The South African
Military History Society

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Die Suid-Afrikaanse Krygshistoriese Vereniging

Military History Journal
Vol 2 No 1 - June 1971

Gallant Gentlemen 1855-1865
The Cape Colony Volunteers of a Century Ago

The 1840s and early l850s were disturbed times for the Cape Colony where there were two Kaffir Wars in quick succession on the Eastern frontier. By 1854, however, it looked as though the frontier would be quiet for a time, although the newly arrived Governor of the Cape, Sir George Grey, came prepared to keep a wary eye on the area. During his time in office the peace which the Colony wanted was precarious and a number of crises arose to disturb it; the Crimean War, the Cattle Killing of the AmaXhosa, the Indian Mutiny, the Trent incident and Zulu dynastic troubles on the Natal frontier.

The Colonial defence system was hopelessly inefficient and in 1855 the Colonial Parliament tried to tighten it up by the Burgher Levies Act to put the Commando system on a better footing. The Act enunciated no new principle and was a consolidating measure with better machinery to register and mobilize the burghers who, under the prevailing law of the Colony, were all adult males, White and Coloured. By reason of this last fact, the Act was not well received in the country districts. There was bitter opposition in Malmesbury and Caledon and a riot at Stellenbosch.

Grey had only been in office for a year, but when a move was made in various towns in the Colony to form Volunteer military units which many preferred to service under the Burgher Levies Act, he was quick to encourage the movement. He had not dealt with Australians, New Zealanders and Maoris without learning a good deal about people living in a pioneering country. The Act remained on the Statute Book but was not applied to men who joined the Volunteers. Without Grey's tact and support, the Cape would have had an unworkable piece of defence legislation instead of the beginnings of what in time came to be a useful force. He encouraged the Volunteers and, on occasion, stood between these enthusiastic military amateurs and the often hostile military authorities.

This was to be rifle green with a helmet, and a black waist belt and pouch. Captain, the Honourable William Hope, Auditor General of the Colony, was elected the first commanding officer in December, and was given the rank of colonel and his second-in-command was the Chevalier Alfred du Prat, Portuguese member of the Mixed Slave Commission.

A proposal made at the same time to form a mounted troop came to nothing, but by May 1856, the Rifles had a brass band good enough to accompany them on guard mounting at Government House and by October the corps was almost fully equipped with uniforms, accoutrements and arms, all provided at no cost to the Government.

The usual procedure was for a few individuals to petition the local magistrate or civil commissioner to call a meeting of the public to consider the formation of a Volunteer corps. If sufficient support was forthcoming names were taken and a committee was elected to draw up rules and to request the Governor to accept the services of the new corps. Almost as a matter of course, the presiding magistrate or civil commissioner found himself elected to command, usually as a captain, sometimes as a major and in one or two instances as a colonel! The fact that his regiment might be no more than two dozen strong was of little importance, for the new title was carried into private life and on to the Bench, and Press and public seldom failed to give the new warrior his due.

The raising of new units in the Colony continued in 1857, the Oliphant's Hoek Volunteers in Ffebruary; the Drakenstein Cavalry in March; the Wynberg and Simon's Town Cavalry in June, the Cape Volunteer Artillery and the Cape Town Cavalry in August, a cavalry section of the Paarl Rifles in September and a Volunteer rifle corps at Middelburg in November. During the following month, new units raised were the Beaufort West Rifles, the Bedford Mounted Rifles and the Richmond Mounted Rifles. Also raised in 1857 were the Murraysburg Volunteer Cavalry and the Burghersdorp Volunteer Rifles.

At its first live shoot, the Artillery fired solid shot from two six-pounders from a position between the Castle and the Military Hospital, probably on the site of the old Sir Lowry Road market. The target was a barrel carrying a flag, floating in Table Bay, quite possibly where the National Road from the North today joins the Heerengracht. In October the gunners took over garrison duties at the castle, enabling Grey to send some Royal Artillery to India. The second live shoot was carried out on 2nd November from the same place as the first, but this time the Artillery used shrapnel at a range of 650 yards, as well as solid shot. The results were reported to be excellent, and Grey's appreciation of the corps' services took the form of a recommendation to the War Office that the guns on loan be presented to the Cape Volunteer Artillery as a gift. This, however, was never done but the gunners received the harness. In the same year John Molteno, member of the Legislative Assembly for Beaufort West, moved that the Artillery be given free ammunition and that their annual grant of £50 be increased, but the House was not in a generous mood and the grant remained at its existing figure.

