Boer war guns

Win/64 said:
I think the Boer War was a little bit early for the Ross.
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Yes ..... the Ross wasn't adopted by Canada until 1902, and the first Mk I Ross rifles weren't actually delivered to the Government until 1905 .....

Mind you, the Boer War experience was the reason for Canada's adoption of the Ross - despite our commitment to sending significant numbers of troops, Britain wouldn't (or couldn't) supply our needs for additional MLE rifles, with the result that rifles already issued to units in Canada had to be withdrawn from them to equip the Canadian contingents to South Africa. The Canadian Government accordingly adopted a policy that it would arm our troops with a Canadian-made rifle as soon as possible. Efforts to get a facility set up in Canada to manufacture Lee-Enfield rifles were unsuccessful, so the design of Sir Charles Ross was selected instead .....

armouredtrooper: This image may be of some interest to you .... a Boer War Trooper of Strathcona's Horse, with his Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle and, just visible behind it, his holstered Model 1878 Colt Double Action revolver ....

TrooperSH.jpg



For that matter, speaking of the Ross rifle, my Mark III Ross rifle was issued to Lord Strathcona's Horse, possibly when they were serving in the trenches an infantry role during the Great War .....

rightside02.jpg


Note the struck-out unit mark at the top of this detail ....
buttmarks02.jpg
 
I think the English were still using black powder at the time. That's why the Boer's were able to pick them off so easily.
 
No ... the propellant in the .303 cartridge was changed to smokeless (cordite) in 1891 ....

The British took a while to get the knack of fighting from cover .... which the Boers were masters at doing .... and also kept trying frontal assaults on well entrenched Boer units. They took a lot of casualties as a result. They also employed far too much foot infantry to begin with. Any time the Boers actually got seriously pressed, they just mounted and galloped away. After a while, the British began to learn a bit, with most new units being Mounted Infantry .... in fact, that is what they eventually asked Canada and the other Dominions to send, exclusively ....
 
Many of the British regulars in SA had the Lee Metford MkI*. The Canadians had the LE MkI which had been issued in Canada in 1897.
 
Yes. You are right. I stand corrected, The Ross rifle was adopted for
WW1. They were armed with the SMLE Mk1. Some of the books I have seem to be wrong, as I did further research and found this to be so.
 
GrantR said:
Yes ..... the Ross wasn't adopted by Canada until 1902, and the first Mk I Ross rifles weren't actually delivered to the Government until 1905 .....

Mind you, the Boer War experience was the reason for Canada's adoption of the Ross - despite our commitment to sending significant numbers of troops, Britain wouldn't (or couldn't) supply our needs for additional MLE rifles, with the result that rifles already issued to units in Canada had to be withdrawn from them to equip the Canadian contingents to South Africa. The Canadian Government accordingly adopted a policy that it would arm our troops with a Canadian-made rifle as soon as possible. Efforts to get a facility set up in Canada to manufacture Lee-Enfield rifles were unsuccessful, so the design of Sir Charles Ross was selected instead .....

armouredtrooper: This image may be of some interest to you .... a Boer War Trooper of Strathcona's Horse, with his Magazine Lee-Enfield rifle and, just visible behind it, his holstered Model 1878 Colt Double Action revolver ....

TrooperSH.jpg



For that matter, speaking of the Ross rifle, my Mark III Ross rifle was issued to Lord Strathcona's Horse, possibly when they were serving in the trenches an infantry role during the Great War .....

rightside02.jpg


Note the struck-out unit mark at the top of this detail ....
buttmarks02.jpg
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That's a nice example of a Ross. I'd be willing to bet that the LdSH Regimental museum would like to see that rifle.
 
armouredtrooper:

Another wee "correction", if you don't mind .... :redface: During the Boer War it was the MLE, not the SMLE .....

The "Rifle, Magazine, Lee-Enfield" (MLE) was adopted in November 1895, and was essentially the same as the MkII* Magazine Lee-Metford ("MLM" for short). The only significant difference was that the barrel had a new system of rifling developed at Royal Small Arms Factory Enfield, to replace the Metford-system rifling, which had been developed specifically to minimize fouling with the original blackpowder .303 cartridge but which had been found to erode very rapidly with the new cordite propellant adopted in 1891.

