Posts Tagged ‘Guards Museum’

Goodlake's Pepperbox Pistol and Bullet Pouch

Lieutenant and Captain (The dual rank system exclusive to Her Majesty’s Guards regiments) Gerald Goodlake, Coldstream Guards, took part in the Battle of Alma, Inkerman, and the Siege of Sevastopol. The Coldstream Guards landed at Kalamita Bay in the Crimea in September 1854, as part of the Guards Brigade, 1^st Division, English Army of the East.  These were Her Majesty Queen Victoria’s elite personal guards.  In the Crimea the Guards Brigade consisted of the Grenadier Guards, Coldstream Guards, and Scots Fusilier Guards.  The Guards’ battle honours include Alma, Inkerman, and the Siege of Sevastopol.

During a Russian probing action up Windmill Ravine on 28 October 1854, a week prior to the Battle of Inkerman, he led approximately 40 Guards sharpshooters against ten times their number in delaying a Russian flanking movement.  This allowed British reinforcements to arrive and drive the enemy back into Sevastopol.  For his gallantry in this action he was presented the Victoria Cross at Hyde Park by Queen Victoria, personally, on 26 June 1857.  He retired in 1881 as a Major General, and was awarded the Honorary Rank of Lieutenant General.

The photograph is of Goodlake’s  six-shot ‘Pepperbox’ revolving pistol and his leather bullet pouch.  He used these items throughout the Crimean War.  This type pistol, sometimes referred to as a “Pepperpot or Pepperbox”, was manufactured in .36 through .40 calibre, beginning in around 1830.  It was primarily for self-defense.  The six barrels were about 3.5 inches long.  The pistol, itself, was about 9 inches long, and weighed about 2 pounds.

The barrels revolved around a spindle, firing in turn as they came under the hammer.  As the trigger was pulled, the hammer cocked, the barrel rotated, and the hammer dropped on a percussion cap (thus igniting the powder and firing the bullet).  The bullets were round lead balls, loaded from the front of each barrel. Fairmans of London manufactured this particular pistol.

This artifact was photographed courtesy of the Guards Museum, London, UK.

British observers on McClellan's staff. Charles Fletcher is seated on the far right, and Edward Neville is also seated, third in from the right.

Almost everyone you talk to about British military observers in the American Civil War can think of only one – Lieutenant Colonel Arthur James Lyon Freemantle, Coldstream Guards. Freemantle is considered by most as a British military observer who chose to remain with, and ‘observe’ the southern side. Because perhaps of the fame of Freemantle through his book, Three Months in the Southern States, or possibly as a result of how he was portrayed in the recent movie, Gettysburg, even historians are unaware of two important historical facts:

1.  Although Freemantle was an officer of the Coldstream Guards, he was on leave of absence while in the States, likely didn’t have a uniform with him, wore tweeds most of the time, and was – in point of fact – more a “tourist” than anything else.  (David Horn, the then curator of the Guards Museum, London, and a renowned historian, tried to tell the Gettysburg movie folks these facts, but they insisted on putting Freenantle in a scarlet uniform as an official British observer at Gettysburg, regardless – Go figure.)

Lt Col Arthur Freemantle (In later years)

2.  On the other hand, there were a dozen or so authorized British military observers with General McClellan and the Federal Army of the Potomac for several months in 1862.  These officers, mostly from Guards regiments and the Royal Artillery, came south from Canada to join Little Mac’s staff.

You see, a brigade of Guards and other regiments, with accompanying artillery, had been sent to Canada by Her Majesty Queen Victoria in response to the “Trent” affair on the high seas.  During this incident, two Confederate politicians were taken from a British ship, HMS Trent, causing great outrage in Britain.  By the time these elite British troops arrived in Canada, things were smoothed over between President Lincoln and the Queen, and a nasty potential war on our northern border was averted.  This left these officers sitting in Canada with practically nothing to do.  Why not observe this “Yank” war first hand?

It is one of these British observers, Ian Carlyle, in the Scots Fusilier Guards, who is the hero of my recently released novel, The Gettysburg Conspiracy.  I modeled my character, Ian, after two of the actual observers on McClellan’s staff, Charles Edward Fletcher and Edward Neville.  They can be seen in the photographic image at the beginning of this blog.  These were both fine officers.

By the way, I survived the dentist.  My cunning plan worked like a charm.

Photographic image of British and other foreign observers with the Federal Army