Fort Henry Guard Drill

[Manfred M]

A short visit to Fort Henry in Kingston, Canada yesterday gave me some interesting shots of life at this early 19th Century British fortress guarding both the Kingston Royal Navy Dockyard and the Rideau Canal from American attack.

During the summer, there are re-enactments of some of the aspects of life at the fort. In this shot, the guard are practising an emergency drill to repulse an enemy attack. Being caught while not on duty, they are not wearing their traditional red tunics.

[rpcrowe]

Neat capture of action... The troops are carrying 1853 Three-Band .577 Caliber Enfield Muskets which was the standard arm of the British Army from 1853-1867. After 1867, many of these weapons were converted to a cartridge loaded Enfield-Snider.

It doesn't look like these weapons have had that conversion so, I expect that the time period represented was 1853-1867; plus a couple of years since I expect that Canada was not the first place to get the newly converted rifles.

[Manfred M]

My understanding is that the rifles used are authentic Snider-Enfield rifles as the period represented at the re-enactment is 1867. The current fort was constructed in the 1832 - 1836 period, replacing an earlier one (built in 1813) and was manned by British troops from 1813 - 1870 and by Canadian troops until 1891.

During the firing demonstration, one could see that the rifles were definitely cartridge loading ones (spent cartridges were lying all over the ground).

[rpcrowe]

I would guess that it would be a lot easier o stage firing exhibitions with cartridge loading firearms than with muzzle loaders.

After a gazillion years of service with various evolutions of the Brown Bess musket, British small arms (along with small arms of the rest of the world) evolved rapidly in about fifty years from muzzle loaders to the SMLE which served the Commonwealth through three wars (WW-I, WW-II and Korea) plus a myriad of other smaller conflicts.

Here's a quick history of those weapons...

[Manfred M]

The spent cartridges can be seen all over the ground during the demonstration of the soldiers firing a volley.

[rpcrowe]

I would love to see this drill. Both because it is quite photogenic (as you have so aptly demonstrated) and because I have an interest in historic firearms - especially those that bridged the gap between the muzzle loader of the first half of the 19th Century and the magazine fed rifles such as the SMLE and the U.S. 1903 Springfield which came into being at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th Centuries.

I once owned a wonderful copy of the Snider-Enfield that was hand made in the Kyber Pass area. It was not a shooter - just a decorative weapon...

I like weapon history just as I like collecting stamps because of the history involved. Although I have shot (and once was on my ship's pistol team), I am much more interested in the weapons themselves than in shooting.

[FootLoose]

I particularly like the first image, Manfred, as you have captured all the men with their left foot off the ground at the same time, except for one which breaks the pattern nicely, and also because of the angle of the legs on the first few. There is no motion blur there but the thrust of the leg indicates movement.