Gordon Frye's History Ramblings

Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows

2012-01-04T23:51:00.000-08:00

I just watched the latest incarnation of the Sherlock Holmes saga, this in the form of the second film staring Robert Downey Jr. in the namesake roll. I had very much enjoyed the first film that he did, and this was, if anything, even better. Jude Law reprised his role as the good Doctor Watson, with a character far more capable than he is often made out to be. Most amusingly cast was Stephen Fry as Sherlock Holmes’ “older, smarter brother” Mycroft. Per the rest of the cast, they were quite competent actors all but since I hadn’t heard of any of them before I’ll pass on mentioning them, so there it is.

Since my reviews are always about the cool stuff, however, I’ll leave all that acting criticism for others (who as usual pan what I like and like what I pan, but again, there it is. They get paid for it and I don’t, so perhaps they’re on to something I’m ignorant of).

As usual, whoever does the props and armouring for these movies knows what they’re doing, and they do it well. From the credits it looks to be a lot of folks, but I give real kudo’s to whoever is actually in charge of the over-all look, be that the Director Guy Ritchie or the head of his Props department, or whoever. Everything looks great! Buildings, backgrounds, set dressing, props, weapons, clothing, background artists, you name it, and it not only was high quality, but it looked like it belonged there, and in fact looked like it grew there (even some of the clothes on some of the actors looked as though they’d been on them long enough to have enough extra passengers and life-forms to begin new planets). Well done on their part.

Minor Spoilers Ahead

Okay, the Cool Toys. They have them, and lots of them. In the first scene in which Holmes has to fight his way clear of things, one of the thugs he deals with has a nice little Webley top-break .38. Sadly (from what I could see, I could be wrong on this one) it was one of their post-WWI models of this size, but what the heck, Webley DID make such a beast in the late-1880’s, so it’s fine.

As usual, Watson is carrying his trusty Webley RIC. This being one of the later models, it was probably in .455” rather than the somewhat less powerful .450”. Speaking of Watson, there was a bit of a time disconnect going on in this film, since Watson is supposed to be fairly recently returned from Afghanistan (the 2^nd Afghan War taking place between 1878 and 1880), and yet there are weapons which hadn’t been invented until the mid-1890’s, but, oh well. Most are close enough. I rather liked the little single-shot derringer which Holmes hands to him on the train, too. Looked like it was a Colt .41” rimfire, but hard to tell: still, cool.

The bad-guys on the train have, of all things, a Model 1889 Vickers-Maxim Machine Gun, in caliber .303”. How cool is that? Brass water jacket, brass receiver, lots of brass everywhere! Unfortunately the cartridges they were using in the belt were the post-1905 Mk VII Ball, rather than the Mk I Ball (black powder with a 220-grain round-nosed bullet, rather than cordite powder and 174-grain “spitzer” bullet) they should have been using. Oh well; details, details...but that's what I'm all about, so I'll mark them down on that one.

The bad-guys on the

train have one other interesting piece though, and that is their “close-in” weapon, at least the one with which they try to kill Our Heroes at close range. For whatever reason, one is carrying a Model 1887 Winchester Shotgun with a short “riot” barrel on it. What? Brit’s just don’t go for such things in shotguns. Isn’t sporting, you know, it must be a double or nothing. You might have been able to buy such a thing in Londo n, but, Goodness! Even as a murder weapon: just not done. I like them though, so it gets points from me.

I do have to take serious issue with one thing on the train though: The British “soldiers” have a nice box full of stick-mounted “Mills Bombs”, AKA hand grenades. Considering that these had gone out of fashion during the American Revolution and didn’t come back until the trenches of 1915 made such things desirable (the first ones were made from jam tins filled with artillery explosives and tied to sticks), it would be hard to imagine the British Army (or fellows posing as such) having such things in 1890. On the other hand, they’re cool and it

does keep the story moving.

Chasing around Paris is always fun, especially if you get to shoot

at folks while down in the sewers, so what else to use but a proper French military revolver? Indeed, they have them! At least Watson does, picking up a Mle. 1892 Lebel 8mm revolver up from a fellow with no further use for it, and using it to good effect. Later he somehow even gets one (or perhaps it’s another sort, but close) with ivory grips which is particularly fetching. Watson always gets the cool guns, I have t o say.

The sniper rifle belonging to the henchman of Arch-Nemisis Moriarty has exactly what one might expect of a former British soldier: a Martini-Henry, though in a somewhat smaller caliber (which is fine) than the original .577/.450 cartridge for which it was designed. It looked almost like the semi-experimental .400” cartridge that the British Army almost adopted, but chose instead to go with the more efficient .303” for their new magazine rifles in 1888. However, there is one scene in which the henchman fires off several rounds in quick succession at Watson, something which simply cannot be done successfully with a Martini-Henry. Shades of a Dallas Deer Rifle, I’m afraid.

On the other hand, the scenes in Germany are great, with plenty of cool firearms to bedazzle the e ye, from the 7.63mm Mauser “Broomhandle” pistols (AKA “C-96” after the year of introduction. See my problem here?) to the 105mm (or was it a 155mm?) Krupp artillery pieces.

There is, however, a “minor” issue with regards to the Broomhandle Mausers. This will take awhile, so sit back and relax.

The henchman notes to Holmes that these unusual pistols are the latest thing, far more modern and thus better than the revolver he is carrying, and possesses a 10-round magazine: all well and good. Then he tosses a clip to Holmes, which h e pulls from a case of such things, to charge the Mauser. From what I could see (and I may have seen what I was expecting, too) he tossed a “charger clip”, being a thin sheet-metal piece which only holds the rim of the cartridge (which is right and proper for a Mauser C-96 ), but then they both slap the floor of the magazines of their pistols as though they had in fact placed fresh magazines into their respective pistols. So, here’s the problem. Mauser didn’t begin to manufacture a model capable of such replaceable magazines until the 1930’s, following the lead of some Spanish copyists. Much of the problem is really a problem with usage of terms. Any more these days, people interchange “clip” and “magazine”, when in fact they are very different beasts. A f irearm may in fact be able to use both, or neither, or one or the other, but they are not at all the same thing. As noted, with a Mauser the clip holds the rims of the cartridges and they are then “stripped” into place (thus sometimes being referred to as “stripper clips”). A magazine, on the other hand, holds the entire cartridge, along with several others, and may be an integral part of the firearm (as in the case of the Mauser) or may be removable, as is the case with almost all modern military firearms. Th ese are generally made of thin sheet metal and contain anywhere from five to 100 cartridges, and can be removed at will by the user. To confuse you even more, there are the “en-bloc clips” such as developed by Mannlicher and later used in the famous US M1 Garand rifle, wherein the entire clip holding the cartridges is fed into the magazine and then ejected.

With me so far? Right; so when the henchman an d Holmes slap the magazine floors of their pistols, it would do nothing other than to make

noise, and not much of a noise at that. The ONLY WAY to load a C-96 “Broomhandle” Mauser is with a stripper clip from above, with the bolt back. That’s how they were designed, and the later version was in fact capable of fully-automatic fire and usually had a 20-30 round magazine. The whole scene is to let the dolts who think that Gangsta moves are cool know that they had loaded the pistols, and then of course the henchman proceeds to turn his pistol to a 90º angle and hold it at Holmes’ head, just like a Gangsta. Okay, now all the Gangsta’s in the audience know that he’s loaded his pistol and is going to shoot it. Joy.

All right, I’m done ranting. I’ll point out that Winston Churchill packed one of these cool Mauser pistols in the Battle of Omdurman in 1898. They were in fact quite popular with British officers of the day, so it’s cool that the film includes them. But, come on, at least load them properly! (Oh sorry, I said I wasn’t going to rant any more on that one. Oops.)

I think that they rather made up for it, however, with the massive use of the usually-forgotten German Gewehr (just means “rifle”) 88, usually shortened to Gew. 88 or G-88, and sometimes known as the “Commission Rifle”. As the nickname implies, it was designed by a commission, and like the commission that came up with the camel, isn’t exactly what was ordered when the Imperial German Army asked for a horse. The Germans had adopted a product of the genius of Peter Paul Mauser in 1871, and again in 1884 with the Gewehr 71/84, a modification from single-shot to magazine-fed (this magazine being of a tubular variety, under the barrel as with a Winchester). However they tired of paying Mauser the royalties on his patents and decided to go around them, using a pinch of Mauser here, a dash of Mannlicher there (it used a 5-round “en-bloc” clip) and to top it of, a strange sheet-steel barrel jacket which was supposed to dissipate heat from the barrel, but instead tended to attract moisture and cause rust. When Mauser showed up with his much-improved Model of 1898, the German Army was more than happy to put their Commission Rifles into the hands of the second-line Landswehr troops and step up to a much better rifle, one which became the standard by which all others were judged for better than 50 years. Anyway…

The poor old Gewehr 88 performs sterling service in this film, both in the hands of the good guys and the bad guys. Dr. Watson in fact manages to shoot the henchman and wound him with his at a pretty decent range, something which the rifle was well capable of. Since one of the good things about the G-88 was that it introduced the famous 8X57mm Mauser cartridge (Mauser got his revenge there, since he didn’t actually design that round. Besides, it’s really a 7.92mm, or 7.9mm according to the German Army. The 57 stands for how many millimeters long it is), a round which was destined to give birth to virtually all of the military and sporting cartridges of the 20^th Century. Even the American 30-06 is a variant, as is the modern 7.62 NATO round.

At any rate, the G-88 and the 8mm cartridge proved to be quite a serviceable combination, far superior to the French 8mm Lebel which it was designed to counter. (In 1886 the French had astounded the world by introducing the first smokeless cartridge, the 8mm Lebel, along with a rifle to go with it. The cartridge was revolutionary, the rifle pedestrian with no mechanical improvement over the German 71/84, but of course the French hung on to it until almost WWII while everyone else went on to much better things, the G-88 being one of them. The Germans, being the premier chemists of the day, weren’t about to let those darned Frenchies get away with stealing a march on them, so they came up with the 8 (or 7.9)X57 cartridge, a rimless bottleneck round which, as I noted above, was the progenitor of most of the military and sporting cartridges of the 20^th Century.

Both good and bad guys make excellent use of these venerable old rifles, and I’m willing to bet that this is one of the few films ever made which features them in it. You occasionally see a Broomhandle Mauser here and there (“Young Winston”, for example), or Webley RIC’s (“The Wind and the Lion”), or even 1887 Winchesters (“Terminator II”). Commission Rifles? Not so much. So that’s another point for the film.

I’m not much up on heavy artillery, so other than to say that they looked more like the WWI “Gustav” siege pieces made by Krupp than anything else, and that I think that they were designed in the 1890’s, I’ll give them a pass.

On the other hand, one of the weird “pocket artillery” pieces they used was definitely not around in the 1890’s, or even in the next decade, and that was the “Meinenwerfer” that the bad guys were using. Think “Trench Mortar” with wheels and you’ve got it. On the other hand, I doubt seriously that anyone since the making of “All’s Quiet on the Western Front” has had one in their movie, so what the heck. Maybe the TNT film “The Lost Battalion” with Rick Schroeder? Maybe not even then.

The final cool and wonderful thing is the rather odd “sub-machine gun” with which Dr. Watson arms himself in the German arms factory. What on earth it was supposed to represent is a bit of a mystery, though I have a few ideas.

To begin with, it’s obviously not firing full-sized rifle ammunition, as the top-mounted magazine (real magazine, not a clip, remember!) wasn’t nearly long enough to hold a full-caliber round. On the other hand, such a thing hadn’t been invented yet (though John M. Browning’s first experimental auto-loading pistol, in 1897 went full-auto on him when he tried it out, because he hadn’t thought of a “disconnector” which disconnects the trigger from the hammer sear. See, it’s actually easier to make a fully-automatic weapon than a semi-automatic one, so all of the laws on the books about such things are flat silly.) On the other hand, there is just possibly something that would almost fit the bill, that being…the Danish Madsen machine gun of 1902. The original patents were from 1899, so it does kind of qualify as a 19^th Century machine gun, but what Dr. Watson was carrying isn’t precisely a Madsen, either. It looks like a strange bash between a Colt-Browning Model 1895 “Potato Digger” (wonderful name, what? But not something you would want to shoot off-hand), the Madsen and the Italian Villa-Perosa of 1916. Both of the later used the curved, top mounted magazines shown in the film, and the Villa-Perosa used the rather under-powered Italian 9mm rimless cartridge, but hey, it’s only a movie.

I do have to say, though, that the Madsen was one of the wonders of the world, mechanically speaking. Rather like a bumblebee, it really shouldn’t work, since the cartridge should have to “bend” to get from the magazine into the chamber. But they work like a champ, enough so that they’re still in use by Brazilian police when shooting up the slums of Rio. Talk about longevity, they haven’t made a new one since the 1940’s, but they’re still on the job.

