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Name: SALMON, Roy John Dugdale MVO, MC 'Samaki' (Capt.)

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Birth Date: 1889 New Zealand

Death Date: 23.9.1952 Natal, South Africa

First Date: 1907

Profession: Known throughout EA as 'Samaki' Salmon, in 1911 he planted coffee near Kampala. Demobbed after WW1 he found plantation overgrown and large areas of country overrun by elephant. Appointed by Govt. to cull them.

Area: Uganda, Limuru, Uasin Gishu

Married: 1931 Lucretia Celia Van Ryck de Groot b. 1905 Cosford, Suffolk. She at one time motored alone from Cairo to Durban.

Children: Charmian

Book Reference: SE, Hut, Drumkey, Land, Red 22, Leader14, Gillett, Nature, Nimrod, Kinloch, Rundgren, North, Breath, EA & Rhodesia, Elephant, Kingsley-Heath, Gazette, Uganda Staff, Chandler

War Service: Served in KAR throughout WW1, badly wounded and awarded MC

General Information:

SE - R. Salmon - Limoru - July 1910
Drumkey 1909 - Directory of Residents - Roy Salmon, EA Syndicate, Gilgil
Land - R. Salmon leased 5336 acres at Uasin Gishu, passed to Karen Coffee Company
Red 22 - R. Salmon, Kampala
Land - 1911 - R. Salmon - Grazing and agricultural, 5230 acres (Farm No. 222) - Uasin Gishu - 6/12/10 - Leasehold under Occupation Licence for 2 to 99 years from 18/11 - Registered 11/10/11
Leader14 - R. Salmon - Kampala
Hut has R. Salmon 1930 Gilgil and R. Salmon 1908 Naivasha
He was badly hurt by a bull elephant and was sent to England for treatment. Returned to Uganda in 1923 and was again appointed to Elephant Control Dept. He accompanied Royalty on several occasions on their Uganda Safaris. From 1931-33 acted as Director of the Uganda Game Department.   
Nature - He was chief elephant controller for the Uganda Govt. for more than 30 years. It was he who looked after the Duke of Windsor (then Prince of Wales) when H.R.H. was on safari in Uganda in 1928. A bull once curled its trunk round his neck and threw him into a tree. This would have been enough for most men. Salmon fell from the tree, crawled to his rifle and killed the elephant as it charged him again.    
Nimrod - a top-line elephant controller for the Uganda government for over 30 years who started his job when Uganda was being first opened up and when vast herds of elephants were over-running the country. Salmon killed more elephants than anyone who ever lived - more than 3500 during the time he was in control work - and made a lot of smaller records as well, such as knocking off 60 in one weekend between Friday evening and Monday evening and putting down 12 with 12 shots in less than 2 minutes at a range of 25 yards. He was a great man Salmon.
Kinloch - "Samaki" had been, of all the old-time game rangers, the greatest elephant hunter, not only because he was a brilliant shot but because, so it was said, he could think like the elephants he hunted ......... succeeded in Uganda's Western Province by Bill Pridham
Rundgren - hunted elephant in French Equatorial Africa where licences allowed him to kill any number of elephant
Breath - formerly of the Uganda Game Dept., had 35 years of shooting elephants and all but 10 of them on control duties. He was credited with having killed more than 3000 of them during his career; in fact the figure is probably 4000 or more if cows destroyed in the course of control operations are included. 'Samaki' was not convinced that the African elephant was really intelligent. Writing about this species (The Field, July 7, 1951) he had this to say: "My outstanding impression is of the pathetic stupidity of the overwhelming majority of them (elephants). Between the 40th and 50th elephant, the not-so-stupid one would turn up; and then the idea that the whole elephant race was pathetic would be in abeyance for an indefinite period."
East Africa & Rhodesia - 9/10/52 - Captain R.J.D. (Samaki) Salmon, MVO, MC, died suddenly at his home, a farm in Natal, on September 23. He was born in New Zealand in 1888, went to East Africa in 1911, and settled in Uganda in the following year to grow coffee and shoot big game. On the outbreak of war in 1914 he took a commission in the KAR, and served with them with distinction until 1919, gaining the Military Cross. Sir William Gowers writes:- "I have heard it said that he got the soubriquet 'Samaki' ('fish' in Swahili) as the result of a most courageous exploit in taking a rope across the crocodile-infested Kagera River under enemy fire by swimming. His men thought only a fish could have performed such a feat. Se non e vero … Anyway, he was universally known as Samaki ever afterwards. At the end of the war he returned to his coffee and shooting, but by 1924 the Uganda Government needed to call on his knowledge of the country and skill with the rifle to assist in the control of the rapidly increasing herds of elephants by becoming the senior of four game rangers in a new Elephant Control (later Game) Department set up in 1925, and subsequently responsible for wild life preservation in general. He acted as Game Warden on many occasions for long periods before the last war, and between 1942 and 1945, when the Game Warden was seconded for special duty, Salmon as Acting Game Warden carried on the department and all supervision of elephant control with only