Charles Townshend (British Army officer) known for his theatrical style, and he liked to associate with actors. In 1884, Townshend was part of the relief expedition to rescue the besieged army of General Charles Gordon, better known to the British public as "Chinese Gordon", at Khartoum. As a Royal Marine officer, he strictly speaking should not had been part of an Army expedition, but he wrote to Field Marshal Garnet Wolsely asking if he could go, and his request was granted. The way that Gordon had defied the orders of the government to leave Khartoum, knowing full well that the government could not abandon a
Khartoum (state) Nile State, and in the west by North Kurdufan. There are several etymologies for the name of Khartoum. The explanation suggested as "most correct" by the state government's website is that it comes from the Arabic for "elephant's trunk", which describes the shape of the site of the city at the confluence of the two Niles, where a stretch of land extends into the water. Other stories are that it is a corruption of "gurtoum", the name for seeds of the sunflower plant, supposedly used by Roman invaders at the current site of Khartoum to treat soldiers' wounds, or that