Last but not least, I have to mention a quick cameo appearance by the immortal Gatling Gun as well, merrily firing black powder loads at our intrepid heroes. Gotta love it when a scene has firearms spanning half-a-century or more in it, all being used with equal abandon! Makes me feel all gushy inside, I must say.

All told, it’s a really good film from my perspective, with lots and lots of really cool, really arcane, weird and wonderful weaponry in it. Even the Cossack has a cool middle-Asian dagger! They trot out all sorts of unlikely and uninvented pieces for us to enjoy, very Steampunk in that regard, and quite fun. Definitely doing some “anachronisms” of technology by a few years, but it’s not a documentary, so why not? It’s fun, and definitely worth the price of admission. I know I’m planning on getting a copy when it comes out on DVD just so I can see what cool stuff is in the background that I missed!

Cheers!

Gordon

* The last instance I can recall off-hand of their use was when an American sailor dropped one from the rigging of the Bonhomme Richard on to the deck of HMS Serapis, where it landed in a box of British hand-grenades and pretty much decided the battle. This was in 1778

.

SteamCon schedule

2011-10-08T14:26:00.000-07:00

Gordon't speaking/moderating schedule at SteamCon 3:

Friday 6-7 19th Century Submarines, Fact and Fiction (moderating)

Saturday 10-noon 19^th Century Firearms (this is a "don't miss" talk)

Saturday 1-2 "Steamy Sailors" (moderating)

Sunday 11-noon "Ironclads of the Civil War and the race for Naval Domination"

Sunday 2-3 "Confederate Privateers"

SteamCon 2010: 19th Century Firearms

2011-10-06T00:22:00.001-07:00

True Grit

2011-01-07T20:43:00.000-08:00

I just watched the new film "True Grit" this afternoon, and I am quite impressed with it. Not a "remake" of the 1969 John Wayne film of the same name, but rather a different adaptation of the book into film. The Coen Brothers did a remarkable job in bringing the book to life, and giving the characters a much earthier, more complex depth than the earlier film ever could have done.

Jeff Bridges as Reuben "Rooster" Cogburn does a great job of portraying a down-at-the-heels US Marshal from "Hanging Judge" Parker's court in Fort Smith Arkansas in the 1870's. Not by any means a "nice guy", but rather a former partisan ranger from the Civil War who had ridden with Quantrell at Lawrence, Kansas and probably performed some rather bloody work in the process. A man of few scruples and less patience when it comes to dealing with others of his ilk, he's a hard man, but also one who has the heart to do his absolute utmost to save the young girl's life when it's endangered. His armament of a pair of "Navy Sixes" is most interesting, being his outfit from his Civil War days carried as spares in pommel holsters on his saddle. (Of course they're not actually .36 caliber Navy Colts, but rather the larger .44 Caliber Dragoons, as they are definitely visually more impressive than the smaller, and smaller caliber, Navys.) His primary armament consists of the more modern "cartridge guns", a Colt Single Action Army revolver (probably in .45, one would imagine) and a Winchester '73 Rifle in .44 Winchester Center Fire (Colt had just begun chambering it's revolvers in .44 WCF the year before, so it's doubtful that Mr. Cogburn had managed to get his hands on one so quickly, but you never know).

Mat Damon's character, Le Boef, the Texas Ranger, is rather amusing in many ways. Dressed in rather outlandish getup for Arkansas he styles himself, rather, as a "buckskin cavalier", but is quickly put in his place by young Maddie Ross, the protagonist of the story. She points out that he looks more the "circus clown" than an officer of the law. What is quite nice about this is that he IS dressed outlandishly for that place, but it's a completely, totally period outlandishness which wouldn't have seemed nearly so out of place further West, say in the Rockies or Western Canada, but in Fort Smith Arkansas not so much. By the way, his Sharps Carbine is completely appropriate for a Texas Ranger, as they were issue pieces during the mid-1870's from the State of Texas which was using former US Cavalry weapons.

Maddie (Hailee Steinfield) of course carries her father's cap-and-ball "Colt's Dragoon", a large revolver which constituted Samuel Colt's first major commercial success in 1848-1861's production. Using the same frame as the larger Colt's Walker revolver (1847) purchased by the US Army and issued in the fading days of the Mexican War, the Dragoon is what made Colt a household name throughout the United States (though it was the smaller, handier Navy Model of 1851 which made Colt a household name throughout the world.) Never the less, it would be quite possible for Maddie to have carried such a revolver, it being her father's property, on such an occasion. Though outmoded by the more modern cartridges which had come out in the past 10 years or so prior to our story, it was still considered to be a powerful, reliable side-arm. Though somewhat slow to load due to it's use of "loose ammunition" (powder, ball and cap all placed within or on the cylinder separately) and therefore also somewhat less reliable than cartridges, it was still very much a deadly firearm, and for the first six shots the equal of anything then manufactured. Still is, in fact.

The only other firearm of note is the Remington Model of 1875 Army revolver which Ned Pepper carries. It's nice that he has emblems from playing cards on the grips, indicative of his sobriquet, "Lucky" Ned Pepper. (I also found it amusing that the actor who portrayed "Lucky" Ned Pepper shared the character's last name, he being Barry Pepper. Rather neat.) By the by, his "wooly chaps" were great! Perhaps not a common item in the Indian Territory in the 187o's (being more of a Northern Plains 1880's and later phenomenon) but from the point of view of defining the character from his comrades, quite brilliant. Besides, they LOOK very, very cool.

The horsemanship of the film wasn't too bad, and the horsemanship of Hailee Steinfield is superb. The girl can ride! Good for her, and good for the Coen Brothers for actually casting a girl who can not only act up a storm, but also ride like she was born in the saddle! Bully for them! Also the horse tack was great. Definitely of the period. Perhaps a bit new, perhaps a bit too "cowboy" for some of the characters, but definitely saddlery that was available in the time and place, and therefore further kudo's to the producers and their props and wrangler departments.

One of the things I have to also remark upon is that the shots fired SOUND like real shots being fired from a black-powder weapon, be it cap-and-ball or cartridge. The big, hollow "Whumph!" sound rather than the sharp crack of the modern smokeless blanks that had been so often used (or rather Foleyed in later) is proper, and to me at least adds a great deal to the "feel" of the film.

So there it is. An excellent film, a wonderful Western, and a great character study of people who have determination and indeed, "True Grit".

Cheers!

Gordon

Letter from My Grandfather, 1916

2010-12-05T13:19:00.000-08:00

I have, among my Mother's affects, a copy of a letter which had been written by her father, Encell Mendel Tener, to his mother on April 24 1916 when he was 19 years old. He had recently joined the US Navy, and was anxious to let the folks at home know what it was like in the Navy. He had followed his Uncle Daniel Mendel into the naval service (it was Daniel who, as a sailor aboard USS Iowa had been the first to spot the Spanish fleet steaming out of Santiago Bay, Cuba on July 3, 1898). The letter itself is quite interesting, giving some details as to life aboard ship, his job and even some details as to the organization of the Navy in general. No doubt this would be classified information today, but in 1916 it was just a letter home, to let the family know what his new life was like, and how he was getting on.

Of note is that he took the entrance exam for the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, and while he did not make it in, he was rapidly promoted during the expansion of the Navy in WWI to the rank of Chief Petty Officer by the age of 21, something rarely seen even in wartime. Obviously he was a very capable young man! It's nice to know something about my own Grandfather in such a time of his life, and that he was respected and well thought of in his chosen profession.

(By the way, the USS New Jersey he speaks of is the "Old New Jersey", BB-16, launched November 10, 1904 and sunk by General Billy Mitchell's bombers in 1923. Also, I've tried to keep the spelling and punctuation as in the original document I have.)

Here's the letter:

USS New Jersey,

Navy Yard, Boston, Mass.,

April 24, 1916.

Dear Mother,

In order that I might uphold the T.L. Lucille gave you for me, I will endeavor, for the benefit of my relations who may be interesting in my life in the Navy, to give a slight description of the Navy, it’s personnel, yards, auxiliaries and maneuvers.

First of all, I will briefly mention Battleships in General. They are divided into four Divisions, viz. First, Second, Third and Fourth, and are classed according to size and age. The first Division ships are the Wyoming, the Fleet flagship, Arkansas, First Division flagship, New York and the Texas. The second Division ships are the Florida, flagship, Delaware, Utah and Michigan. The third Division ships are the New Jersey, flagship, Nebraska Which holds the Red “E” (Efficiency), Virginia and Rhode Island. The fourth Division ships are the Louisiana, flagship, Kansas and Connecticut. Some of the ships in “Ordinary Reserve” are the Georgia, Minnesota and the Mississippi, and a few of the other old rattle traps that the US boasts of as first line battleships.

The ships are very large and compact, but the 1^st, 2^nd, Division ships are more graceful and speedy than the 3^rd and 4^th Division ships.

The Arkansas mounts 14-12” guns and some 20 or more 5” secondary defense guns, besides the submerged torpedo tubes and anti air craft guns. The other big ships have the same except that they have less 12” guns than the Arkie. All the big guns are mounted in turrets, two guns in each, and the turrets extend from the main deck to the platform and splinter decks below. In the third Div. ships the guns are somewhat differently arranged, and as we carry only 4 – 12” guns which are mounted in two turrets, one for’d and one aft. The 8” guns are mounted in superposed turrets, (on top of the 12”) and in waist turrets, one on each side of the ship. We have 20 – 6” secondary defense guns and also the torpedo tubes. In the fourth Division they have no super-posed turrets and the 8” guns are mounted in two turrets, on each side of the ship.

The engines on the New Jersey are immense, they are called, Four Cylinder, Triple expansion, inverted, Reciprocating engines. The cylinder dimensions are as follows:

For’d Low Press. 44” Dia.

High “ 33” “

Intermediate 37” “

After Low “ 44” “,

Stroke 48”

Some engines, and their greatest speed is about 125 revs. per minute, which is a little better than 19 knots, but the highest speed we made on our last full power trial was 18.3 knots, but I hardly think she’ll ever make that again.

We are in dry dock now and you can get a very clear idea of her size when you can see all of her that is submerged when afloat; her propellers keel, keelson plates and the heavy armor, with which she is plated.

The daily routine in port for the Engineer’s Force (I will mention that of the Deck force later), begins with “Up all hammocks” at 6.45 A.M. Then breakfast at 7:30, “turn to” at 8:15 and “Knock off” at 11:30. Dinner at 12:00N. and “turn to” again at 1:15 P.M. and “knock off” at 4:00 P.M. First liberty call for Engineer’s Force at 4:30 P.M., and liberty is up at 8:00 A.M. the following morning. Supper is at 6:00 P.M. and “Hammocks” goes at 7:30. You can turn in anytime after hammocks. “First call” goes at 8:55 P.M., “Tattoo” at 9:00 P.M., and last but not least “Taps” at 9:05 P.M., ad after that all must be quiet and everybody but those on watch turned in.

The deck hands arise at the bright and early hour of 5:00 A.M., and immediately upon getting their hammocks stowed perform the arduous task of scrubbing down decks. After that is accomplished they shine bright work until time for breakfast, which is usually a frugal meal, and afterwards they perform their toilet and lounge until 8:15. Then they shine more bright work clean the compartments and clamp down (wet and mop) the decks, then shift into clean clothes for Quarters. I think I forgot to state that the Engineers who are standing auxiliary watch go to Quarters but not those who are turning to. After Quarters the “Swab” resumes his duties, which he hates and no one blames him for his is never thru. The main difference between a “swab” and one of the “Black Gang” is that the latter works hard in his allotted time, but the former never works hard and consequently is never thru. Is work all thru the day is a constant repetition of what he just did a few hours previous to that at which hs is now working, also he may be called upon at any time of the day or night to do any extra work that might happen along, but an Engineer does his four hours watch (underway) and then sleeps and eats for eight hours before he is again called on for his efforts in the propulsion of the ship.

My duties are somewhat different than any of the above. I am in the Log Room (Engineer’s Office), and the Engineer Officer has been pleased with my work and behavior and has recommended be for F1C. It was he who encouraged me to try the Annapolis exam, and since they are over, he has reinstated me in the Log Room instead of putting me below. If he is satisfied, I may say that I am, and that I will do all in my power to uphold my good record.

You have mostly heard me speak of the pleasant side of life in the Navy so far,. But now, in fairness to any make person who might hear this and take it into his head to enlist, let me speak of the other side of the life.

When you have been cruising at some seemingly foolish manouvers for a week or two, and then come into port and not get liberty, when you come into the Navy Yard and have to work from 5:30 A.M., till 3:30 A.M., the next morning to get ready for a board of inspection and survey; and have to work till 6:30 P.M. when you were supposed to go on liberty at 1:30 A.M., these all go on the wrong side of the crew’s ledger. But these are few and the least of many, but the most important of all is the bum Commissary. Oh! what meals he puts out. He is so bad that the Officer of the Deck has to inspect the messes before “Pipe Down” at every meal. It is not so bad all the time, nor in all the ships, but it is most of the time and on most of the ships all the time. The last sentence is meant for emphasis. Does it work?

