Mr. Gatling's Terrible Marvel by Julia Keller

Author:Julia Keller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

"A LITTLE GATLING MUSIC ”

I remember the ceaseless bombing thunder that shook the house, like an earthquake, the futile popping of revolvers, the whining shells overhead . . . the heavy breathing of my men about me, and always just in front of us, the breathless whir of the gatling.

—Richard Harding Davis, Captain Macklin

On March 31, 1887, a Thursday, an unusually exotic and decidedly eclectic collection of items was systematically loaded onto a transatlantic steamship known as the State of Nebraska. It was a memorable manifest. There were "97 Indians, 180 horses, 18 buffalo, 10 elk, 5 Texan steers, 4 donkeys, and 2 deer.” There were rifles and fringed buckskin jackets and colorful neckerchiefs and big-brimmed cowboy hats. And there were a few other things, too: Gatling guns.

The objects constituted the packing list for Buffalo Bill’s Wild West and Congress of Rough Riders of the World, a traveling show that was taking advantage of its biggest break yet: a chance to perform in London as part of Queen Victoria’s Jubilee. While a thirty-six-piece band on deck—the musicians tricked out in cowboys hats and moccasins—struck up “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” the steamship fumed and churned out of New York harbor.

In the roughly two decades that had passed since the end of the Civil War, the Gatling gun had become a ubiquitous symbol of American pluck and bluster, of American determination to tame the rugged West, and it was a crucial part of William Cody’s show. Since the early 1870s, Cody had entertained thousands of his countrymen in towns large and small with the bombastic extravaganza, complete with sharp-shooting heroes, thundering wagons, whooping Indians, and an electric atmosphere. But this trip was something else again: This was royalty. This was a publicity bonanza. This was the threshold of a global marketplace, the first step in mounting the sort of large-scale spectacle that could bring great profits. Cody’s show even had the interchangeable parts of which American manufacturers were always boasting: horses, Indians, cowboys, Gatling guns. If one dropped out, you simply inserted another in its place. There were irreplaceable stars such as Annie Oakley, of course, and there was Cody himself—vivid, flamboyant, unforgettable—but the heart of the show was its clockwork modularity: so many Indians (check), so many cowboys (check), so many Gatling guns (check).

Mounted atop a wagon, barrels flashing as a cowboy fired blank rounds, the hand crank going round and round in the energetic revolution that, to the delight of the audience, would under real-life circumstances have spelled swift and certain death, the Gatling gun was a guaranteed showstopper in the climactic scene in which the brave settlers were saved from the bloodthirsty Indians. Cody knew what audiences liked. He knew what people came to see. He knew how much they enjoyed being frightened and awed. And nothing looked meaner, scarier, and yet more alluring than a Gatling gun.

Until the Thompson submachine gun in the 1920s, and the AK-47 later in the twentieth century, no other firearm

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.