Cannon fodder

Robert Morgan relates the rich history of a gun captured by the Mahdi's army before being hauled from the Nile following a battle in which Winston Churchill made his name

This month is a bit of a departure as I thought we could look at something really big.

The cannon pictured here is a rifled muzzle-loading battalion gun for the close support of infantry. Dating from 1883, it fires a hollow cast iron explosive shell of approximately 8lb in weight with external copper or lead studs designed to match the rifling, similar to the Armstrong system. Effective range was in excess of 1,000 yards. This is one of the few times in history where arms technology took a step backwards in real terms.

Breech loading guns were already wellestablished when this gun was produced. The problem was all to do with the Navy. In 1858, the French decided to put ironarmoured plates on their battleship Gloire. Other nations quickly followed suit, with the result being that the breech-loading guns of the day simply could not be made powerful enough to penetrate the armour. The first battle between ironclads happened on 9 March 1862 during the American Civil War, as the armoured Monitor was deployed to protect the Union’s wooden fleet from the ironclad ram Virginia and other Confederate warships. On the second day of the Battle of Hampton Roads, these two ironclads repeatedly tried to ram one another while shells bounced off their armour. The battle attracted attention worldwide, making it clear that the wooden warship was now out of date, with the ironclads able to destroy them easily.

To overcome this stalemate, the forces of the world quickly reverted to using massive muzzle-loading cannon, but with the improvement of rifling for accuracy. The same technology was scaled down for the support guns used on the battlefield. The invention of the screw breech would soon change guns back to breech-loading, but for a period of around 30 or so years, muzzle-loading was the standard.

Insurgents

This piece has a really interesting history. In 1883, a poorly trained and inexperienced Egyptian army was formed to march up the route of the Nile to oppose insurgents led by a fanatical religious leader, the Mahdi, Mohammed Ahmad. Colonel William Hicks, a British officer and known locally as Hicks Pasha, led this army. He had been made a pasha (a high official) by the khedive (viceroy) of Egypt in 1882. A number of these bronze rifled muzzle-loading cannon were cast specifically for this army, together with some iron-barrelled models as well. Unfortunately it was to no avail, Hicks’s army was overwhelmed and massacred at El-obeid, just south of Khartoum. More than 10,000 officers and men, including Hicks, were killed in the engagement, and the Mahdi welcomed the captured artillery, including this particular gun, into his force.

Revenge

Move forward to 1898 and shortly before the decisive Battle of Omdurman (where a young Winston Churchill first made his name), Kitchener ambushed the Mahdi’s son at Atbara River, causing over 6,500 casualties and recapturing the guns in the process.

Lieutenant William Sitwell, who became a brigadier-general, eventually recovered the actual gun. He later wrote Ahistoryof Barmoor (his family home in Northumbria), which mentions the episode: “We dragged it (the cannon) along with a convoy of wounded for 30 miles to the Nile and lay it on the bed of that classic river until it was convenient to send it to England without undue curiosity from superior authority. It was originally captured from Hicks at the massacre in 1883 and carries the name of the Khedive Ismael, and the date 1281 (after the Hejira calendar) or A.D. 1863” (sic).

In truth, the gun had remained hidden at the bottom of the Nile for three years before it was recovered. On its return to England, William set it up outside Barmoor Castle, where it stayed until being loaned to a local gun club in 1958 for demonstration shoots. The carriage and wheels were renovated in 1959; not bad for something 76-yearsold that had witnessed the deaths of many and had spent three of those years at the bottom of a river. A member of the same club eventually purchased it from Sitwell in 1964. Holts auctioned the piece in 2016 and it is believed it still resides with its new owner.

“it is one of the few times arms technology went backwards”

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