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mike snook 2


Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Posts: 920
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Simon

I think that is a beauty. That is the right colour, (fear not, obviously our friend Keith momentarily lost his marbles - it's very hot where he is! Wink ) and you are right to show the case (which was later picked up from Fugitive's Drift). I like the way you have endeavoured to be faithful to history by portraying the case whilst at the same time allowing the observer to see exactly what is inside it - a very good compromise.

As Martin has hinted there is indeed evidence that only Coghill had a sword at the time of their deaths. Melvill is sourced on the Fugitive's Trail as asking Mr Brickhill if he had 'seen anything of his sword back there'. So this tells us that:

a. Melvill had a sword to begin with.
b. That he lost it about half way down the fugitive's trail (he is not with Brickhill early on).

It would have been perfectly possible either to lose or drop an unsheathed sword, or to have a sheathed sword torn from belt slings, equipment or saddlery in desperate going through close country. There is insufficient history to take this beyond a 50/50 guess - sheathed/unsheathed before its loss - nobody knows. So I would venture to suggest that what you have shown, (imagining that a few hundred yards later he might well have dropped his blade and then be caught up with by James Brickhill) is allowable even in very pure history terms.

The both officers together thing is a subject that attracts the iconoclastic slightly smug, 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' type of AZW enthusiast, who likes to deploy one essential fact (the two officers did not leave camp together) to undermine the whole story. Coghill left about the same time as Curling and Smith of the RA. In truth we have no idea how far behind Melvill this trio were when they rode back over the saddle. Any answer between 50 yards and half a mile would be allowable I would say.

In fact Melvill and Coghill were together for most of the scramble to the river - but often with others nearby, around or ahead of them. Melvill was riding with Private Bickley when Coghill caught him up. Later on the pair was separated from Bickley and rode along with a conductor called Martin Foley. After that they joined an ill-defined 'group' which included the interpreter Brickhill. In the approach to the river they were with Higginson. Later they were alone.

Question. Would it have been theoretically possible for one of ten thousand hidden cameras distributed along the Fugitive's Trail, in any moment in time, to have snapped them together in the manner you portray, and against that background? Well the arcs are nice and tight left and right and, for all we know, Private Bickley or Martin Foley might be just off the right hand edge of the painting. So in my opinion, yes, subject to a few reservations about gradient and bearing in relation to the nek/saddle, it would have been theoretically possible for one of my notional hidden cameras to have recorded such a scene.

More to the point than such hypothesis, Simon, I congratulate you on a super portrayal. By the way, a print of your first Isandlwana painting sits above my study desk and receives much attention as I periodically lift my head from the keyboard for inspiration!! I am already breaking into a cold sweat to own a copy of your Durnford and M&C paintings. Where, when how will this be possible?

Regards as ever
Mike


PS. The red silk in the fringe is very subtle and only really visible quite close up - at this sort of range it might be discernible - just...maybe...but I would advise not overdoing it. Be guided by Martin's comments who has access to the real thing.
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mike snook 2


Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Posts: 920
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Simon

On the question of the 2nd/24th Colours, we have no real history to help us I'm afraid. They began the battle in the guard tent (located in the saddle) and were subsequently lost. They were clearly damaged at some point because only bits of pikestaff, in particular the head of one, were ever seen again. Whether they were damaged in the looting of the camp or during the late fighting nobody can say.

The reason history cannot help us definitively is that there was a significant body of men still alive and fighting when the last of the fugitives (potential eyewitnesses) left the scene. Of this last group of stalwarts (groups in the plural, in fact) there were no survivors. So we cannot tell whether at any point somebody might have dashed into the guard tent to look for and subsequently defend or flourish the colours. The cyncial modern mind might suggest to us that it doesn't seem likely that anybody fighting for their lives in such a desperate scenario would worry about two pieces of silk. But that's not the way people thought back then; most soldiers had a highly attuned sense of duty and honour when it came to this sort of thing.

It is not impossible that they emerged into the fighting at the end. But equally it is not impossible that they were forgotten about in the heat of the moment and played no part. What makes the latter scenario the more probable is that the 2nd Bn contingent, whose colours they were, was mostly wiped out behind the rocky ridge, during the breaking/turning of the British right. That said, Dyer, the adjutant of the 2nd/24th, the very man who might be the most likely to think of the colours, was still alive towards the end. He was identified as having died with Wardell's H company (1st Bn) in the stand they made in the (front) mouth of the saddle. How did he get there?

Possibilities:

1. Survived massacre of G Coy (2nd Bn), made his way across to H Coy and retreated with them. (possible)
2. Was serving as an aide to Pulleine, not with G Coy to begin with - but rather just behind H Coy. (possible)
3. Was not on the firing line during the battle. (Unlikely)
4. Had been on the firing line but had gone back to the tents for some reason and joined H Coy after it had completed its retreat to the mouth of the saddle. (Possible).

There is a reference to him being mounted, and there is oral tradition in the regiment which refers to officers turning their horses loose in order to stay with the men. This is probably traceable to Symons and others - but I can't remember now whether there is an actual written reference to it in Historical Records of the 24th Regt (I will look when I have some time). Anyway, Dyer might be a candidate as one of the officers who did turn his horse loose, or might equally be a candidate for having provided Pulleine with a remount (if he was indeed unhorsed - see HCMDB for discussion of this issue). I digress.