Some of the most important ports of call of the fleet are New York, Boston, Phila, Norfolk, Old Point, Charlestown S.C., Portland, Santiago, Havanna, Guantanamo Bay, Culebra (U.S.W.I.) and Newport and Black Island, R.I.

We coal again tomorrow and Friday, taking on some 1500 tons of the so called “Black diamonds”. Our total coal capacity is 19,090 tons of coal, but I have seen us coal so much that the fleer plates of the firerooms were piled high with it.

I don’t know as yet how I made out in the exams, but I expect the returns from Washington in about two more weeks. I hope that they are satisfactory, because I’d hate to fail after these hard months of study.

You can see by the difference in the ink that this letter has been written in installments, but I haven’t had the time to write it all at once. The type needing cleaning and I must do that tomorrow, I cleaned the other machine completely today, taking it almost completely apart.

As we have to arise at about 4:30 A.M. tomorrow, I must turn in early tonight because it is one of our busiest days when we coal ship.

Hoping that this letter is not as bad as I think it, I say goodbye, and love to all.

Your affectionate son,

Encell

The Wolfman

2010-02-17T20:52:00.000-08:00

We went to see the latest incarnation of "The Wolfman" the other night. Not too shabby, though I doubt that it will win any Oscars. Still, a nice little romp through late-Victorian England, complete with Scotland Yard inspectors, Gypsies, and werewolves.

There was certainly lots of nice eye-candy to be seen (and I don't mean the pretty girl, though she was certainly fetching). Among other interesting things was a nice steam-omnibus that got at least a little bit of screen time. There were also some magnificent horses, in the form of Andalusians and Friesians, all of whom were very well trained and handled. It's always nice to see such well mannered horses in films, and not having their faces torn off by idiots actors manhandling the reins. Very nice teams pulling some nice little carriages throughout the film, and a couple of gorgeous saddle horses to.

I was also quite impressed with the costuming and hair. At one point Our Hero Lawrence Talbot (played by Benicio del Toro) was wearing an out fit that I KNOW I have seen in photo's of a famous actor from the late-19th Century wearing. I can't recall if it was Oscar Wilde, Edmund Boothe or another actor, but with a velvet jacket, trilby hat and cape he was the very image of an "actor" of the era. Another excellent bit of period fashion was the doctor in the asylum, with his hair parted down the middle...all the way back to his neck. Not many people would know of that oddity of fashion, and I laud the hair designer for it.

Now for the fun part, my "What Weird Guns Did They Have?" section. I was actually pretty impressed by their armourer's choices, for the most part. Lots of Martini-Henry rifles, as would be expected, since the Martini-Henry was the primary issue service rifle for the British Army and Royal Navy during the period from 1871-1888, with issues continuing well into the 20th Century for some units. That the Metropolitan Police might actually have access to these is quite a reasonable expectation. Interestingly there were also a number of the civilian versions to be seen in the hands of various Werewolf hunters as well.

I thought it very apt that the immediate predecessor of the Martini-Henry in the British service, the Snider-Enfield, was also seen in some numbers in the film. Rifles and carbines both, again in the hands of the civilian Werewolf hunters.

The protagonist and his father of course, being gentlemen, carry their beautiful double guns. Hard to tell whether they are double rifles or double shotguns, but from the thinness of the barrels at the muzzle, I will assume them to be double shotguns. Either way, nice big hunting guns with a sufficient calibre to down most any game one could imagine. They look to be 10- or 12-bore to me, and when loaded with a solid slug (of silver, of course!) they make quite a salutary proposition for defense against a Werewolf. I couldn't tell if they were Holland and Holland, Purdy or some other of the host of superb quality gunsmiths who at one time inhabited the British Isles and produced the highest quality firearms ever made, but the under-lever actions were of the type popular in the 1870's and '80's, definitely within the time period of the rest of the material artifacts of the film.

There were also several other interesting rifles shown here and there. One looked to be either an Alexander Henry single shot or a Farqharson-action single-shot, and another oddly enough looked almost like an American Sharps. Hard to tell with only one viewing though. Maybe I'll get it on DVD when it comes out and edit things to be a bit more coherent (and accurate)!

Heros of course must also have pistols, and they were shown in some abundance and variety. One of the first to be seen is a Patrolman's revolver, an Enfield model of 1878, issued to the British Army in caliber .476. They are an odd sort of break-open design that doesn't actually break open all the way, just enough to drop out the empty rounds and ensure that the rims of the loaded rounds still within the chambers will now drop under the star ejector when it returns and jam up the piece completely. One must pull it apart again and try to pry out the loaded rounds and replace them properly in their chambers after the star ejector has returned back down to it's place before you can then reload and finally shoot the blasted piece. So make sure you fire ALL your rounds before you try to reload it.

The next pistol to be seen is a break-open Webley .455", the good old standard which served the British Army so well from the late-1880's through WWII and beyond. The one shown looked to be a Mk II, with a 6" barrel (which was actually somewhat of a rarity. Most have the 4" barrel). It's hard to tell the difference between a Mk II and the Mk's III, IV and V though, the Mk II having a slight "bump" at the top of the grip behind the hammer to keep your hand from slipping forward under recoil. In fact, I suspect that they used several of the models, because I seem to remember seeing examples both with, and without the "pawl" or bump. At any rate, they are a fine weapon, and head and shoulders above the poor old Enfield .476".

I did catch a few glimpses of a Webley RIC .450" (see my review of "Sherlock Holmes", below), but it was not featured to near the extent that the later, larger break-open Webley's were. Actually however, they were probably more likely to have been seen in the hands of both policemen and civilians in the 1880's than the .455's, but what the heck. I'm just happy to see that they were using period revolvers of the proper nationality, rather than just sticking whatever happened to be in the prop house armoury into the hands of the actors and saying "Action!".

All in all, a fun little romp. Lots of action, a fair amount of shooting, and general mayhem, with fun to be had by all. If nothing else, seeing an homage to the original "Wolfman" film complete with an actor who actually rather LOOKS like Lon Chaney Jr. is worth the price of admission.

Cheers!

Gordon

Sherlock Holmes Movie

2010-01-01T13:48:00.000-08:00

I just watched the latest Sherlock Holmes movie, with Robert Downey, Jr. in the title role and Jude Law as Dr. Watson. Rather well done I thought, though of course imperfect, and not liable to satisfy the true acolytes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Still it was fun, and without too many glaring historical inconsistencies.

There were of course minor details to attack, such as the extreme youth of the actors portraying the roles of Irene Adler and the Home Secretary, etc. but these are pretty easily overlooked. On the other hand, there were a lot of nifty details to enjoy, enough to make a Steampunk drool.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Proceed at your own discretion

Of the minor details that I loved were, to begin with, the ramming prow of the ship under construction which Holmes and his adversary manage to send down the ways prematurely. Not everyone is aware of just how big those rams were and how prevalent they were in the warships of the day. As a negative, however, the Thames is not 300 feet deep at London (or anywhere else), and unlikely to swallow a major warship whole. But it was a cool effect anyway.

Other nice effects were all of the gadgets and steam engines tossed helter-skelter about the sets. The various steam-boats, factories and general filth from the coal-smoke were wonderful to behold. The filth of the populace was certainly fairly accurate as well, though perhaps not as enjoyable to see. Still, it wouldn't have looked right without them.

A couple of nice carriages, Paddy Wagons and even one nice little Hansom, though sadly it wasn't seen much. Black Friesians of course, but the one coach taking Holmes from the jail showed off it's dapple-grey horses nicely.

The guns. They were great! Not many of them, sad to say, but those which were shown were wonderful. Holmes, Watson and the Police all carried Webley "Royal Irish Constabulary" (AKA "RIC") revolvers, as well they should. They were extremely popular in Britain and the Colonies during the period between 1868 and the turn of the century, as they are compact, powerful and reliable firearms. Shooting the .450 round, they carry a punch, though perhaps not sufficient to stop a charging Pathan or Zulu. Thus the Army moved away from that cartridge in 1878, but it remained quite popular in civilian circles for many, many years. Oddly though, they had the American Ambassador carrying one as well. I should think that any God-fearing American ambassador, be it to the Court of St. James or Timbuktu, would carry a Colt or Smith and Wesson though. Oh well, details, details. I can't have everything.

On the other hand, there WAS one nice little American firearm shown. One of the "Bad Guys" had a gorgeous little Sharps 4-barreled derringer, carried in a wrist rig, that was pretty cool. Such "put it in your hand" devices were in fact known in the Victorian era, and the little 4-barreled derringers were certainly popular, so it's entirely possible to imagine the bad guy in London having such a thing. On the other hand. .30 rimfire is a rather pipsqueak of a round, and unlikely to pierce the skull of anything bigger than a rabbit, if that. But still, a cute little gun that was indeed popular at the time.

The film isn't a classic by any means, but well acted, and as far as the goodies in the background to get the juices flowing, wonderful. I think I'll buy it when it comes out on DVD!

Cheers!

Gordon

Update Jan 15, 2010: Here's an excellent article on "The Guns of Sherlock Holmes"

Nifty Old Revolvers

2009-11-11T13:20:00.000-08:00

Since I'm sort of in the Steampunk/ "Lamplight Adventure" mode these days, I thought that I would show off and discuss a couple of interesting revolvers that have come my way. Sadly I only actually own one of them, but what the heck, it's fun just to be able to enjoy fiddling with them while in one's possession. And when you get down to it, such old things aren't actually OURS anyway, we're just the temporary stewards of them, while they make their way through their existence.

To begin with, I'll show off the Galand-Sommerville revolver, patented in 1868. It's pretty advanced for the day, and had a very reliable extraction system not unlike the later Enfield revolver of 1876, which the British Army adopted for general service and issue. Anyway, check it out. Here it is closed, as one would have it when either carrying it in the holster or readying to fire.

Next it's open, after having fired all of the rounds. Note how it pulls the cartridges out by their rims, and dumps them out, clearing the chambers for the next load of cartridges. The one disadvantage is that if you've only fire one or two shots, you still have to to through the motions of dumping out all of them. One would hope that the bullets still in the loaded cases would prevent (or at least slow them down) from just dropping out, but I haven't tried it with loaded rounds, so I don't know for certain. Hard to come up with Webley .442 ammo these days, I'm afraid.

The revolver itself no doubt has a very long and interesting history, which sadly we don't know. My friend who owns the revolver purchased it at a store in Herrat, Afghanistan some 20+ years ago, and it definitely shows some age and hard use. The grip is quite obviously a local replacement, but probably done some years ago. I'm betting that it's an original Galand, as the proofs and marks seem right, but there is also the possibility that it's a "Khyber-made" piece, based on one that may have been picked up somewhere (read "Dead Englishman") by a local and replicated several hundred times over the past 150 years. No matter, it's still a very cool piece.

The next item is also rather interesting in its possible history, and interesting enough in just its pedigree. It is of the Austrian Gasser design, of the pattern decreed by King Nicholas I of Montenegro to be carried by every male subject in his kingdom. (Handy too that King Nick had financial interest in the Gasser company, what?) Unfortunately for Nick, his decree only stated "Gasser Pattern", rather than manufacture so the Belgians, who are always up for a commercial enterprise, filled the gap with their own versions, as this one here is. What is more astonishing though is that, according to some (though I have not found solid evidence, but what the heck. I go with the "It is almost certainly true, because it sounds good!" theory for now) was purchased by Pancho Villa for his revolutionary army ca. 1912 or so. It DOES say on the top of the barrel "For .44 Winchester Cartridge", which to say the least would be an unusual one for Central Europe, but why in English, rather than Spanish? Or did Pancho's purchasing agents figure that the ".44 Winchester" was sufficient? Or what? Hard to tell, but it IS in .44 Winchester Center Fire (AKA .44WCF and .44-40), so who knows. Might even have been for the US market, though I can hardly credit that. On the other hand, Americans HAVE been known to buy some pretty outrageous things because they look cool (Hmm... I guess I'm guilty of that myself...) so here it is.

You'll note that it's a pretty big gun. It IS big. What is odd though is that for all of it's size, it still is only a 5-shooter. The cartridges only come about 3/4 of the way down the chamber, so I guess that the 11mm Montenegrin Gasser cartridge must have been BIG! Lots bigger than the .44WCF at least, and that's a pretty decent sized round. Anyway, here it is now open, with five nice new .44WCF empties in the chambers. Pretty cool old gun, I have to say.

Anyway, that's it for now. I'll post again when I get something new that's interesting, or go on some new wild adventure.

Cheers!

Gordon

SteamCon '09

2009-10-31T13:14:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we attended a most amusing and enjoyable event, “SteamCon’09 at the SeaTac Marriott. I had been invited to give a presentation on Victorian-era firearms (the real ones) and was assigned to three other panels for the discussion of various aspects of the genre. It was quite the experience, and definitely worth the efforts we put out for it.

