The Nile Cruise

1 · POSITION

The Nile cruise as a product — a fixed itinerary from Cairo to Aswan and back, at a fixed price, on a boat the traveller did not have to hire — was made by Thomas Cook & Son. A twenty-day cruise to Aswan cost £44. The register enters it as the first packaged long-stay leisure product it holds, and it is still the shape of the market. [1, 2]

2 · BEFORE COOK

Before Cook the river was for those who could charter a dahabiya, the sailing houseboat — mostly the members of Cairo’s private clubs. The trip to Aswan and back took about fifty days under sail and cost Amelia Edwards about £10 a day in 1873. Steamers cut it to twenty, and Cook offered what the charter did not: security, ease, and a place for a woman travelling without a chaperone. [1, 2]

3 · THE CONCESSION AND THE FLEET

Cook competed at first for the river traffic, won a concession from the khedive for tourist trips south of Aswan, and in 1880 received the concession for all of it. In 1884 the British requisitioned his steamers for the Sudan campaign and returned them broken; from 1885 Cook built his own, in Scotland, shipped in kit form and assembled in Cairo — first-class boats for up to eighty passengers, and later the Egypt in 1907, the Arabia in 1911 and the Sudan in 1921, the sole survivor of the flotilla, since restored. [1]

4 · THE HOTELS AT THE END OF THE RIVER

The cruise needed beds at its turning points. The Old Cataract at Aswan is recorded as built by Cook in 1899, and the Winter Palace at Luxor opened in 1907. The Aswan Dam, inaugurated with its locks on 10 December 1902, removed the rapids that had stopped the steamers. [1, 2]

5 · ⚑ CANDOUR

⚑ The date of Cook’s first Nile tour is given as 1860 by one source, 1868 as his first visit to test the ground by another, and 1869 as the start of his Egyptian tours by a third; the register’s 1869 is kept, and the other two are printed. The year of the £44 fare is not given. [1–2]