One brigadier who should be a military man, that is a regular soldier, with a staff officer, also regular.
1. Artillery. (Four 6-pounder guns). One commandant, two subalterns, one surgeon, one apothecary, four sergeants, four bombardiers, one armourer, one store sergeant and 60 gunners.
2. Cavalry. (One squadron of two troops of 40 dragoons each). One captain, two subalterns, one surgeon, one apothecary, four sergeants, four corporals, two farriers, one saddler, two trumpeters and 80 dragoons.
3. Rifle Corps. (Four hundred men in two wings). One commandant, four captains, two surgeons, one adjutant, one quartermaster, two apothecaries, one commissariat officer, four first lieutenants, four second lieutenants, eight sergeants, eight corporals, 360 privates, six buglers. Total 402.

Like all attempts to bring order to chaos, it was to be commended but, as it was bound to cost money and to disturb vested interests, it was doomed from the start. Nor did the Volunteers take kindly to the idea of being organized and to taking orders from Imperial regular officers. There developed a small Volunteer staff in Cape Town at this time with Colonel Hill, Resident Magistrate of the city, as Colonel-in-Chief and Alfred de Pass, a merchant, as Commissariat Officer, but their duties were limited to organizing the administrative side of reviews and field days. Lieutenant Colonel John Eustace who was elected to command the Cape Royal Rifles in October 1858, was also gazetted as lieutenant colonel of the Cape Town Volunteers and acted as second in command to Colonel Hill, and in 1860 an additional staff officer was appointed.

All this in the best tradition of low-brow entertainment for the troops! The review itself was a success with 600 men on parade, 300 of them being Cape Royal Riflemen and including two new companies. Shortly after the review, the Cape Volunteer Artillery published a regimental order which stated "to Gunners Sorey and Roe the company is indebted for the use of two excellent teams of horses". The artillery was to continue being indebted to these gunners for a few more years as the result of governmental meanness in failing to provide the corps with horses for the essential business of pulling the guns, although their skill in gunnery was growing apace. In November they had three guns and competed against the regulars of the Royal Artillery with shot and shell over a thousand yards.

The D'Urban Cavalry decided to expand its band to full cavalry band size and lured Bandmaster Namick away from the Rifles in October at an annual salary of 100 guineas. Further instruments were imported from Europe at a cost of £100, and at the end of the year the Cavalry band with a strength of 17 instrumentalists, all mounted, was reported as being far better than "the Rifles discordant band."

He was buried in a style which was a combination of Military ceremonial and Victorian ideas of what was proper on such occasions. The Press described the procession in detail:
"The following was the order for procession of the funeral cortege, the corpse on a gun carriage drawn by horses, The Volunteers with arms reversed, the instruments and drums of the band craped and muffled:

The Horse Guards in London, to whom the incident was reported, had some sour remarks to make about "Colonial Volunteers", but it was generally agreed that the culprit in this instance was the type of ammunition issued. The upshot was an order that all rifles were to be inspected after firing live ammunition and, "in order to prevent accidents, the charging by cavalry of infantry squares will be discontinued, a sham fight must be against an imaginary enemy in future." Generations of South African soldiers have been familiar with orders of this kind.

The Cape Royal Rifles managed to replace the bandmaster seduced away by the D'Urban Cavalry with another named Ireson, and the Scotch Volunteers acquired a pipemajor named Cowan. Local composers of music were obviously inspired by the Volunteers and in February 1860, there appeared in the press an advertisement offering a piece of music entitled "The Cape Cavalry Galop" by Miss S. Kannemeyer, dedicated by permission to Captain Porter.
Price 2/6 at Darters. Darter himself wrote and published the Cape Volunteer Artillery March in June 1860, also at 2/6 per copy.

