The Man-eaters of Tsavo is a book written by John Henry Patterson in 1907 that recounts his experiences while overseeing the construction of a railroad bridge in what would become Kenya. It is titled after a pair of lions which killed his workers, and which he eventually killed. Following the death of the lions, the book tells of the bridge's completion in spite of additional challenges (such as a fierce flood) as well as many stories concerning local wildlife (including other lions), local tribes, the discovery of the maneaters' cave, and various hunting expeditions. An appendix contains advice to sportsmen visiting British East Africa.
Several publications about and studies of the man-eating lions of Tsavo have been inspired by Patterson's account. The book has been adapted to film three times: a monochrome, British film of the 1950s, a 1952 3-D film titled Bwana Devil, and a 1996 color version called The Ghost and the Darkness, where Val Kilmer played the daring engineer who hunts down the lions of Tsavo. Colonel John Patterson is to build a bridge in East Africa (later Kenya). While he is working on this, two man-eating lions show up. They will stop at nothing for a bite of human flesh and the first attempts to stalk, capture or keep them out of the camp fail. They attack the camp hospital and kill a patient. Even after the hospital is moved, one lion penetrates the thick, thorn fence called a boma built to protect it and drags the water carrier away to his death. In the course of hunting these lions, Patterson encounters a red spitting cobra, a rhinoceros, a hippopotamus, a pack of wild dogs, a wildebeest that faked dying, and a herd of zebra, of which he captured six. He also shoots a new type of antelope, T. oryx pattersonianus. Eventually, the first lion is defeated by baiting it with a tethered donkey while Patterson keeps watch from an elevated stand - though for a few tense moments Patterson himself becomes the hunted. Patterson and Mahina hunt the second lion on the plains. When they find and shoot it, the lion charges them and it takes repeated shots to bring it down. The lions are not the only challenge to completing the bridge project. Tensions between native workers and Sikhs brought in from British East India to work on the project (coolies) threaten to stop the project. At one point, Patterson meets a danger far greater than the lions - a fierce flood. It wipes out the supply bridges and wraps iron girders around tree trunks like wire. Uprooted tree trunks act like battering rams trying to annihilate the bridge. But the well-built bridge stays intact. This challenge proves that the year spent working on the bridge has not been wasted. After Patterson completes the bridge, he learns that a lion has been trying to destroy the train station. When he goes to see, he finds big bloodstains where the lion was trying to slash the roof.
Author Biography:
Lieutenant-Colonel John Henry Patterson, DSO (10 November 1867 - 18 June 1947), known as J. H. Patterson, was a British soldier, hunter, author and Christian Zionist, best known for his book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (1907), which details his experiences while building a railway bridge over the Tsavo river in British East Africa (now Kenya) in 1898-99. The book has inspired three Hollywood films - Bwana Devil (1952), Killers of Kilimanjaro (1959) and The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) in which he was portrayed by Val Kilmer. In the First World War, Patterson was the commander of the Jewish Legion, "the first Jewish fighting force in nearly two millennia", and has been described as the godfather of the modern Israel Defense Forces. Patterson was born in 1867 in Forgney, Ballymahon, County Longford, Ireland, to a Protestant father and Roman Catholic mother.[2] He joined the British Army at the age of seventeen and eventually attained the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel[3] and was awarded the Distinguished Service Order (DSO). He finally retired from the military in 1920. In 1898, Patterson was commissioned by the Uganda Railway committee in London to oversee the construction of a railway bridge over the Tsavo River in present-day Kenya. He arrived at the site in March of that year. Almost immediately after Patterson's arrival, lion attacks began to take place on the workforce, with the lions dragging men out of their tents at night and feeding on their victims. Despite the building of thorn barriers (bomas) around the camps, bonfires at night, and strict after-dark curfews, the attacks escalated dramatically, to the point where the bridge construction eventually ceased due to a fearful, mass departure by the workers. Along with the obvious financial consequences of the work stoppage, Patterson faced the challenge of maintaining his authority and even his personal safety at this remote site against the increasingly hostile and superstitious workers, many of whom were convinced that the lions were in fact evil spirits, come to punish those who worked at Tsavo, and that he was the cause of the misfortune because the attacks had coincided with his arrival.
