., the American corvette Cyrene, under the command of Captain Grace, had arrived from Tunis and anchored next to the Gannet. By late afternoon, the bashaw himself sent a third vessel, a large flat galley manned by oarsmen, to collect Laing and his baggage and bring them to shore.

"Shaking hands with Captain Bruce and his officers," Laing confided to his diary, "I disembarked amidst the cheers of the crews of both Gannet and Cyrene, who manned the rigging on the occasion." His send-off was heady stuff for a junior officer; Laing felt he was accorded the treatment of a visiting head of state.

The port founded by the Phoenicians and later fortified by the Romans was now governed by a bashaw (or pasha), agent of the Sublime Porte in Constantinople.

The Regency of Tripoli was the most important of the three kingdoms on the southern Mediterranean coast (Algiers and Tunis being the two others) which owed their nominal independence to the Turkish sultan. Tripoli's bashaw was preceded by a functionary carrying his staff of "Three Horse Tails,"* a rank equivalent to the governors of the three most important provinces in the Ottoman Empire: those of Cairo, Budapest, and Baghdad. The royal yacht carrying Laing was festooned with the bashaw's flags and other symbols of office. It twisted its way through the fleet of Mediterranean sailing vessels that crammed the ancient harbor.

The distance from shore was less than fifteen hundred yards, but the bashaw's leaking vessel had nearly swamped when Laing jumped onto a flight of slime-coated stone steps leading to the wharf at the center of the mole. Here, a small mob of ragged Africans began to grapple for Laing's luggage. One man tried to make off with a sailor's duffel bag but was stopped when another man kneed him in the groin and demanded a coin for apprehending the thief. The less athletic contenders for porter were chased away and the Scotsman followed a procession of luggage bearers to the foot of the quay.

"On placing my foot on terra firma," Laing recalled, "(which was not until a very late hour, our progress being impeded by the freshening breeze which blew direct from the harbor) I was received by Hanmer Warrington, Esq., His Majesty's consul general, and treated with that friendly hospitality which all preceding travelers from this quarter have experienced in common with myself."

Rumors about Warrington abounded in London. Most alleged that the consul -- a beefy, pear-shaped man -- was no more than a bibulous Falstaff who had been released from debtors' prison in Gibraltar and exiled to his isolated post on the frontier of the Sahara only because he was the husband of an illegitimate daughter of George IV. Even so, the men in London who disliked Warrington (and these were legion) could not deny that in his . . .

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Race for Timbuktu by Frank Kryza Copyright © 2006 by Frank Kryza. Excerpted by permission.
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