Recruiting for the Volunteers rocketed, the Artillery calling up its honorary members on 1st February and receiving 20 recruits on the same day. The Rifles found the response equally good, and on the 6th both these units, the Sappers and Miners and even the Cavalry, were hard at work daily in batches of 30 at a time, doing gun drill under Hopkirk. Lieutenant Colonel Eustace, who had shortly before retired from command of the Rifles, and Henry Jones, a former captain in the same unit, rejoined as privates. The press was able to remark gleefully that there were three generals doing gun drill in the batteries, the Attorney General, The Treasurer General and the Surveyor General, while the Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Sir Christoffel Brand, was pounding a sentry's beat at the Castle in the uniform of a private of the Cape Royal Rifles!

The defences of the Bay were strengthened by the building of an earthwork at Kyk in die Pot, when 100 convicts from the Breakwater Prison were put to work on 3rd February, shifting soil. The work progressed so rapidly that by the 14th, 40 of them were withdrawn. 68-pounder guns were emplaced and on the 18th of the month, Kyk in die Pot was renamed Fort Wynyard. In May the Volunteers were still at gun drill.

Not all towns in the Colony were able to work as fast. Port Elizabeth had sufficient Volunteers to man some hastily built earthworks but had no heavy guns to emplace in them. Mossel Bay reacted with a meeting of the Town Council which resolved to raise a Volunteer corps and to send an urgent request to Cape Town for guns. With a commendable sense of realities, the Council resolved further to write to the officer commanding the Royal Naval squadron at Simonstown, requesting him to send a warship to cruise off the port of Mossel Bay, in case any Yankee commerce raider arrived to prey on shipping. Neither the Governor nor the Royal Navy obliged. The scare died down and military ardour abated rapidly. By the end of August attendance at musters was poor, and in the same month the Cape Town Municipal Commissioners forbade any further shooting on Green Point Common.

In his report of January 1864, he praised the Port Elizabeth Volunteer Artillery but noted that their guns stood in the open, needed repainting and, when used for drill, horses had to be hired to pull them. He also had praise for the Port Elizabeth Volunteer Rifles as being a corps that took the trouble to make itself efficient and had a number of old soldiers and former German military settlers in its ranks. Its arms, however, were worn out and useless and were those originally issued to the German Legion. The Grahamstown Volunteer Cavalry and Volunteer Rifles appeared no longer to exist and he recommended that their arms be called in. The Bathurst Rifles consisted of the right sort of men, but the turnout for his inspection had been poor as the weather was rainy and the harvest was being gathered. Bisset's report was probably a fair one, and the Eastern Province Volunteers could hardly claim that he was an ignorant and prejudiced Englishman.

The report on the Western Volunteers was made in February 1864, by a Brevet Major Jones who appeared to like the Volunteers as little as they liked him. His report, however, was by no means unfair. He attributed the decline in volunteering to the current economic depression in the Colony, and the consequent unwillingness of the average man to undertake the expense of serving in the Volunteers.

"There are at present in Cape Town the cadres of no less than five independent corps, whose aggregate enrolled strength only amounts to 480 officers and men, and when the actual numbers which can be assembled on parade are considered, it evidently appears desirable that the whole of these five corps should be amalgamated into one battalion, for the existing diversity of dress and the attempts at Brigade movements by the combination of incongruous little detachments brings ridicule on the Volunteers at every parade."

He proceeded to deal with each corps individually. The Simon's Town Rangers were animated by a good spirit and their numbers, although few, bore a good proportion to those of the working classes from which they were recruited, and in an emergency they could be augmented by dockyard hands. It was fairly drilled in the manual of arms, platoon exercises and company movements, while its shooting was moderately good. The Cape Town Rifles, although the strongest Cape Town Corps, had falling numbers because of economic hard times and the general decay of the Volunteer movement. Arms were kept in an indifferent condition and as many were privately owned, there was little uniformity. The corps was dressed in rifle green with black leather accoutrements, but its military activities were limited to parading on the Grand Parade, marching past, firing blank and skirmishing. The Scotch Volunteer Rifle Corps was only mustered for inspection with great difficulty. Its drill was indifferent and, apart from a few good shots, musketry was poor and received no attention as part of unit training. Clothing was of an expensive national character and resulted in a great variety of dress on parade.