The focus was “Steam-Punk”, which is actually a literary genre developed some decades ago by authors such as Tim Powers (who was in attendance), James Blaylock and others who took science fiction ideas, mixed them with various fantastical elements, and placed the entire mess (usually) in a Victorian atmosphere. Sometimes off-shoots from Jules Verne or H.G. Wells, sometimes taking such period experimentations as Tesla’s ideas and expounding on them, and sometimes just taking modern technological concepts and putting a 19th Century spin on them, Steam-Punk contains a lot of vibrancy and imagination. This energy is felt at such events as SteamCon’09, as most of the participants are passionately interested in some aspect of the genre, and seem to hurl themselves into it with gusto. It’s cute.

We had arrived around noon on Friday at the hotel, as my talk was on Friday evening and I needed to ensure that all of my details were in order. I had brought some 35 antique firearms with me (all of them officially “non-firearms” according to Federal Law, just to be clear on that) to show off and discuss with the audience, so it was important to make sure things were properly arranged.. Lucky for me my good friend Eric Worth and his wife Sarah were some of the top-dogs within the security apparatus, and Graham Ainsley, the Chief of Security is an old acquaintance, so I was comforted by the knowledge that all would be done that could be done to ensure things proceeded smoothly. Which they did, of course..

My first panel discussion however, was “Building an Airship”, which I have to say was rather new to me. Enjoyable to be sure, but my idea of being above the ground usually entails having a horse under me, so I had to do some studying to figure this one out. We had a Physics guy on the panel to keep us firmly grounded in reality (though sometimes a bit too much, alas!), while Cheyenne Wright of “Girl Genius” was the moderator to keep things flowing and draw the ideas out on the white-board. Kaitlin Kitridge, an author, was there for some of the imaginative ideas we could promote, while I was there as the nominal “historian”. Well, I know SOMETHING about the history of heavier-than-air craft, but not enough, I’m afraid. But it was a lot of fun to do this, with all of the audience participation and all, and I think we did a creditable job in “building” Hermione’s Revenge. Might even work!

The firearms talk went very well indeed, though of course an hour is WAY to little time to go through 50 years-plus of firearms development in anything like any detail. I started with the standard British military firearm of the early 1840’s, the smooth-bore, flint-lock Brown Bess musket which was little changed from the muskets used at Concord, or at Blenheim for that matter. But change did come quickly after than, and I went through the development of the rifle-musket, the development of the self-contained cartridges and the the conversions of such rifle-muskets to cartridge, the repeater in the form of the Henry and Winchester rifles, etc. on to the Mauser bolt action of the 1890’s. For handguns, I started with the Colt Paterson “Texas Model”, through various Colt and Remington cap-and-ball revolvers to the early cartridge revolvers such as the Galand-Sommerville, the Colt Single Action Army and the Smith and Wesson break-tops. I ended with the Mauser C-96 “Broomhandle” and the Colt-Browning M1902 auto-loaders. Shotguns were simple: double-barrel percussion, double-barrel cartridge, and the Winchester 1897 pump-action. I think that everyone left the lecture somewhat enlightened and hopefully quite entertained by my antics, as I certainly enjoyed the experience.

Saturday was quite fun of course, my friend Steward Marshall was able to finally get there though unfortunately, as he couldn’t make it on Friday for my talk, without his Gatling Gun. Alas! Well, next year. My panel discussion on Uniforms went fairly well, though I must admit to being totally upstaged by my co-panelist Steve Criss, who wore his Zeppelin Officer’s uniform and (more importantly) brought two of his “crew” with him. The lovely Leutnant and Hauptmann were, shall we say, noteworthy? So whatever we gentlemen of the panel blabbered on about, I suspect that no one really paid much heed to, which is probably just as well.

My final panel, on Sunday was on “Victorian Whiskers”, in which my co-panelist from the day before, Steve Criss was again with me on the panel. It was perhaps the best of the lot, as we had by then worked out a fine banter, and could easily and effortlessly pass the baton back and forth for discussion, and both of us knew enough about the subject to keep the audience reasonably well educated, and I believe quite amused as well. As both of us have fine sets of whiskers, it was of course a subject near to our hearts, and thankfully there were no young beauties to take away our thunder this time. (It would be rather hard to imagine this of course, but one never knows these days!)

The entire convention was enjoyable in the extreme. I engaged in lots of talking to folks whom I either knew well, new a little, or had just met there and then. One gentleman in particular (from Virginia of all places) and I struck up a particular friendship, which was rather as though we had known one another for most of our lives, though we hadn’t ever set eyes upon one another before. Most interesting! Having drinks with the Guest of Honour Tim Powers and his lovely wife Serena was quite nice too. A most enjoyable evening was had by all, I do believe.

One of the things which struck me strongly about the event was that everyone tried very hard (or just about everyone, close enough to it that the very few who didn’t were completely hidden by the masses of people who cared) to capture the spirit of the Victorian age. Not that everyone actually achieved a good Victorian look, and I wouldn’t go about such an event being a thread-counter, but the spirit was definitely in place. Everyone was obviously having a grand time, and were doing their best to look at least ominally “Victorian.” A lot more so than at many of the reenactments I’ve attended, where you are pretty much required to make a good attempt at period clothing! So a tip of the topper to all of those who attended in “proper” Victorian clothing, whether it be in top hat and tails, or in khaki with a pith-helmet and goggles. It worked, and looked good.

Next year’s SteamCon is already in the works, and the good news is that its topic will be “Weird, Weird West”. I think I have a good handle on already. Even better is that I’ve already been invited to speak again, so I’m already very much looking forward to it!

Cheers!

Gordon

More Cowboy Mounted Shooting

2009-08-09T20:38:00.000-07:00

Last time I spoke at length about my attendance of a clinic for the sport of Cowboy Mounted Action Shooting. Well, I attended another one yesterday, on a different horse. Since my old War Horse Woody just doesn't like the whole idea of shooting off of his back, I decided to try out my little Quarterhorse Gryphon this time. He's kind of a scaredy-cat about a lot of things, but in our practices he didn't seem to much mind us popping off percussion caps around him, so I thought I'd give him a try. I was very, very pleasantly surprised to discover that he is a GREAT little horse for shooting off of! After the first few shots he didn't even twitch an ear when I fired, and did the course flawlessly at all gaits. I'm impressed with the little guy! I guess I've got myself a good shootin' partner now!

But this blog isn't to discuss the merits of horses exactly, but rather to ponder the imponderables of how and why people do the things they do in the pursuit of, or guise of, Historical Reenactment. It is also to vent my spleen with regards to people who seem to have absolutely no idea as to what they're doing, too, so read on, gentle reader, for my rant.

I guess I have to say that first off, I have an odd proprietary feeling towards the sport of Mounted Cowboy Action Shooting, since I was witness to the official debut at the Cowboy Action Shoot "Winter Range" in Arizona in 1992. I thought it was a hoot and a half, watching three guys (one of whom I had worked with previously, and had just sort of showed up for the heck of it to the shoot, only to get dragged into the match because he had his horse with him. Lucky him!) take part in a very exciting display of shooting from horseback. Of course it was with blanks, and shooting at balloons, but it was set in the "Old West Town" stage of the range, and looked incredibly cool to the onlooker. For a bit more of the history of the sport, check out this article by founder Jim Rogers. Anyway, I thought it was very cool, but as I didn't have a horse at the time, figured that it was beyond my resources to get involved. Time passes...

So 17 years later, lots of films and many horses later I finally decide to try it again, just for the heck of it. The sport has changed from it's humble beginnings, with Jim Rogers insisting upon at least a nod to the historical Cowboy in one's dress and whatnot. From what I can tell on Youtube, it's all about speed, very little about horsemanship, and hardly anything at all about history. As I had long thought, it's simply "Barrel Racing with Guns." Sad. But there is hope out there, so who knows where it will lead.

One of the things that I have noticed about all forms of Cowboy Action Shooting, be they mounted on horses using blanks, or standing at a shooting range using live ammo, is that most folks haven't the faintest idea of what a real old-time Cowboy or 19th Century Westerner looked like. There are some wild flights of fancy, but for the most part I think that people are just lazy and don't bother looking at original photo's to even see what the people they think they're portraying looked like. Or if they have, they've made no attempt to modify their outfits to show that they have. So sad! The whole "Cowboy Era" is one of the most engaging mythologies of North America, and to serve it so poorly by not even giving it's reality a nod is a huge disservice to the men and women who worked, lived and often died in the West in that time. I will admit freely that the participants of the standard Cowboy Action Shooting come a lot closer to a true "historical look" than the Mounted Action Shooters do (that I have seen), but it's sort of like damning by faint praise to say it. I'm sure that it's often as not a case of ignorance, and these folks actually think that they're making a serious attempt to look proper and carry the proper arms and leather, but many times it's just that they don't care. They want to win, and that's what it's all about. And THAT attitude is what is REALLY sad!

By the way, I would like to point out that I not only have nothing against the folks who chose to portray "B" Movie Western characters, but I think that it's great! Guys portraying The Lone Ranger, Hoppalong Cassidy, or even pure fantasy characters who are of the "type" are cool as all get-out, and I laud them for their time and effort that they put into it. After all, it takes time, research and money to come up with a cool alias such as that, and that's what I'm all about. Slightly different focus of course, but I can appreciate where they are coming from.

While I'm ranting, I will veer off into some related issues. There was one gentleman who showed up to the clinic yesterday with a gorgeous mare who was obviously more horse than he was able to handle, and who even more obviously didn't want to be there or be involved in this sport. She jumped every time a blank was fired, and absolutely, positively refused to "run the course", even when virtually forced into it. She just wasn't having any of it. That was fine. What wasn't was the fellow's insistence that she BE a shootin' horse, no matter what. I understand that it's poor form to let the horse win, but by the same token, pushing them past their limit is guaranteed to put you well back in your training, and you'll have to work back up to it to get to the same place you already were before you got stubborn and stupid. Gryphon hates jousting, so he doesn't have to do it, Woody loves it so he gets to. Woody hates action shooting, so he doesn't have to do it. Gryphon seems to love it, so he gets to. There are some things that we're good at, some things not. Horses are no different, so why try to force a square peg into a round hole? Damage to both horse and rider may result in such attempts!

So here's my conclusion, or at least my plea. That people who wish to take part in a form of Historical Reenactment of some sort at least tip their hats to the originals that they claim to represent, and that they treat their horses the way they themselves would like to be treated. It's not all that hard, folks.

Okay, rant mode off until my next rant.

Cheers!

Gordon

Cowboy Mounted Action Shooting

2009-06-10T22:13:00.000-07:00

Did something interesting weekend before last. We went to a Cowboy Mounted Action Shoot clinic in Silverdale put on by the Kitsap County Mounted Sheriff's Posse. It was amusing. Bev, Neb and I showed up in our 19th Century kit (Bev and I in Mex-Tex outfits, Neb in her "Explorer" suit complete with pith helmet, taking photo's). We brought Woody and Darshan, who is fresh from his long stay in Madera, CA. at a trainer learning how to be a Spanish horse. And of course, I brought some guns!

The clinic was set up so that anyone with a horse could show up and participate, which was nice. The folks of the Sheriff's Posse putting it on brought sufficient revolvers and plenty of blank ammunition (part of the rules are that they always supply the blank ammo, which ensures that no idiots load live rounds into their pistols and blast balloos with lead, sending errant bullets in the the audience at the same time), so that they could (and did) loan out pistols to all who needed them. I think I was the only one who used my own stuff completely.

Just for the record, I brought my Colt Single Action Army "Cavalry Model", made in 1885 with the 7½" barrel and my Colt Single Action Army "Artillery Model" made in 1880 with the 5½" barrel (it's a cut-down Cavalry Model, a modification from the turn-of-the-century). I also brought my 1917 Colt SAA with full engraving, silver plating and ivory grips for Bev to use, but she opted to fire the issued Ruger's instead of getting my "Barbecue Gun" dirty with the blanks. Nice of her!)

They started the program out by desensitizing the horses, which was a wise and intelligent thing to do. We rode in a "herd" around the arena, and as the horses got used to it one of the fellows stood in the middle of the arena and fired off some blanks. As they got used to that, they passed out pistols to various folks in the herd, and they (safely) fired off the blanks towards the center of the arena. Eventually everyone fired off at least five rounds from their horse while their horse was in the relative safety of the "herd".

The final part of the clinic was everyone "running a course", which consisted of 10 balloons on poles, which you ride by and blast with the blank. Since the black powder blanks will shoot burning grains of powder for up to 20 feet, it's not as though you really have to aim, or be particularly close to the balloons to hit them. Most folks took it at a walk or a trot, though since the events are timed eventually most folks take the course at a full gallop. Bev and I did it at a nice trot, keeping the horses well in hand.

In reality it's more barrel racing than shooting, but heck, it combines guns and horses, which are the two things I live for, so it's hard to resist. If nothing else, it's excellent experience for the horses, making them put up with shooting from their backs. I think Darshan was more concerned about the popping balloons than he was the shots fired!

Cheers!