The British learned many things during the Boer War, one result being that a significantly modified rifle was adopted. Two of the primary innovations were:
a) the decision to have a single "medium-length" rifle, instead of a long infantry rifle and much shorter carbines for cavalry, etc.
b) the introduction of the "charger-loading" system, utilizing the now-familiar chargers holding five rounds, which were stripped off into the magazine using the "charger bridge". (The first MLM rifle had an eight-round magazine, while its later versions and also the MLE had ten-round magazines .... but the rounds had to be loaded into the magazine one at a time.)

It was this modified design adopted in 1903 which was the now-famous SMLE (i.e. "Rifle, Short, Magazine Lee-Enfield") .... and it didn't see any significant war service until 1914. At the outbreak of WWI, Canadian troops troops were armed with the Ross Rifle (primarily the MkIII, like the one I have.) The well-known failure of the Ross as a suitable battle rifle resulted in its withdrawal from Canadian combat troops, and replacement by the SMLE in mid-1916.

MLE (top) and SMLE (bottom) .....
MLE_MkIstar.jpg

SMLE_resized.jpg


Thank you for the kind words on my Ross (.... which the LSH Museum is welcome to see, if they wish, but can't have .... ;) ) It is actually in full original "as manufactured" condition - right down to never having had its bolt "pinned" to prevent incorrect re-assembly, such as was done by official order to most MkIII bolts!
BOLT_UNPINNED_PINNED.jpg
 
Since this thread was about "Boer War" rifles. Here's a pic of a Boer sporting Mauser in 7x57. Far superior to what the Brit's were using. http://
 
Depends on which Boer war you are talking about, The Boers did purchase a good number of Martini's in the first go round, and some British volunteer cavalry units were armed with .303 Martini carbines.
 
The rifle armament of the Transval Forces consisted of 34,000 .577-450 martini-Henry's,2850 .303 Lee Metfords,24000 95 Mausers 7X57,2000 Portuguese 8X60R,model 85 Guedes SS BP, and 100 Steyr made 6.5X55 Krag Jorgenson with 25,000 rds of ammo.In addition they aquired 2000 Martini Henry carbines and 2000 Webley revolvers.Twenty two Maxim Nordenfelt and Vickers Maxim guns in 37mm,15 cm Creusot long Toms ,6 7.5 cm Creusot field guns,4 Krupt howitzers, and 8 Krupt field guns.Combined Boer forces had 50,000,000 rds of ammo at the start of the war.Prefered rifle of boers 450 Westley Richards."God and the Mauser" was the the Boer fighting slogan."Eendrag Maak Mag" in unity there is strength...........Harold * when the British couldn't beat them on the field they resorted to the " final solution"[sound familiar?]burning farms ,killing livestock,and imprisioning woman and children in concentration camps where 28,000 died of disease.
 
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Sorry to be a boar (boer? bore?) about it, but to begin with they would have used anything they could get hold of - being an irregular force, essentially a band of farmers. So virtually any rifle that was plausible for a South African farmer c 1900 could be a Boer War weapon. Certainly, though, the Mauser became 'the' Boer rifle. Both my great grandfather, in the British Yeomanry, and a great great uncle, in the regular British cavalry, left written accounts of their experiences in the Boer War, the former an unpublished diary and the latter as co-author of his regiment's history of the war, and in both cases 'Boer' was virtually synonymous with 'Mauser' - a name that evoked respect and fear because of the Boers' phenomenal sniping ability with it.

The British fought a brutal, bloody and very long war against the Boers - almost three years - and little quarter was given on either side. The enforced removal of civilians to camps in the latter phase of the war was an attempt to remove the Boer support network and bring the war to an end. It was a callous policy and greatly opposed in Britain when the public came to learn of it, and the horrifying numbers of civilian deaths from disease and malnutrition. But in no way was this a 'final solution' - it was a repugnant policy even then, but we should be very wary of using words that elicit comparisons with the Nazi Jewish Holocaust, which was genocide.
 
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28000 I read there were hunderds of thousands of Boer Familys let starve to death in them Tent citys or Death Camps.
mainly Woman and
kids, babys and very old sick men.

