Great Tales From English History: Captain Cook, Queen Victoria, Edward the Abdicator, and More by Robert Lacey

Author:Robert Lacey [Lacey, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: England/Great Britain, History, Royalty, 18th Century, 19th Century, 20th Century, Nonfiction, Politics & Government
ISBN: 9780316114592
Publisher: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Published: 2014-11-02T04:00:00+00:00

‘WOMEN AND CHILDREN FIRST!’ – THE BIRKENHEAD DRILL

1852

STEAMING OFF THE COAST OF SOUTH AFRICA late in February 1852, HM Troopship Birkenhead, a paddle-steamer, was one of the first iron-hulled ships built for the Royal Navy. She was carrying British troops, many of them raw recruits, with a small consignment of wives and children, to fight in the Kaffir Wars – an empire-building enterprise to conquer the territory of the Xhosa people in the eastern Cape.* [*In modern times the liberated Xhosa have provided the first two presidents of democratic South Africa, Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki.] The sea was calm, the sky bright with stars, and most of the six hundred or so passengers and crew were sound asleep. Looking over the port rail, the small group of sailors who were manning the watch could make out the distant outline of the shore to the left-hand side of the ship, when, just before 2 a.m., a loud crash brought the Birkenhead to a juddering halt. Travelling at 8 knots (nearly 15 kilometres per hour) the vessel had driven hard on to an uncharted rock.

Instantly the lower troop deck was flooded, and as water came pouring through a gash in the Birkenhead ’s iron cladding dozens of soldiers were drowned in their hammocks. Up on deck the crew struggled to release the lifeboats, to find that most were rusted in their davits. Only three boats could be launched, and the ship’s commander, Captain Robert Salmond, ordered that the twenty-plus women and children on board should be dispatched to safety, along with the sick.

Elsewhere on deck, Colonel Alexander Seton of the 74th Highlanders took command of the troops, ordering them to line up in their regimental groupings. Many were boys and young men who had been in uniform only a few weeks, but they quickly assembled in their ten detachments, rank after rank, in parade-ground formation.

Now came the moment that distinguished the sinking of the Birkenhead from the sad but not uncommon fate of many ships in the centuries before radar, sonar and satellite weather-forecasting. Seeing that the vessel would not stay afloat much longer – she sank, in fact, within twenty minutes of being holed – Captain Salmond gave the order to swim for the boats, only to be countermanded by his army opposite number, Colonel Seton.

‘You will swamp the cutter containing the women and children!’ cried the colonel. ‘I implore you not to do this thing, and I ask you to stand fast!’

The four hundred or so young soldiers who had lined up on the deck of the Birkenhead obeyed him. A handful broke for safety, but that only served to emphasise the stolidity of the serried ranks who chose to stay, standing side by side as the ship sank towards the water. We do not know when and how the onrushing ocean finally overwhelmed the Birkenhead, but as the Boy’s Own Paper told it, the young soldiers ‘went down with her to their watery graves as if merely on parade’.

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