Looking at possibility 4, one of the reasons why the adjutant might ride back to the tents is, exactly as Melvill did, to secure the Colours. Of course Dyer has a knottier problem of having two colours to worry about, rather than in Melvill's case just the one. Was he slower off the mark than Melvill(?).....which might explain why the horns of the buffalo had snapped shut and the 2nd Bn Colours remained trapped in the camp. Was there even a failed attempt to save them which is lost to history(?)...... we know they were lost but we don't know where they were lost. Might, for example, somebody on horseback only have made 50 yards before being taken down? Did Dyer secure them, find himself trapped in the camp, and take them to the security of a rallying square(?)....the best he could manage in the circumstances. Or were they simply forgotten about and left unattended in the guard tent with furious fighting raging on all sides?

Any of the spectrum of hypotheses outlined above (and several more besides) are theoretically possible - but the bottom line is we simply don't know. In summary - they were last recorded as being in the guard tent. There are no source references to them during the battle. But there is a period of time in the fighting for which there is no British primary source evidence (with the sole exception of Maori Browne through his binoculars from miles away!) and virtually no Zulu testimony to speak of.
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smithart101


Joined: 06 Feb 2008
Posts: 65
Location: Dorset UK
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Mike,
thanks so much for the insight, absolutely fascinating and I am intrigued by the idea that there may have been an attempt to save the 2nd Battalions colours. As you say, the Adjutant of the 1st Battalion did so which lets us suppose that Dyer would have had the same priority. Your possibility 4 has a ring of logic for me.
Perhaps trying to carry two colours on horseback proved too cumbersome and he was left to make a stand with the other soldiers on the saddle. I feel a painting coming on!

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PRS


Joined: 11 Oct 2005
Posts: 84
Location: Bulgaria
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Simon

Do you have a catalogue of your AZW paintings ?
Or maybe a website ?
Thanks
PRS

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mike snook 2


Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Posts: 920
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Simon

Your call of course, as long as you are clear that what I have outlined is the conjectural vacuum constrained within the known historical parameters, and you are content with the 'we simply don't know' line of reasoning. If you paint it, some will see fit to criticize it as having no definite foundation in history....(which would be a fair point)...and AZW flak can be pretty heavy at times!! It is for you artists, not us historians, to decide where artistic licence takes over. But undoubtedly there is plenty of historical sea-room on this particular point. Why not see what some of the folks on here think first.

It is interesting that Fripp included a regimental colour (which can of course only be the 2nd/24th one, the 1st Bn's being at Helpmekaar). He was in Zululand later in the war, but I am not aware of anything he has written about his great work and why it looks like it does. (Anybody else aware of anything?). I think he might just have included the colour on spec as a bit of romantic iconography designed to make his painting the belter it is, but as I wrote in my first book, nobody can say that he was definitely wrong to portray one of the 2nd Bn colours amidst the remnants of a rallying square, though if said square was a bit further back in the saddle, I fancy he would be on safer historical ground. Logically of course, if one colour found its way into the fight, it would be more likely than not that both would have been in the same place.

Of course you put your rallying square in roughly the same place as Fripp but without the colour - which is fine. You followed the received wisdom at that time which placed Pope and G-A (with their eye-glasses) back in the saddle, but I am absolutely convinced that it was quite impossible for G Coy to have got back to the saddle and we now have the Bassage pocket-book at Brecon which definitively places the G Coy dead on the forward positions rather than in the saddle. Roughly speaking both your respective squares are on the position where H Coy made its final stand.

Back to colours. There is a story, very thinly sourced I seem to recall, (second hand description of a post-battle rumour sort of thing) about an officer on a certain-coloured horse, (can't remember what the descriptor colour was), which wasn't Melvill, but who was supposed also to have had a colour. Can anybody else recollect the story and its source?

As I say, anything is possible and what I have not done is given you any balance of probability for what might have happened. Forced to do so, I have to say that I would put the scenario of the colours being looted from the guard tent (probably after everybody was dead) at greater than 70%. But that in itself might make for an interesting and different Isandlwana painting, making Zulus rather than Brits your central figures.

Bit more context. Hope it helps.

Regards

Mike
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Sawubona


Joined: 09 Nov 2005
Posts: 1179
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PRS,
In the event that Simon doesn't get back quickly enough with a more complete listing, I can tell you that I "Googled" his name (which is now officially a real word) and came up with quite a few sites that carry his prints and even one or two original oils. Have at it.
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Mike

Do you think it might be worthy (not sure that's the right word) an officer did make it to the tent, but perhaps got cut off, whilst inside, and there defended the colours as the Zulus entered and ripped at the tent canvas from outside. An unseen battle within a major battle, which shows the colours weren't just there for the Zulus to take, as someone was present trying to protect them, but a scenario not witnessed by any of the survivors ?

I don't feel this would be too much from the truth, or what could have been the truth. What do you think ?

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mike snook 2


Joined: 04 Jan 2006
Posts: 920
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Just about anything is possible in the chaos that prevailed at Isandlwana at the end. But why an officer particularly? Sure, Dyer as adjutant is a good bet to think of such things, but might not any surviving member of the 2nd/24th's rear details have spared a thought for the battalion's colours?

As an interesting aside, it's often overlooked that not a single member of the 2nd/24th survived the battle.

As ever

Mike
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Mike

Good point. It needn't be an officer.

I guess I just don't like the idea of the Zulus taking the colours without a fight. How about, as a happy medium, an officer, with a couple of soldiers escort, punching through the Zulu skirmishers to obtain the flag ?

More than just one of the 24th putting up a fight in/at the tent ?

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melvill and coghill painting
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