Following the death of Charles Gordon in Khartoum in 1885 at the hands of the Mahdists, one of his key Lieutenants, German-born Emin Pasha, was left cut off from the world in the swamps of southern Sudan facing the Mahdist forces alone.
With their hero, Gordon, dead the British public demanded that the same fate should not befall Emin Pasha.
And thus in 1887 the Emin Pasha Relief Expedition was born.
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For the next two years it battled through over 2,000 miles of impenetrable forests in the Congo before finally reaching the beleaguered Emin. Two thirds of the force died of starvation and the leaders were accused of beating porters to death and even colluding with cannibals.
Many say the brutality of some of the leaders, provided the basis for some of the characters in Joseph Conrads classic novel set in the Congo at that time, “Heart of Darkness”.
The expedition was an epic, chaotic and violent climax to the golden age of European exploration in Africa.
This is the story of that epic relief expedition to the heart of darkness.