one game ranger and a Native staff. His work for more than 20 years had involved constant elephant hunting and tours of supervision on foot, generally in difficult country, at all times of the year and in all weathers in an equatorial climate, and by 1946 his health had begun to cause anxiety. In 1948 he was invalided and retired. That he lived so short a time to enjoy his rest - if such an active body and spirit could ever be said to enjoy rest - is due I think to his unremitting and energetic work in the bush for so many years. He had an intimate knowledge of the wild life of the country, and was a most remarkable shot. In 1948, after his retirement, the Game Warden, Captain Pitman, himself a very good rifle shot, wrote: 'At elephant killing he was not only outstanding but unique. He possessed very definitely a sixth sense - an elephant sense, which enabled him to anticipate what an elephant or elephants would do.' I think this is a very true judgement." He had been a wattle farmer in Natal since he retired from the Game Department of Uganda in 1938.
Captain C.R.S. Pitman writes - " Samaki was for more than 20 years the outstanding personality of the Uganda Game Department, and his skill as an elephant hunter was unrivalled. Probably he did not know how many elephants he had killed, but the total may well have been 4,000, or even more. His achievements were unique; no one has ever surpassed or equalled him as an elephant shot, and no one ever will. Of his many amazing performances, the one which is evergreen in my memory is the occasion when on three consecutive days, in the course of a special elephant reduction campaign, he killed single-handed a total of 70 elephants. Only the few who are familiar with the high velocity heavy rifle will really appreciate the magnitude of such a feat, which, apart from other considerations, is well-nigh incredible when judged in terms of discharge and recoil. Samaki did not emerge unscathed from his long years of hunting, and there is no doubt that a disastrous encounter in 1921 with a wounded elephant - the only time that an elephant ever worsted him - eventually hastened his end. He possessed an elephant sense which enabled him to survive experiences which would have been the end of others, and to see him illustrate in the field how to deal with a charging elephant frontally - either to kill, stun, or turn it - was a real treat, though nreve-racking for the inexperienced. He had many years of elephant hunting to his credit before he became a Government servant, and once when an infuriated Government suddenly closed down on the so-called 'cultivation protection' measures of the planting community he had to hand in to the local authority some 96 tusks for which he could not properly account! His patient, painstaking, and thorough training of his African hunters - an exceedingly dangerous business - afforded an example which others could emulate, and the integrity and faithfulness of his personal staff were proverbial. He was an excellent companion and breezy raconteur, and amongst his host of friends in all walks of life could be counted several members of the Royal family. Few but he knew that since 1933 he was not 100% fit, but undaunted he carried on with the life he loved, and it was not till 1946 that the red light which he had seen for so long blazed into a beacon which could no longer be concealed. Many will honour Samaki's memory. There is now one less of the fast-dwindling band of the great elephant hunters of the past.
Elephant - Captain R.J.D. Salmon, Uganda's Deputy Game Warden - who took charge of the Department when Captain Pitman was lent to Northern Rhodesia, and who stopped counting when he reached his thousandth elephant - once had a miraculous escape from an elephant, which took his head in its trunk and gave it a twist, but even that did not cool his ardour. In military parlance, he is too stout a fellow to be put off by such an incident. East African know him as very cool and collected, but probably few are aware of the good work he did during the East African Campaign in company with Captain Tracy Philipps, who used to carry out raids on the shore of Lake Victoria, lying up in the forest with 5 men during the day and working behind the German lines at night in order to capture a German askari on leave in his village and bring him back to the British side. Salmon was very keen to go on such errands, and, being exceedingly efficient with a machine gun, his company was always welcomed by Philipps, who told me that Salmon showed extreme coolness at all times, particularly on one occasion when the raiding party had to fight its way back outnumbered by sixteen to one.
Gazette - 4/11/1914 - Appt. - Carrier Corps - To be Lieutenant - D.R.J. Salmon
Gazette - 4/11/1914 - Appt. - Transferred to the East Africa Police (Military Service Battalion) - Lieutenant R. Salmon, Carrier Corps
Uganda Staff 1938 - Game Ranger, appointed 1924
Chandler - [comprehensive entry] …………. Ill health eventually caused Salmon to retire from the game department after the end of WW2. He died in his sixth year of retirement on his farm in Natal in 1952.
Uganda Journal Vol 17 No 1 p. 68 - A Tribute by Capt. C.R.S. Pitman - 2.5 pages

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