I dont blame the British people for that BUT it was like them Nazis only on a smaller scale.
I wouldnt blame Germans for Hitller either.

But the British War Machine in SA back then was commiting Genocide by killing all the Boers Woman and Childern it dont get much worse than that!
No way the British can Candy coat that!
 
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There's a pretty good account of this on Wikipedia, under Second Boer War - the section on concentration camps and the British public response. I have the Pakenham and Ferguson books cited in the article, and the Wikipedia account seems reasonably balanced. Neither of these authors is an apologist for the British, but neither of them would suggest that there was a policy of genocide - it was a matter of dismal planning and incompetence. The desertion of the land by the Boer farmers, who had gone off to fight, combined with the British scorched earth policy (a desperate attempt to bring the war to an end, similar to US policy in Vietnam, for example), resulted in a vagrant rural population many of whom were starving and disease-ridden beyond hope when they were brought into the camps. The camps were meant to keep people alive but were poorly-run and bred disease, and the food provision became swamped by numbers. The mortality rate in the camps was several times more than the expected mortality rate at that time in South Africa; it was more than twice the rate of death by disease among British troops (typhoid and other disease killed thousands of British and Empire troops and exceeded deaths in action during the war). The Boer War brought out war in all its ugliness, but civilians were not massacred or exterminated in death camps.

Enough of that - there's probably a Genocide Forum somewhere for this. More relevant to this thread is the excellent photo at the top of the Wikipedia article, showing Boers with Long Lees - Lee Metfords or Lee Enfields.
 
If it happened it's relevent history.Then we won't mention the small pox infected trade blankets circulated to hostile Indian tribes either!...SSSSSSSSSH..............Harold
 
mbogo3 said:
If it happened it's relevent history.Then we won't mention the small pox infected trade blankets circulated to hostile Indian tribes either!...SSSSSSSSSH..............Harold
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At the time of the infected blankets and the disease outbreaks (late 1800s), the infected tribes were more or less peaceful and I question just how much people really understood what carried disease. Lister had only just introduced antiseptic surgery and I doubt the general population including traders had any real concept of germs as we know them today. Doctors and surgeons continued to ignore the lower death rates in hospitals with hygenic practices well into the 1800s because they just did not seem to accept that there were things like germs. The time period was only just after a common belief in blood letting to cure disease and tongue in cheek, governments still appear to believe we can benefit from being bled dry :>)
I think the idea of deliberately infected blankets probably falls in the same category as trade guns selling for a stack of hides as high as the gun (400+ hides)

cheers mooncoon
 
At the time of the infected blankets and the disease outbreaks (late 1800s), the infected tribes were more or less peaceful and I question just how much people really understood what carried disease. Lister had only just introduced antiseptic surgery and I doubt the general population including traders had any real concept of germs as we know them today. Doctors and surgeons continued to ignore the lower death rates in hospitals with hygenic practices well into the 1800s because they just did not seem to accept that there were things like germs. The time period was only just after a common belief in blood letting to cure disease and tongue in cheek, governments still appear to believe we can benefit from being bled dry :>)
I think the idea of deliberately infected blankets probably falls in the same category as trade guns selling for a stack of hides as high as the gun (400+ hides)
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Well said sir. In addition one must remember that the Native american was the primary procurer of pelts and hence wealth for the monopolies of the time and absolutley no benefit could have been gained from deliberatley killing off the work force!
 
Well they knew they could develop smallpox vaccine from cowbox pus in the 18th century, so it isn't a strech that they knew smallpox pus is infectious.


mooncoon said:
At the time of the infected blankets and the disease outbreaks (late 1800s), the infected tribes were more or less peaceful and I question just how much people really understood what carried disease. Lister had only just introduced antiseptic surgery and I doubt the general population including traders had any real concept of germs as we know them today. Doctors and surgeons continued to ignore the lower death rates in hospitals with hygenic practices well into the 1800s because they just did not seem to accept that there were things like germs. The time period was only just after a common belief in blood letting to cure disease and tongue in cheek, governments still appear to believe we can benefit from being bled dry :>)
I think the idea of deliberately infected blankets probably falls in the same category as trade guns selling for a stack of hides as high as the gun (400+ hides)

cheers mooncoon
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