Gordon

Charge of the Light Brigade

2009-04-12T21:29:00.000-07:00

I just finished watching the 1968 film production "Charge of the Light Brigade", directed by Tony Richardson. Beautifully filmed, it's a very odd movie, and of course with it's strongly anti-war sentiment it's bloody and shows battle to be ugly business. Unfortunately it's also very disjointed and quite hard to follow. I actually know what is supposed to happen and when, but even then it's hard to figure out just who is who and doing what and why. Small wonder then that the critics, who Richardson had blasted as "intellectual eunuchs", panned the film. But the worst of the travesties committed by Richardson in this film was that he insisted, for "creative purposes", to fly in the face of all of his advisers and put ALL of the British Light Cavalry, not just the 11th Hussars, in "Cherry Pickers" or "Cherry Bums" trousers. The 11th Hussars were the only regiment in the British Army with crimson trousers (everyone else wore blue), and thus really stood out in a crowd. But for whatever "creative" reason Richardson had, he insisted that ALL of the British Light Cavalry be so attired. Didn't make the members of any of the other regiments who had supported the making of the film very happy, either. Oh well. Interesting film to watch, even though it's often painful at times to endure.

The reason for my watching it is that I just picked up a new book on the subject, entitled "Into the Valley of Death: The Cavalry Division at Balaklava 1854" by none other than John Mollo (with his brother Boris), the gentlemen who had done so much of the research on the uniforms worn by the British forces at the time. So the research did at least result in a fascinating book, well illustrated not only with original paintings and photographs but also modern interpretations of the uniforms as well. Of note are the many sketches drawn on the spot by the French General Vanson, now housed in the musée de l'armée in Paris. Those sketches themselves are worth the price of the book, actually.

At any rate, John Mollo does rant a bit about Tony Richardson's handling of things in his forward, which definitely made me want to watch the film. Alas, though beautiful, it is disappointing in the end. Too bad, it had huge potential.

On the other hand, it has enthused me further to complete my own studies on the dress and accoutrements of British Hussars of the period. So on I go, delving further and further into the quicksand of research, from which hopefully I shall emerge eventually not only unscathed but fully dressed, armed and accoutred as a Serjeant of the 15th (King's) Light Dragoons (Hussars) in a few month's time!

Cheers!

Gordon

Cavalry, Dragoons and Light Dragoons Pt. II

2009-03-23T20:39:00.000-07:00

To continue with our discussion of below...

Okay, now move forward 20 years, with the formation of the new Regiment of Dragoons for the US Army (under legislation submitted by none other than Richard Mentor Johnson, Representative for Kentucky). Although they were officially always referred to as "Dragoons", there is a constant unofficial reference to them as "Light Dragoons", and this is also to be seen in their uniforms, arms and accoutrements. The dress uniform of the US Dragoons was almost a line-for-line copy of the British Light Dragoons (as opposed to the "Heavies"), and in the "stable dress" of the American Dragoon it was even closer a match. They even copied the saber issued to British troops, as the US Model 1833 Dragoon Saber is almost identical, with the exception of the hilt being of brass rather than of iron, to the British Pattern 1822 Light Cavalry Saber. The only real difference between the two when you get down to it is that the US Dragoons were armed with a rather revolutionary new carbine, the Hall's Breech-loading Carbine Model 1833, while the British Light Dragoons were still being issued the older flintlock pattern dating from the Napoleonic Wars. This new Hall's Patent Carbine DID have one rather interesting aspect to it (other than the rather novel breech-loading apparatus), it had a cleaning-rod/bayonet arrangement fitted to the underside of the barrel. That it was awfully spindly suggests that it was only there for emergencies, and it didn't last past 1840, so I don't suspect that it was considered either successful nor particularly useful, or perhaps even needed. But it does suggest that there was SOME attempt to make the Dragoons serviceable on foot, so they weren't completely bound to their saddles.

Another regiment of Dragoons was formed in 1836, and bound for the Seminole War in Florida at that time. They got some horses, but spent much of their time dismounted. In fact, they were dismounted as a regiment in 1842 and "converted" to a Rifle Regiment. But that didn't last long as they were remounted some two years later, and never gave up their horses after that. But in 1846, on the verge of the Mexican War, Congress actually acknowleged that there may be some use for such troops as the Volunteer Mounted Rifles being raised in the Southern states as well as Texas, and authorized the formation of the Regiment of Mounted Rifles. Sadly this regiment during the war only had two of it's companies mounted, the rest of them were, in fact, a rifle regiment. To that effect, when Winfield Scott paraded into Mexico City after it's conquest by American troops in September of 1847, he refered to them as the "Brave Rifles!", a motto which they retain to this day.

Yet again however, we discover that these "Mounted Rifles", once they were actually issued horses for their service on the rapidly expanding Frontier, found themselves reticent to relinquish them for combat on foot, just as their ancestors had done in the years and centuries previous. Time after time we find the Mounted Rifles in combat with the local indiginous population of the Plains being mounted, rather than being some sort of Mounted Infantry. It's a curse.

In 1855, Secretary of War Jefferson Davis convinced Congress to authorise two new mounted regiments to help ease the burden that had fallen on the shoulders of the three older regiments in policing the Far West. Experiments in mounting up Infantry and issuing them revolvers and rifles were only marginally successful, as they usually ended up being mounted on either broken-down ex-Dragoon horses or mules, neither of which were known for being able to catch up with Indian ponies in a pursuit. But these new regiments were to be mounted on blooded Kentucky horses and armed with the latest weapons available, and so they were. In fact the 2nd Cavalry was so doted upon by the Secretary of War that they were referred to as "Jeff Davis' Pets". Not too far from the truth, with their Colonel being Albert Sidney Johnston and the Lt. Colonel being Robert E. Lee, both to rise fairly high in fame a few years later. These were raised specifically as CAVALRY though, with no thought at all to their having to dismount at all during combat.

When the Civil War did finally roll around, Congress actually took stock of the situation as it stood and made sense of it finally: ALL of the Mounted Regiments were converted in name, as well as function, to Cavalry. The First Dragoons as senior became the 1st Cavalry, the Second Dragoons became the 2nd Cavalry, the Mounted Rifles became the 3rd Cavalry, the First Cavalry became the 4th Cavalry, and the Second Cavalry became the 5th Cavalry. Congress, in a fit of generosity also provided for a 6th Regiment of Cavalry. Thus after all these years, name and actual function finally came together in one place, and all of the various US Mounted Regiments were designated Cavalry, as they had acted as from the beginning.

Of course the final irony of it all is that during the course of the American Civil War, mounted troops more and more began to act as true Dragoons and less as true Cavalry as they years went by. Frontal saber charges were noted to be singularly suicidal in the face of rifle-musket fire, while the mobility and extra firepower of mounted units, especially when armed with breechloaders such as the Sharps, or better yet magazine carbines such as the Spencer came into play. So finally, the US Dragoons and Mounted Rifles become Cavalry in name as well as function...only to become morphed into true Dragoons for the first time! Amazing stuff, this...

So next time you read someone pontificating about how the US Dragoons were "trained to fight on foot as well as on horseback" remember that yes, they WERE trained on foot before they were allowed to mount their horses. ALL horse troops were trained like that, and the US wasn't the vacuum that most writers think it was. But more, remember that the US Dragoons were in fact LIGHT DRAGOONS, and fought far, far more often from the hurricane deck of their mounts than they ever did on their own two feet. They were Light Dragoons, By God, not some sort of Mounted Infantry! Until the later years of the Civil War, that is...

Cheers!

Gordon

Cavalry, Dragoons and Light Dragoons

2009-03-23T12:47:00.000-07:00

While I'm on the subject of Dragoons and what not, I thought it an apt time to discuss one of my pet peeves: the complete incomprehension of most modern military writers to understand just what in the heck a "Dragoon" is.

If you crack open a book or a web-page on cavalry (especially American cavalry) you will soon discover the term "Dragoon", and of course the author will make an attempt to define this rather unusual term for the reader. Usually they take it straight out of a dictionary, without ever bothering to check to see if the definition they've chosen to spout is in fact the proper definition for the era which they are writing about. What doesn't seem to be a commonly understood phenomenon is that terms change in their definitions over the years, and while they may mean one thing in one century, often as not mean something quite different in another. Thus the massive confusion.

In the early 17th Century, a "Dragoon" was the proper definition of Mounted Infantry. They were armed as Infantry, with an arquebus/caliver/musket and infantry accoutrements (such as a bandolier of chargers, etc.), were organized as Infantry with corporals, sergeants and ensigns, and acted like Infantry in the field. The only thing they did with horses was to ride to the battlfield and then dismount to carry on their activities. Dismounting one's Harquebusiers/arquebusiers á cheval was certainly commonly done, and the archers of the Kings of England were often mounted on nags for their Chevaucheé's, but as for orgainising mounted infantry on a large scale, the tip of the hat must go to the Admiral Gaspard de Coligny in the French Wars of Religion. He wanted to give some serious infantry firepower to his Cavalry-heavy armies as well as do something useful with his otherwise surplus numbers of Shotte. His successor in the Protestant Cause, Henri de Navarre, later Henri IV of France, followed this lead with his "Equestrian Army" (see the article "All the King's Horsemen" by my old friend Ron Love in the 16th Century Journal, 1992.) By 1600 this was well established, and as such was much discussed by military writers such as Sir Roger Williams, Johan Joachim von Walhausen and John Cruso. In the 30-Years War and the English Civil War they were an important part of any army in the field, both for scouting and skirmishing, but at times also taking part in Cavalry actions.

This seems to be a standard process, in that Mounted Infantry has a strong tendency to try to "improve their status" by doing less and less Infantry, and more and more Mounted as the years go by. There is a distinct disinclination to dismount and fight on foot, at least until another war comes along and the need is appreciated by all and sundry. Then, often as not, yet another new corps of "Mounted Infantry" is raised, and the old Mounted Infantry (by whatever name) gets to be Cavalry.

By the beginning of the 18th Century this trend was pretty obvious, and many of the European powers (such as Russia) had completely disbanded their "Horse" (i.e. "real" Cavalry) and converted all to Dragoons. The English followed suit in the early years of George 1st, interestingly enough because Dragoons cost less to operate than Horse. Thus, with the exceptions of the Household Cavalry, all British mounted units were now Dragoons, Dragoon Guards, etc. With the change in status, there was also a minor change in organization. Here to fore, Cavalry NEVER had a rank known as Sergeant. They had Corporals, and not many of them. Cavalrymen were the elite, and were understood to not need as much babysitting as Infantry were, thus the lack of need for such a rank. Besides, Sergeants were originally there to impose order in the ranks, and not simply discipline. Order as in, Ranks and Files. So along with the new lower status, Cavalry now received a new rank, Sergeant. (You can tell a "Real" Horse unit in the British Army, as they have Corporal, Staff Corporal, Quartermaster Corporal, and even Company and Regimental Corporal-Major, all of which rank with [or above, since they're Household Cavalry] the Line NCO's.) If you hear of a Sergeant of Cavalry, well, he isn't REAL Cavalry, but from a one-time Dragoon regiment.

Since only the ranks, pay scales and names had changed (though the poor Dragoons were now encombered with rather long muskets to use for carbines as well, though otherwise they were equipped as Heavy Cavalry), there was a perceived need for, guess what, someone who would actually perform scouting and screening duties. Thus by the 1750's the Light Dragoons were invented, the first in British service being the 15th (King's) Light Dragoons. They were followed shortly by the 16th and 17th, and some of the earlier Dragoon regiments were later converted as well. On the Continent, the same need was felt, but rather than coverting Dragoons they formed new regiments based upon the rather flamboyant irregular troops employed by the Austrians in the form of the Hungarian Hussars. The duties were the same, the names and uniforms were, however, different. These Light Dragoons performed yeoman service in the American War/American Revolution, and were of course copied by the American forces in the form of such units on the Patriot side as the 1st-4th Light Dragoons, and on the Loyalist side by the British Legion Light Dragoons. They were armed with light carbines, swords and pistols, just like the "real" Cavalry of the English Civil War, sans some armour. But they were termed now "Light Dragoons".

By the Napoleonic Wars, the Hussar rage was riding quite high, and several of the British Light Dragoon regiments managed to, by one means or another, get themselves renamed "Hussars". Some (like the afore-mentioned 15th) were still Light Dragoons, but added Hussars to their name, as in "15th (King's) Light Dragoons (Hussars)". When the War of 1812 erupted between the US and Britain, the US was, of course, sans any Cavalry of any meaningful kind, and had to raise most of them from scratch. They fell back upon the older scheme of Light Dragoons, but for Volunteers, often as not the horsemen were rather termed "Mounted Rifles", as they were expected to do exactly what Dragoons had originally been formed to do: ride into battle, dismount and then fight on foot, in this case as Light Infantry/Rifles. One such unit, Richard Mentor Johnson's Kentucky Regiment of Mounted Rifles did a stellar job as such. However at the Battle of the Thames in 1813, one squadron of the Kentucky Mounted Rifles under Johnson's brother James did the standard switch: they remained mounted, and performed a charge against the 41st Foot and scattered them. The most interesting part of this was that tactically it was brilliant, as the 41st Foot was expecting them to dismount since they had no sabers, and was thus arrayed in skirmish order. James Johnson on the other hand ordered his men to "Draw Tomahawks" and charged them with tomahawks in hand, riding over them and smashing them, winning the battle.