The Volunteer Engineers (Sappers and Miners) were composed of mechanics, officered by civil servants, and were well drilled when they could be mustered. The long Enfield rifles on issue were not popular and proved too cumbersome when the sappers were engaged in digging. Their uniform was like that of the Royal Engineers and was much worn. Apparently it was also proving too expensive for many of them, and Government assistance was wanted to acquire it. Their shooting was also only moderate. The Cape Volunteer Artillery was the one corps to come in for praise. Its spirit was better than any in Cape Town, its guns were kept in a good shed in the Castle ditch and were drawn by hired horses, (probably a reference to Gunners Sorey and Roe), with harness which was the property of the corps. Ammunition was supplied for practice at Government expense, and Major Jones reported that he had seen a shoot carried out at a range of 800 yards in a regular manner. The guns and carriages were in a fair state, considering the length of time they had been in possession of the Volunteers, but the latter would be the better for a coat of paint. So far the money voted for the purchase of horses had not been used, and they were hired when needed, being harnessed two to a gun. The last corps investigated was the Stellenbosch Rifles. The commanding officer had to report that he had been unable to find anyone to parade, and Jones advised that the arms were all unserviceable from rust. His final recommendation was that all the Cape Town Corps should be merged into a single unit with a standard uniform.

Understandably, dynamite like this was not released immediately, and the Cape Town Volunteers were not made aware of the contents of the report until February 1865, a year after it had been made. A very stormy meeting on the 18th of the month had to be adjourned after the Governor, the Commander of the Forces and Major Jones had come in for vociferous criticism from all ranks, in the best volunteer tradition. The report was reconsidered on 7th March and it was resolved that the decision to amalgamate the various units be left to each corps, which in practice meant that each corps continued to go its own way. In September the Artillery dined in celebration of their anniversary, secure in the knowledge that they at least had much to be proud of.

The subsequent history of most of the other units was short, and within a year or two most of them had ceased to exist.

A few figures illustrate the rise and fall of the Volunteer movement in the Colony in the first period of its existence.

In 1861 there were 35 units with a total strength of 1814 all ranks. The following year's total was 28 units and 1165 men. By 1863 the numbers were 24 units and 1234 men. The numbers then began to diminish:

1864 ..	17 units and 963 men
1865 ..	13 units and 723 men
1866 ..	7 units and 532 men
1867 ..	5 units and 329 men
1868 ..	5 units and 320 men

In 1869 the movement had reached the nadir of its existence with only five corps left, the Cape Town Cavalry, 36 strong; Prince Alfred's Own Volunteer Artillery, 65 strong; The Duke of Edinburgh's Own Volunteer Rifles 100 strong; the Port Elizabeth Volunteer Artillery, 32 strong, and the Port Elizabeth Volunteer Rifles, 49 strong.

Somehow the small hard core managed to keep these few units alive, and 1870 heralded the beginning of better times for the movement. A scant 10 years later, the Volunteers were to give the Colony sterling service in a five-year series of frontier wars, and by then the lesson had been learned that their first commitment was the defence of Colonial territory. South Africa's fine tradition of citizen soldiering had been given the solid foundation on which today's regiments have been built.

NOTES
1. Still in existence as Prince Alfred's Guard.
2. Now Cape Field Artillery.
3. Disbanded in 1888.
4. The town of Durbanville was originally known as Pampoenfontein. Later it received the name D'Urban, changed to Durbanville in the l880s to obviate confusion with Durban, Natal.
5. The editor of Punch.
6. See "Captain Robert Granger and the Scotch Volunteer Rifle Corps", Africana Notes and News, Vol. 14 (1960-1961), P. 266 for further detail.
7. It may be noted that a keen regiment of New York Volunteers, known as Zouaves set out in 1861 to fight in the American Civil War in exactly this uniform.

SOURCES:
Cape Monitor - 1855-1862.
Cape Argus - 1857-1865.
Cape Colony Blue Book - 1858-1870.

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