2004 - Mimi and Toutou Go Forth Read Online Free PDF Page A

sauce—as an aperitif. Tyrer was a handsome man, but spoilt the effect by wearing a monocle and addressing people with the prefix ‘Dear Boy’, even if (like the retired petty-officer doorman) they were several years older than him.
    Next up the steps was ‘Tubby’ Eastwood, a short man with a neat round face. He was once a travel agent at the offices of Thomas Cook in Elizabethville in the Belgian Congo, which was on the expedition’s route. Taken on as the team’s Paymaster and Spicer’s confidential clerk, Eastwood was a genial fellow. He was also an ardent Methodist and animal-lover.
    A former racing driver, Chief Engineer Lieutenant Cross had twice won the Grand Prix, though he actually knew almost nothing about the workings of the internal combustion engine. Appositely named, he took offence easily and would become the butt of jokes during the expedition. Cross’s senior Engine-Room Artificer (ERA) was John Lament, a Glaswegian and an equally prickly character. Among the junior ERA s was one William Cobb. He and Lament were the only ones who really understood how the boats’ engines worked.
    Lieutenant Wainwright would be Transport Officer. A Belfast man originally, he had worked on the railway that came from Beira in Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) inland to Rhodesia, where he had a cattle farm. He had been a labourer once, then driven locomotives, and he loved steam engines with a passion. Wainwright was in charge of the traction engines that would pull the boats part of the way. He was about 45, with a sharp nose and light brown hair. He would become known by the junior members of the expedition as ‘Old Loco Driver’, but he was respected by everyone. Intelligent and inquisitive, Wainwright became great friends with Dr Hanschell in particular.
    Dr Hanschell was born in Bridgetown, Barbados, in 1880. He was part of the Hanschell shipping and distilling family, makers of Cockspur rum. During his childhood there he became fascinated by the Navy. He remembered fondly the time he had been allowed aboard HMS Tourmaline in the harbour and climbed to the top-sail, coming home with ship’s tar on his hands and knees. He was later sent to Britain to be educated at Malvern College, Worcestershire. After qualifying at St Bartholomew’s medical school in London, he returned briefly to the Caribbean. He was Acting Port Medical Officer in Bridgetown in 1907–8. In 1913–14 he was a member of the Colonial Office Commission on Yellow Fever in the Gold Coast.
    Prior to his appointment to Spicer’s team, Hanschell was back in London and holding down two jobs. He was both Acting Medical Superintendent of the Seamen’s Hospital in the Royal Albert Dock at Wapping, and Senior Demonstrator at the School of Tropical Medicine. The doctor had a precise mouth, searching eyes and an odd way with sideburns, which were cut off at angles high above the ear. While working in London he had lived quietly with his wife in Muswell Hill. Spicer and his wife Amy sometimes visited—Amy bringing along her husband’s socks to darn as they chatted in the comfortable front room.
    Also on the team was Frank Magee. A ‘half-scalliwag Fleet Street adventurer’, according to Dr Hanschell, Magee had covered the Anglo-Boer War for the North-cliffe newspapers, the Daily Mail and the Evening Standard . One of Magee’s first jobs was for Hannen Swaffer, the spiritualist and ‘Pope of Fleet Street’, then with the Daily Mirror . Swaffer once told Magee to go and be the first to climb Mont Blanc that season. He was to plant a Daily Mirror flag at the summit for a picture story. Magee was given expenses of only £20. Reaching Chamonix, he realised the expedition would cost far more, so he sent a begging telegram to the Mirror . Swaffer wired back: ‘The greater the task, the greater the glory,’ but sent no money. Magee wired another telegram: ‘God Alps those who Alp themselves. Send £100.’
    The money was sent. A week or so later a