Once a British camp and bridgehead had been established at Shikarpur, in the absence of further camels to move the supplies of war, ammunition and food stores began to be sent down the Indus by fleets of hastily requisitioned barges—“flat bottomed, very shallow and broader at the stern than at the bow, which rise to a peak some fourteen feet out of the water,” remembered a young infantryman, Thomas Seaton, who was given charge of one supply convoy.