More Later...

Cavalry, Dragoons and Hussars

2009-03-22T13:12:00.000-07:00

Been WAY too long since I last posted. Sorry to all who check this blog occasionally, if anyone ever will again! Sorry about that...

Anyway, last November we hosted a nice little "Civil War Cavalry Camp" here at Tilbury, mostly to accommodate a couple of friends who want to get back into it. Of course they didn't show, but my other friends who usually do Mediaeval and Renaissance equestrian activities did. And what was most astonishing, they showed up in Civil War uniforms, no less! Bully for them, I was impressed with their industry in doing so. Also friend Stewart who generally does British Engineers came over as well, dressed to the nines in his Victorian "undress" officer's kit. Very nice!

Since then I've been delving back into my studies of the American Civil War and most especially the years leading up to that conflict, mostly in the West. I got into contact with a gentleman who runs the living history program at Ft. Steilacoom, near Tacoma, and thus I've thrown myself headlong into a study of the various Indian-European conflicts in Washington state. And of course even though Ft. Steilacoom was entirely garrisoned by Artillery and Infantry troops, I HAVE to do a Dragoon impression. I even found that there was an ill Dragoon in the fort infirmary during the inspection of 1853, so I think I'm safe in portraying a transient courier from Ft. Vancouver. So here I am portraying a Dragoon from the 1st United States Regiment of Dragoons, ca. early 1850's.

Of course, throwing myself headlong into the 19th Century like this wouldn't be complete without my branching out a bit too. So the afore-mentioned Stewart has somehow maneuvered me into getting rather interested in his own group to study, the Royal Engineers Columbia Detachment. The "big event" to date for the RECD fellows is presently the Pig War event on San Juan Island in July. This year is the Big Year, the 150th Anniversary of the militarization of SJI by the forces of the United States and Great Britain over who owned the San Juan/Orcas islands. The treaty of 1846 merely stated that the boundary between the US and British Columbia was to be along the 49th Parallel, and then through the shipping channel between the mainland and Vancouver Island. The question of course was "which one?" Several channels there, and of course each country chose the channel that best suited it's interests. Things came to a head over the shooting of a Hudson's Bay Company pig by an American settler, thus "The Pig War".

Now, before you start thinking that I've gone stark, raving mad in that I'm actually pondering the idea of picking up a spade and portraying my Irish roots with a will, forget it. As it turns out, the Royal Engineers Columbia Detachment, under Colonel Moody, was supplied with not only Engineering troops ("Sappers"), but also two men from the Royal Artillery, and interestingly enough two Non-commissioned Officers from the 15th (King's) Light Dragoons (Hussars)! Col. Moody thought it might be necessary to organize and train loyal subjects of the Queen as militia cavalry to combat the American Juggernaught, thus the two Cavalry NCO's. Never mind that British Columbia is hardly what one might consider "cavalry country", but still, there they were. And there it is, then! So now I can with a clear conscience portray a Hussar in the wilds of the Oregon Country! Amazing stuff, what?

So now off into the wild and woolly world of researching into the details of just what on earth these fellows may have worn to British Columbia. Would they look like they just got off the boat from the Crimea two years before? Or would they have fully adopted the new clothing and equipments of the regulations published in 1856, just two years prior to their sailing? Ah, the joys of research! It ought to be rather interesting, and it should fill my time rather nicely, I shall presume. Wish me luck!

Gordon

Playin' Cowboys

2008-10-13T12:25:00.001-07:00

Yesterday, for a change, I decided to do something rather different. I've been pretty well planted in the 16th Century for the past few years (something that has interested me for many, many years though, I just haven't always indulged myself in it always), but after watching "Appaloosa" (below) I decided it was time to pull out the old Western gear and do some playing with that. I haven't managed to indulge myself in THAT passion for several years, so it was about time. I still have most of my kit of course, so it's not as though I need to go out and buy or make anything. Just dust it off, oil it up and put it on.

I doubt that I'll get TOO excited about it, though I may wander over to the local Cowboy Action Shoot at the end of the month, and "one of these days" (when our schedules coincide) I'll take the class in Mounted Cowboy Action Shooting that the local Sheriff's Posse puts on. So far it's always been when I have other things scheduled (like last weekend, when we were doing the North Country Muster). I'll drag Bev along of course, as soon as she's able (she'll be a while, as she had surgery last week that has knocked her for a loop. Pray for her speedy recovery!), and we'll knock their socks off, I assure you. Well, at least we'll have fun.

So here are a few photo's that Neb took of Woodrow (who may just be a bit on the stout side for a cow pony...) and me having fun in the back pasture, playing "Cowboys". It would probably have to be either 1860's or early 1870's, what with me packing my cap-and-ball revolvers and a Henry Rifle. Someday we'll do a photo shoot with later-period stuff just to counter-balance things, but this will do for now. BTW, the saddle was made by my compadre RJ Preston of Fay, Oklahoma. It's an interpretation of the Thornton Grimsley Dragoon saddle of 1833. Close enough, it certainly works for a pretty long period of Westward adventures!

Cheers!

Gordon

North Country Muster

2008-10-13T09:12:00.001-07:00

We managed to survive our "School of the Renaissance Soldier: North Country Muster" on the first weekend of October. Unfortunately it also happened to be the first weekend of Autumn/Winter and rained pretty much throughout the weekend. Ah, authentic Northern European Weather to go with our event! Luckily it wasn't too cold, just very, very wet.

We didn't manage to attract huge numbers of new folks, but we did attract a few new recruits and bring back a few others, so we count this as a success. I believe we managed to muster somewhere in the neighborhood of 35 hardy individuals, willing to brave the elements in order to enjoy Life in the Sixteenth Century. Good thing we had lots of wool to wear.

For my own part, I was pretty pleased with the results. We mustered a total of 8 horse, of whom 6 were able to do all of the crazy Cavalry things that I love to inflict upon people (and horses). Not only did we get to practice our various drills such as wheels, column-to-line, etc., but we also for the first time under my command practiced "Dismounted" tactics. Meaning that we had four of the Horse armed with firearms who dismounted, handed the lead to their designated horse-holder, and went forth on foot to distract and annoy the Foote with our fire. Most enjoyable, especially as the Shotte (the musketeers) had just fired off their last charges, and were ready to head back to camp for more ammunition. Happy were we when we made this discovery! I wondered why they weren't shooting back...

Did I mention that it was wet? Most of the Horse (and the horses) were intelligent enough to billet in the barn. Your Rittmeister of Horse however was stubbornly insistent upon setting up canvas and living well... and damp. Setting up in the rain, taking down in the rain, then getting the wonderful chore of drying out LOTS of canvas in our garage. Thankfully we have a huge garage, and lots of poles to drape things from, as I believe we ended up with most of the tent-roofs to dry out. But dry they did, and all are now safely put away, with not a spot of mildew on them.

As always we ate well, thanks to our Victualer Cindy Madsen. Greater thanks cannot be transmitted, as a full belly makes the worst conditions tolerable. And the conditions weren't all that bad, so the wonderful (and plentiful) food made it all that much more fun. I think I always gain weight on these outings, even though I labour from dawn to dusk. Strange.

So as always, we had a wonderful (of soggy) time, the horses (as always) took a day to get used to the idea of what we were doing, and started to really click just about as it was time to pack up and leave. Alas. One of these days we'll figure out that we need THREE days of such training to get the horses' heads into the proper frame of mind. Next time.

Speaking of which, next time should be in April, at the Actions of the Lowe Countries in Sacramento. Just enough time to get everything cleaned up, dried out, and rust free. Maybe a few more recruits crazy enough to join us in our wild adventures, too.

Cheers!

Gordon

Appaloosa (The Movie, Not The Horse)

2008-10-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

I usually don’t use the term “Superb” to describe movies, since I generally much prefer to work on them than watch them, but I have to say that Appaloosa, starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen, is just that: Superb. My wife and I just got back from watching it this afternoon, and I was totally blown away by not only the skill of the director, cinematographer and the stars, but also the props, hair & makeup and costume people as well. Usually it’s in the Hair & Makeup department that things go south in period pieces, but they actually did a great job on this one. Even when background people may be just right, the Stars are usually seen in some horrid contemporary hair fashion that may look right to the modern viewer, but clashes with the period being done, and in 20 years will look downright silly. Not this time: it looks good.

Likewise the clothing. Even Renee Zellweger’s clothing is spot-on, down to the underwear (yeah, you get to see some of that, too). The men’s clothing is great, what with vests and ties everywhere. The boots were good two-piece boots of the period, and the spurs were the fine “California” rowel spurs of the day, not the clunky “Western Spurs” that are worn now-a-days. And the HATS! My God, they are GREAT! All sorts of hats of the period, but best of all is Viggo Mortensen’s hat, it is GREAT! I’m officially jealous of THAT hat.

Props did a fine job with the gunbelts, saddles, you name it, and the Armourer outdid himself. From Viggo’s 8-gauge double shotgun (them things are BIG, and his was indeed a bloody big shotgun!) to the fact that his carbine (1866 Winchester) and his pistol (1872 Colt “Open Top”) fire the same ammunition (.44 Henry Flat), thus making them very serviceable together. Ed Harris’ combination of a pair of 1873 Colt Single Action Army’s and a Winchester 1873 Short Rifle was nice too: again, they easily could be in the same caliber, since Colt brought out their SAA in .44 Winchester Center Fire (aka .44-40) in 1878, and the story takes place in 1882. Plenty of time for Harris’ character to pick those up, while Viggo Mortensen’s character would still be considered well armed. Heck, one guy even had a Spencer carbine! Little details like that make me all warm and fuzzy inside.

Other details were absolutely wonderful, for instance after one of the shoot-outs, which happens in the blink of an eye. Viggo says to Harris “That was fast”. Harris answers “Everybody could shoot!”. Most gunfights were that fast, none of this long, drawn-out Hollywood gunfight stuff, and this was true to life, at least when depicting professionals. A fair amount of lead flying, lots of blood, and not much time elapsing. Thank God Harris (the Director as well as Star, Writer and Producer) chose not to “Sam Peckinpaugh” us with morbid shots of slow-motion carnage. Fast and furious, then over.

The story itself was very well played out. Subdued, really. It’s a buddy story, with the girl who comes between them, but it’s not done the way one might expect. The two main characters of Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen) are long-time partners. They don’t talk a lot, and don’t need to either. Lots of looks, a few words, and deep understanding of how the other man works is all there for the viewer to see. It’s the way films are SUPPOSED to be done, without a lot of talking. SHOW ME, don’t talk me to death, and this is exactly what Harris does in this film. He shows, doesn’t talk.

There is a lot to be said for this movie, and I really can’t think of a single bad thing to say about it, which for me is highly unusual to say the least. But I think that the very best thing I can say is that in the very last scene, with Everett standing in his “Shootist” stance, he looks straight out of Frederick Remington’s paintings, and is absolutely perfect in stance, clothing, weaponry, hair, you name it. On this, higher praise I cannot possibly give. He looked “Right”.

Gordon

Mourning Taxi

2008-09-21T11:52:00.001-07:00

My beloved old Warhorse, Taxi (AKA "Taximeter Cabriolet" and "Big Yellow Taxi") passed away in the early hours of September 14. He was somewhere in the neighborhood of 37 years old.

Many people will remember Taxi as a horse that anyone could ride, and who could qualify a Resusci-Annie as an expert horseman. He made a LOT of people think that they knew how to ride, in fact. He certainly taught me a lot about horses, riding, and life in general.

Taxi had at least four careers in his long lifetime. First and foremost he was a Hunter-Jumper. Not only did the previous owner inform me of this, Taxi informed me of this fact by taking me over a number of jumps, several of which I was not informed of in advance. And he could jump pretty high for his age (his mid-20's then), as a 4' jump was no problem at all for him.

His second career was as a movie star. I bought him, in fact, specifically to use for the Kevin Costner film "The Postman". He was the wrong colour, being a Buckskin/Dun and the job required a black horse, so we worked on that. I knew he was going to be a great horse when he didn't object to being dyed black. 18 bottles of Revlon, BTW, to dye a good-sized horse. He kept looking around behind him wondering where "that black horse" came from, and went to! Taxi worked on a number of films besides "The Postman" though, including "Ride with the Devil" (with Toby McGuire), and Mel Gibson's "The Patriot". In all of them Taxi's willing heart and steady personality shone through. I think Taxi's last production was working on the History Channel show "The Conquerors", in which my friend Henrik Olsgaard portrayed William of Normandy. Taxi of course portrayed his Trusty Warhorse, and did a wonderful job in that role, as always. I have no idea how many guys tried to buy him from me over the years, but I wasn't about to sell him, ever. He was my buddy forever, that one.

