For Kitchener's Soudan campaign the company built the Melik, which was very similar to the Woodcock and Woodlark, and the gunboat fleet contributed largely to the success of this expedition Although hit by shells on several occasions, neither vessel sustained any vital injury to either engines or boilers, which was a little surprising for, as an incentive to good marks manship, the reward of a wife was Promised 10 any gunner getting a hell into either of the boats.
"These early Nile gunboats were all sent out in sections and re-erected fon the river as, until recently, war the practice for the Yangtze 'Thus, HELMS, Sandpiper, a special shallow draft vessel also' constructed Messrs. John I. Thorneyeroft & Ca. was despatched from Southampton in plates and angles and re-erected at the Kiangnan Dockyard in Shang hai.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.