Part 1

Hostilities in Africa during the 1800s gave birth to many stories of courage on one of the world’s most inhospitable continents. Various historical events — particularly in Africa’s north — also saw the growth of the famous Royal Marines and the British Navy manned by brave men of a gallant and stoic nature with loads of determination.

One of these men was the beloved grandfather of a Yamba resident who proudly relates his ancestor’s incredible life as a man of the seven seas from his birth in England in 1872 until his passing in Sydney in 1949.

The grandfather in question was Francis Arthur Glencross, also known as Glencross-Grant, who ran away from his home as a young farm boy with thoughts of adventure and the smell of the sea in his nostrils.

History shows that the call of sailing over the horizons and far away from home quickly led Francis to obtain a berth on a sailing ship crossing the Atlantic Ocean and bound for Chile in South American waters. This old wind-jammer battled high sail- breaking winds for 25 days at one stage on this particular journey while rounding the notoriously heavy seas around Cape Horn.

As Francis’ now-retired grandson points out, it was experiences of this sort that made Britain’s deep sea sailors of those days the tough and sturdy men they turned out to be.

After arriving back on English soil, Francis was apparently more determined than ever to sail the seven seas and make them the source of his life’s work. He consequently joined the Royal Navy and was commissioned to become a member of the Royal Marines’ Plymouth Regiment. In this capacity, he initially served on 10 different war vessels, including the famous HMS Impregnable.

It was not long, however, before he found himself as a member of the Royal Marines on HMS Scout, headed for the Suez Canal and down the Red Sea to the north-eastern African coastline in the Indian Ocean for an adventure of a lifetime. Here, the Marines were to intercept dangerous Arab slavers who were capturing native men and women in Africa’s hardy interior before transporting them by boat to the Middle East for sale to Arab buyers around the Persian Gulf.

As slaving had already been abolished, Francis and his fellow Royal Marines were committed to attacking several Arab dhows with the dreaded smugglers on board — and then dealing with them for their crimes against humanity.

Francis’ next brush with the wars of Africa well over a century ago was when he accompanied HMS Scout to Massawa, in Eritrea, to give urgent protection to British citizens there and to save them from serious threat when the Abyssinians drove an invading Italian Army out of their country.

When Britain’s senior military field-marshal, Lord Kitchener, decided that Britain had to re-conquer the nearby Sudan, previously lost by the British to the warring Mahdi and his blood-thirsty Dervish warriors, Francis once again found himself in the middle of yet another major conflict.

Equipped with naval cannon, Francis and his Royal Marine comrades became part of Kitchener’s invasion army bound for the mystical city of Khartoum on the River Nile. After many forced marches across some of the toughest desert country in the world under a searing African sun, Kitchener and his men managed to defeat a large camel-riding and heavily armed Dervish contingent at Atbara.

They then marched to Berber before becoming involved in the historic bloody pitched hand-to hand battle for the surrender of Omdurman in 1898.

As a result of this previous unimagined victory, the power of the warring Mahdi was broken and Kitchener and his men — including Francis — were heralded as heroes among world acclaim.

The Mahdi and his Dervish warriors are said to have fought with great fury and with no fear of death in battles against Kitchener and his troops.

English newspaper comments at the time reported that the Dervishes were the most dangerous army in known history and never took prisoners.