Taxi's third career was as a Cavalry horse for reenactments. He had learned his trade doing Cavalry in films, so it was easy for him to do. Just not so many horses around, and a bit more gunfire. Not much though. And while we were at it, we did some "train robbing" too. He didn't mind the size of the locomotives, the crowds, or the gunfire. The hiss of the steam wasn't exactly his thing though, and he tended to give the steam clouds a wide birth when possible.

His fourth career was as a jousting horse. He didn't do a lot of it himself, but he trained a lot of other horses, and people, how to do it. He could hit his mark, and run a straight line whenever called upon. All the other horses we've trained for this took a lot of time, Taxi just did it naturally.

He had a good retirement, too. Even after we decided that he was too feeble to really put anyone on board him anymore, he still wanted to come out and play with the other horses when we would drill. He would just pair up with one of his buddy horses, and form up with the rest of the horses for the drill. He knew it down pat, and once he knew what the specific maneuver was, he'd do it as well as the rest of the horses (the one's with people on board). The best was when we did a "Left On Into Line" move. In it, the first horse(s) in a column turn to the left and halt. The next horse(s) pass the first ones, turn left, and halt, and so on and so forth. Taxi was taking up the rear, and simply followed on, and parked on the right exactly where he was supposed to. No rider. I was so proud of him for that!

Over the years Taxi also was the "go-to" horse for my daughter Alexandra and my wife Neb. He taught them a lot, too. But even after I had pretty much replaced Taxi as my primary horse (I didn't want to wear him out by riding him hard, so while on "The Patriot" I bought Twister to take his place. After Twister didn't work out, I bought Woody, who is still my Warhorse), Taxi was always first in my affections. He may have become the "spare" horse, but rather than, as in most cases, the "spare" being the problem horse, Taxi was the easy horse to ride. And he loved doing things for people, teaching them how to use their aids, and being a generally wonderful "lesson horse", as it were. He excelled at that, as with all things.

But his heart finally gave out. He had suffered from congestive heart failure for a few years, thus his retirement, but was otherwise healthy. But over the past few weeks he had begun to lose weight, and wasn't as spry as he usually was. I got into the habit of every morning when I went down to the barn to feed the horses of kissing him oh his forehead, and letting him nuzzle me back. The last time was Friday morning, as I had to fly to Reno to attend my nephew's wedding just south of there. So it was my fate to not be there when he passed away, but he was with good friends and family, people who loved him. They saw him off gently.

Thanks for letting me pour this out, I know that many people would want to know of Taxi's passing. Raise a glass in his honour, to wish him quick passage and godspeed to the green pastures of Fiddler’s Green, where all good horses go.

I'll have more to post, I'm writing up a proper eulogy for the old soul now, but this will do for the moment. I just need to get something up for him now, while the pain is fresh.

Gordon

Weekend in Arcadia

2008-08-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

The other weekend, I got together with friends from Goode’s Company/ Ravenrook/ Academia della Spada for a bit of fun camping and campaigning near Port Townsend, WA. Friend Nathan Barnett (the “Cpt. Goode” of Goode’s Co.) decided that since our local Renaissance Faire wasn’t happening this year (for various and sundry reasons), and we wanted to get folks kick-started for our School of the Renaissance Soldier in October, that it would be a grand idea to hold a little “prep” event in the mean time, thus “Arcadia” was born.

The site we used was quite beautiful, with woods and a large hayfield to drill on. Or so we thought. Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to use the horses on the hayfield, as the actual owners of the site (as opposed to the folks who were long-term renters of the site, whom we were going through for the land use) declared that the horses were going to ruin the crop of hay. I call balderdash, but not my fight, so I stayed out of it, but in a way it turned out very well in the long run.

Among the participants in the event were a number of folks who were total virgins to the reenactment, as opposed to “Ren Faire”, scene. I think that many were quite interested in the idea of actually keeping all of one’s period clothing on during the event, rather than just wearing wool and heavy layers during the heat of the day and then changing into cotton jeans and “T” shirts for the evening. Some (who I imagine didn’t show) were astonished at the concept I’m sure, but there it is. I guess the difference between Ren Faire and reenactment is that one is playing, one is portraying. I’m not sure exactly how the semantics would fall out on which is which, but there it is. One is occupied with a portrayal full time all weekend, the other is only while the paying public is in sight, and pretty much only for them.

I had concluded some time early in the planning stages that the idea of my Horse being lancers wasn’t exactly a great idea, since the maximum number I figured I could count on was three. So rather than bother with that sort of thing, I packed carbines and pistols into the truck for Bev and I to use while portraying Harquebusiers, rather than our usual “Launtiers” of the late-16^th Century. One of the advantages of this was that we didn’t have to wear armour if we didn’t feel like it, and considering the humidity of the weekend, we didn’t. So instead, it was our buff coats and felt hats, rather than steel for us! I also decided to slum by wearing my “2^nd Best Suit” and boots, rather than my nice ones. Mostly it was due to the fact that it was going to be hot, and I didn’t want to wear my hot heavy lined top boots when I had a pair of perfectly serviceable boots made out of much lighter, and unlined, leather laying about that could also be easily turned down for more comfort yet. Add my old leather jerkin and “viola!” I was a Harquebusier!

The carbines we carried were ones made by Dale Shinn of Sacramento, California. I carried the wheellock rifled carbine, Bev the little flintlock. The wheellock had an interesting history. My then-girlfriend’s sister Jeannette had taken photos of Dale and his friends at the Frazier Park Black Powder Rendezvous back in 1976 or so and given them to me shortly thereafter. Dale and company were clothed in their best 1630’s outfits, with matchlock and wheellock firearms, and it drove me absolutely wild with envy to see the pictures (I still have them around somewhere). I had already seen Dale featured in a couple of “Guns and Ammo” magazine articles by Garry James (another member of the group in the pictures: I still have those magazines around too) and was very much in love with the idea of owning my own wheellock made by Dale. A few years later, after having met, and become fast friends, with Dale, he sold me the self-same carbine he had been carrying in the photograph. Being young and dumb at the time, I allowed my friend Roy to talk me out of the carbine, as “I had a wheellock and he did not.” Some years later Roy in turn sold the carbine to our close friend Carl Ontis (who had tried to con me out of it during the short time I had owned it), and then more years passed, and I acquired it for myself again. And there it shall stay! It’s a nice little carbine with one of Dale’s “1630” locks on it. They weren’t all that great, but he was trying for a production piece at the time, and it was fairly easy to make in large numbers.

The carbine Bev was carrying is of much later production, but also by Dale Shinn. He made it for me to give to my wife as a present, something she was less than impressed with I’m afraid, but Bev certainly likes it! It is very light, having a light 20-gauge barrel (as opposed to the heavy .50 rifled barrel of my wheellock), and the stock is configured so as to be quite handy to shoot one-handed. It has a very early style of flintlock on it, still retaining the “belly” of the wheellock. Both are of styles common in the early decades of the 17^th Century, and both of the carbines are fitted with sling-bars and rings on the left sides, so are able to be carried by the swivel-snap on a carbine sling.

We also had my pair of Jacobean-lock pistols, plus our other wheellock pistols to boot. We were fairly well outfitted with firearms, for a change! And lucky for us, friend Rob/Raph showed up Saturday afternoon with his horses to play, so I outfitted him with a pistol, and he became our “horse-holder” for the event.

As noted above, we were ejected from the hayfield, so on Sunday of the event we had to make use of the woods instead. There were LOTS of nice trails through the woods, making for some rather interesting games. The basic plan was “we’ll see what transpires”. The pikes were tromping through the woods over trails, and we found them to be a most marvelous prey. There proved to be an old railroad levee cutting the edge of the property, which made a nifty “high road”, and we made the most of it by setting several “ambuscadoes” on it. Bev and I dismounted while Rob held the horses a few score yards up the road. Nice for the Foote to march by while we shot at them, I must say. Of course, they didn’t always notice (my pyrite wasn’t always properly contacting the wheel on my lock, thus several misfires), but we had fun dismounting, setting the ambuscado up, firing at the passing pikemen, then rushing off to mount and ride helter-skelter to the next spot. It was a hoot, and we got pretty wound up from it, but not as wound up as Bev’s horse Darshan. He REALLY got excited with the fun of running through the woods, up and over game trails, and chasing (and being chased) by the “Boggards” of the woods. When he got so excited that he started bucking, we figured it was about time for us to call it a day. Stinker. But it WAS his first real experience in doing woods work, where as my horse Woody and Gigi, Raph’s mare, were old hands at it. I guarantee that Darshan will get LOTS more experience of this nature!

We enjoyed the heck out of the “Forest Fight”, and gave me pause to consider the similarities with conflicts between “disciplined troops” and various forms of savages/irregular troops on the other hand. Setting ambushes, sneaking around and watching one’s foe come to you is exciting and interesting in a positive way, while marching into the unknown is exciting in a rather negative way. It was nice to be the irregular troops this time!

Another aspect was that we were finally doing “Light Horse” work. Usually at Elizabethan-era reenactments, when doing Horse, we portray much heavier gradations of the arm, usually in the form of Demi-Lancers, AKA cheveaux legér, who were well armoured and usually armed with a heavy lance. This time we got to be sans-armour, and with carbines rather than lances, and we dismounted to fight rather than charging into the mix. I suspect that the horses much preferred this idea, too. We definitely need to do more of this!

All photos, except the very first one, are by Byron Dazey and may not be reproduced without his permission.

Romance Writers of America: San Francisco Adventure

2008-08-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

At the end of last month I had the interesting experience of being a presenter for a portion of the “Romance Writers of America” conference, held in San Francisco. The group I actually spoke for is “Beau Monde”, which specializes in Historical Romances (thus explaining why on Earth I was invited to speak there.) At any rate, it was an adventure to be sure!

Most of the endeavor involved getting myself and my “props” (which constituted some score or more muskets, rifles, pistols and revolvers, several swords and four saddles complete with tack) from the environs of Seattle to downtown San Francisco. I certainly wasn’t about to haul all of this inventory via airline, so drive I did. Fairly long drive, but at least this time I wasn’t hauling horses cross-country, as I usually seem to find myself doing. I spent the night before the event at friend Nick’s house in Berkeley, where of course we stayed up too late talking about “stuff”. Then it was off at 0-dark-thirty to beat the traffic into SF. Made it to the Marriot with no issues, and took the Valet Parking option. The joy of course was in hauling all of the aforesaid impedimenta from point “A” in the lobby to point “B” in the bowels of the hotel, without exactly knowing where point “B” was. That in itself was a further adventure, but I got there eventually.

The presentation went fine, of course, entitled something like “Firearms of the Golden Age” or some catchy phrase like that which my host “Kalen Hughes” came up with. The room to which I was assigned was fairly small and packed full of rather attractive and better yet very attentive ladies. I can’t say that I was at all ill-disposed towards the situation. However, due to the exertions of getting everything set up, plus the poor air-conditioning (it was SF after all, they’re not used to heat) and that the room was full of bodies, I was sweating like a horse. I hope it didn’t show too much.

What I found most amusing was that, while I had gone well out of my way to ensure that I brought the coolest, most interesting and famous of the firearms I own to show off to these ladies, the one thing they were most interested in was of course the one that was the last minute “what the heck, I’ll throw it in” one. I should have known, of course. So among my wheellock horse-pistols, matchlock and flintlock muskets, Henry and Springfield rifles, Colt’s revolvers and the like, what were they interested in? The tiny little flintlock “Turn Off” pistol. Again, I should have known. It was made at some point during the Regency period or there-about, and they were quite popular not only as a pocket pistol but as a “muff gun”, to be secreted in the fur muff that was so fashionable in the period. In a day and age where casual violence was in fact much greater than it is today (contrary to modern mythology), carrying a small, handy “equalizer” was a smart thing to do. And, obviously, my audience somewhat appreciated that fact, thus their interest. I found it quite agreeable to have been fortunate enough to hit upon “just the right thing” for their interest, even if it was completely by accident.

My other presentation, later in the day, was as a member of a panel of speakers on the subject of historical horsemanship. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I can’t recall the names of all of my other co-panelists (I recall that one is a Veterinarian who is also a historical romance writer), but the lady who pretty much lead the discussion was a fine lady by the pen name of Sophia Nash. All of my co-panelists were quite knowledgeable on horses and especially on women’s roles with horses in various periods of history. I brought the hardware (saddles and tack) and discussed military horsemanship through during the past 400 or so years (briefly, as that’s a long time period to cover). Of course we went longer than the time allotted to the session, which was fine by me, as it gave me more license to pontificate, but alas, it eventually came to an end. I must admit that I enjoyed the lime-light, even with the stresses of getting things set up, torn down, and packed away again.

After the end of THAT part of the conference, and after having to haul my stuff over hill and dale (well, actually just up and down various floors: that place is huge!) my eldest daughter Elizabeth arrived on the scene. She’s presently working at an internship in the City during the summer while awaiting the start of her last year of law school at Golden Gate University. It was great to see her, and get a chance to wander around the hotel a bit to see what other things were going on with regards to the conference. There were LOTS of women there! As my old friend Steve Moffatt (who was there to give a presentation on armour) stated: “Man, this place is full of women! YIKES!”

Another nice thing was seeing many old friends from the Renaissance Military Society, from when we used to be a part of St. Michael’s Guild at the old Northern Renaissance Faire. Kalen, who was running the “Beau Monde” show, was an old hand from the RMS and had arranged it all, so it was old home week. Even Eyore Danny stayed to socialize! I was astonished…and pleased, to be sure.

I ended up going in to the Ball Room for the big “Signing” session. When I walked in, the sound resembled high-caliber hail on a corrugated tin roof! Lord, but was it loud in there! The ball room wasn’t exactly designed to suppress THAT much noise, I guess. Anyway, I managed to find both Kalen and Sophia in the press, and also one of the ladies who had attended my first class, Monica McCarty, so I bought their books for my wife to enjoy. (Check out her blog here on the subject of Romance Novels.) Eventually it was time to leave, though. I conned Elizabeth into doing the driving back to her bungalow in Oakland (she’s used to SF traffic), where her husband Jeremiah had dinner waiting for us. After a nice visit, it was hit the sack, then make the loooooong drive home the next day. Thank goodness I had the next day off to try to recover!

American Eunuch

2008-07-07T23:05:00.000-07:00

This one is going to be a bit off-track here, as it’s more a musing about modern man (not woman, or human-kind, but men specifically) and our state of existence. So if this sort of rambling is of no interest, well, off you go!

I’ve been struck of late how many modern American males, especially those of the under-30 set (specifically those who indulge in the fashion of shaving their heads) look to me like enormous babies. I don’t mean that in a derogatory fashion, they don’t ACT like babies, they just look like them. Round, bald, and chubby. Then today I was having a conversation with my wife about two cats of ours, one a tomcat (a new arrival and soon to be altered), the other long since neutered. And of course the tomcat is buff, hard, and skinny while the neutered cat is, while not rotund, certainly not skinny by any manner or means. I’ve of course also noticed how stallions are hard muscled no matter how large, and have attitude pouring out of their sweat glands, while geldings are soft muscled (even if enormously strong) and much easier to deal with (thus their popularity, stallions being a pain and moreover dangerous.) At any rate, the conversation about the tomcat struck a chord, and I had an epiphany: American Males are Eunuchs.

If you think about it, and compare any modern American male today to a photograph of his grandfather in WWII without shirt on, you’ll probably notice a great and grave difference. Men of two generations ago were hard, wiry and fit. Men of today are anything but. Even men who work out regularly and are buff aren’t skinny like their ancestors were. We are descended of hard men, we have become soft, and I mean that physically, not in other ways (that would be a rant for another day, but I suspect it’s already been done to death). Besides having a very sedentary lifestyle, what has happened?

I guess I could blame TV for one, since most men find it much easier to flop in front of a TV with a six-pack of horrid swill called “beer” (Joke: “Why is American beer like sex in a canoe? It’s $%^ing close to water!”), with all of the alcohol and calories, but none of the taste and substance of real beer and ale. They watch professional athletes do outrageous feats of prowess that can only be dreamed of by the watcher, since by now he’s 50-100 pounds over weight and totally out of shape. He can pretend, though, and claim that the team is his own, and that his opinions (rather than his money) matter. In the end, TV and professional sports are only a part of the issue, and are probably more a symptom rather than the disease.

Another thing I could (and will) blame is High Fructose Corn Sweetener. Nasty stuff, that; you’re far better off with sugar as it will only rot your teeth. HFCS is worse in so many ways, but one of the big evils is that it REALLY seems to be responsible for the fattening up of Americans. Drink a 32oz. soda, and you get enough calories to sink a battleship. I know some fellows who do that every day, several of them, and they wonder why they’re fat. Ugh

I could also rant about milk and all of the hormone additives that the Dairy Industry puts into them. Gee, it’s been pretty well established that the placenta isn’t a barrier, it’s a pathway for drugs, and so are the milk glands. Want to increase your intake of estrogen? Drink lots of milk, boys! That will get your “moobs” growing, and your muscles slackening! Gads…

On top of that, when was the last time you heard of a fight in school (that wasn’t an assault by members of one ethnic group against another, that is.)? Seems as though the old-time “boyhood rights of passage” like getting into a one-on-one after-school fight are strongly suppressed these days, too. Interesting how men seem to be neutered from one side by food and activities, and neutered on the other side by the Powers That Be.

So what is it? Was the result of World Wars I and II so horrific that the Illuminati decided to “do something” to reduce the combativeness of young Western men? (and that presents the next question, being “How the hell would they do that?”) Is it just a result of affluence and decadence? It certainly seems as though Suburban Males are the chief victims of this trend, since inner-city “youths” seem to have sufficient testosterone to merrily engage in plenty of warfare of their own, and rural lads seem to be still working hard enough on the farm (though that of course is an ever-shrinking minority) to stay pretty fit and engage in bar fights on their night off, while Suburban men and boys are stuck in front of the TV or computer screen pretending that they’re doing wild and wooly things.

I’m not suggesting that getting into fights is necessarily a good thing, but it does seem to be something that was engaged in a LOT in the past, and now it’s restricted pretty much to Gangsta’s killing one another over turf or being “dissed”, or the occasional bar-room brawl in a Cowboy bar in the sticks over some girl. It used to happen A LOT, be it gentlemen having a very formal duel or neighbors duking it out over the fence-line, but now any of that sort of thing in polite society gets you arrested. It’s weird how effeminate we’ve become. I suppose it’s all a part and parcel of the trend towards “metro-sexual”, where one is neither male nor female, but rather a “sexual being”. Call me old fashioned, but I don’t see how that works, myself. In any case, so be it. I’m not ranting on the politics of that presently, just on why Men are no longer Men in our society. Then again, neither are women “women” any more, which is the odd part. Women are more masculine than they were, men are more feminine than they were, and the West thinks that’s just fine. Other cultures (read “Islam”) don’t think that way at all, and is full of hard men full of fight. I hope that this quest to keep us from killing one another doesn’t result in our becoming the sheep for the Barbarian Hordes to come in and rule.

Gordon

Armour, Parades and Historical Precedent

2008-06-11T11:22:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago my joust partner and I participated in a little parade in our local town of Poulsbo, WA., along with our friends of Goode’s Company and others. Although the theme of the parade was “Viking Fest” there we were in our 16^th Century kit, probably about as close to real Vikings as there were present, sad to say. Bev and I were riding our horses and wearing our jousting armour, while wife Neb and husband Brian (my wife, her husband) were on foot handing out flyers for the local Renaissance Faire. The whole affair took us something on the order of 3-31/2 hours to complete, from the time we put on armour and mounted up to the time we were done with the whole mess and could dismount and take off the armour. The worst part of it was that it was an unseasonably hot day for this part of the World, being 85º+ in mid-May. I don’t think it’s gotten anywhere near that warm since then. A good time was had by all, but it got me to thinking and comparing.

I have worn armour fairly regularly for many years, this being probably the third or fourth suit of armour that I’ve owned in my lifetime. It’s not terribly heavy, but it is fairly complete (for the upper half at least, thus it’s really only a “Half-Suit”). The whole is made of mild steel, rather than spring steel, as Bev’s armour is. Of course her armour is a fine rendition of late-15^th Century Milanese Export armour, which was made to defend against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, but not bullets. My armour is more of the weight of late-16^th Century armours which indeed were designed to protect the wearer (at least a little bit) from bullets fired from the arquebuses and pistols in use during that day. So when we were marching in the parade, I made note of the fact that it began to really hurt my left arm and shoulder to lift it up. My right arm wasn’t so bad, but the left was definitely feeling the “pinch” of the armour weighing upon my neck and shoulders. By the time we reached our trailer to dismount, my left arm was starting to really smart, and it was painful to rein my horse. Ouch.

Which got me to pondering some of the comments made by 16^th Century writers concerning armour of the day. One of them, Francois de la Noue, pointed out that in his youth, he had known older gentlemen well into their 60’s who could wear their armour all day without fatigue, while “in these modern days” a man of 35 could hardly wear the full armour considered necessary for more than a few hours. I could relate! He further noted that in response to firearms, men “sheathed themselves in stithes” (anvils) for protection against bullets, but to little effect.

Another military writer, Sir Roger Williams, noted that while the breast and back plates, as well as the helmet and perhaps the first few lames of the tassets (the pieces below the breastplate which covers the abdomen) should be “pistol proof at the least”, the rest of the armour, be it pauldrons and vambraces (covering the shoulders and arms) or the cuisses (covering the thighs) should “be as light as possible”. Pretty much just enough to defend against a pike or a sword, but not enough to deflect a pistol ball, let alone a musket ball. But the price of wearing armour that was proof against such bullets was too high in the form of weight, as he further pointed out that a horse would have enough work carrying a man encumbered by the weight of armour he suggested for 10 hours, let alone armour sufficiently heavy to be proof all around.

At any rate, all of this got me to pondering things, and what I plan to do in the future with my armour. For now I will of course keep my heavy pauldrons and vambraces, for they are rather expensive to replace. But when I do get around to replacing things in my armour, I fully intend to go with spring steel. Not only much lighter, but stronger and less likely to dent under the forces of an oncoming lance. The down side of course is that spring is somewhat more expensive. Alas! So for now I’m sticking with my mild steel pauldrons, vambraces and gauntlets, but for the future, Spring Steel!

Cheers,

Gordon

Actions of the Lowe Countries

2008-04-14T08:46:00.000-07:00

I just (well, a week ago) returned home from my adventures in California attending the School of the Renaissance Soldier:Actions of the Lowe Countries IV, which was held at Gibson Ranch Park just outside of Sacramento. It was founded four years ago by myself and Patrick Gaul (who is the present Muster Master of the event), based upon a concept by Nick Worthington. We had participants from not only up here in Washington State, but also from Wisconsin and even one hearty fellow who flew out from Massachusetts! I had driven down hauling the horses with my squire and protege, while wife, pard and a compadre flew down. It took us two days to drive, took them about two hours to fly. Hmmm...

The School of the Renaissance Soldier was designed as a means of gathering together as many like-minded individuals and groups as possible in a single setting to practice the military arts of the 16th and early 17th Centuries, something usually not possible with the small groups generally the norm in reenacting circles. We have thus managed to muster some pretty impressive numbers of both Pike and Shotte, actually sufficient to be able to form a "Square" of Pikes with "Wings" of Shotte around them. My own endeavour in this has been to experiment with 16th and 17th Century drill and tactics with Horse, both Heavy and Light. Although we're not quite up to critical mass on numbers of Horse, never the less we've all gained experience over the years with our experiments, and had LOADS of fun with it!

We tried out two new experiments this year with Horse. First was from the beginning to separate the Light from the Heavy Horse. Since Light Horse is primarily for scouting, harassing and otherwise annoying the enemy, I felt that they should do just that. Under the skilled hand of Corporal Berg, that's exactly what they did. The Heavy Horse, under either myself or Cornette Thompson, practiced the fine art of keeping a straight, steady Line of Battle at all gaits in readying for The Charge. LOTS harder to do in practice than in theory, I might add. We also practiced various maneuvers which would bring us from Column of March to Line of Battle at various gaits. Wheel's, Into Line's, About's etc. were practiced and eventually all got the hang of it. Saturday was pretty grueling, but we survived. Sunday was great, and we combined to practiced the "Charge Foote" while Foote responded with "Charge for Horse! Present Carrots!" whereupon we took all of the horses through the infantry ranks, while the infantrymen held out carrots to their four-footed friends. It was very useful in sacking out the horses in preparation for the Tactical later in the day.

The second major experiment was to attach a unit of Dragoons to the Horse. All of the Dragoons wrangled together (under "Reformado" Nick Worthington) had been cavalrymen at earlier events, so I had no problem with the fiction of them being mounted infantry. We of course didn't have sufficient horses to allow them to ride into the field, dismount and fight on foot, but it wasn't a stretch of the imagination for us. Nick outfitted his small detachment with caliver and carabine, with a border-lance performing the duties of a half-pike. The Dragoons performed very well, and gave both the Horse something solid to rally upon after being recalled from their Charges against the Foote, and it gave the Foote something somewhat less fluid than the Horse to maneuver against. It was a very successful experiment, and I anticipate a great deal of discussion and effort being put into putting together something somewhat more permanent for the future than the rather ad-hoc formation we enjoyed. It certainly gave a great deal of credence to the opinions of Sir Roger Williams, the Admiral Coligny and J. J. von Walhausen during the period!

I'm sure that over the next few weeks I'll be discoursing at length on these various things, so stay tuned (or not, as the case may be.)

Allons!

Gordon

(photos in this entry by Neb, Patrick Gaul, Zephram Gomez, Peter Nelson and Nathan Barnett)