29 May 2014

Even before the popular shift from muzzle loading to breech loading guns, the role of firearms in Botswana as elsewhere in the world was already being impacted by the presence of improved rifles and shot.

Writing to his father-in-law the Rev. Robert Moffat at Kudumane, in a letter from Kolobeng dated 1 August 1850, the Rev. Dr. David Livingstone requested the following:

“Can you get the bullet mould (perhaps 2, & ramrods to fit) of 8 to lb. or rather fit 8 to the pound bore but conical, from Birmingham? Those which have an indentation behind fire much further, the dotted line marking the indentation. Sechele is very anxious to get the seven-barrelled gun. You seem to have forgotten it.”

Also appearing in the same correspondence was a simple hand drawn sketch of a sharp pointed cylindro-conical bullet illustrating the indentation line.

The document is revealing in a number of details. It provides unequivocal evidence that Moffat, as well as Livingstone, had more than a casual connection with the introduction of armament’s technology into the region. The 8-bore bullet moulds, as well as the seven barrelled

gun, were meant for Sechele’s growing armoury, at a time when he was already under threat of attack by Transvaal Boers. 

In this respect, Livingstone’s relationship with firearms during his residence in Botswana is clearly relevant to our understanding his historic identity, role and legacy. Yet notwithstanding the fact that the above correspondence along with additional evidence has long been available, notably in Isaac Schapera’s collections of the missionary’s correspondence, it has continued to be underplayed or denied, while Moffat’s role has gone virtually unnoticed.

Along with associated correspondence, the letter also raises the question of the nature of the two missionaries’ relationship with arms suppliers in the Birmingham Gun Quarter.

The passage also gives us additional insight into Sechele’s by then already sophisticated appreciation of munitions. Here, one’s attention may be drawn to the Kgosi’s reported interest in a seven-barrelled gun, which refers to his desire to acquire a Nock model carbine volley gun, or facsimile. Originally designed in the late eighteenth century for use by the British navy, from a single priming charge a Nock Gun was capable of firing from all seven of its barrels in close sequence. 

Although their naval use was discontinued by the second decade of the nineteenth century, Nock Guns subsequently found limited favour among sportsmen, resulting in the production of rifled civilian versions in the 1830s.

It is not clear whether Sechele ever received his seven-barrelled gun. But, even if delivered, it is doubtful that it would have been of any great advantage in either hunting or war. Although of technical interest as precursors to machine guns, Nock Guns were muzzle loaders, making their arming relatively cumbersome. If handheld they suffered from heavy recoil. Even when mounted they were generally less versatile than swivel guns or small artillery of the period, which were more durable and easier to arm.

Swivel guns were a common armament among the Boer trekkers, being available as naval surplus, auctioned at times with larger cannon as salvage from ships that had either run aground or been decommissioned at the Cape Colony.

As an example of what was then cutting edge weapon’s technology the more intriguing element of Livingstone’s prose is rather his reference, with evident prior familiarity, to heavy cylindro-conical bullet moulds. While Livingstone’s sketch may appear unremarkable today, in 1850 it illustrated a supersized version of an advanced pattern that would not as yet have been found as ordinary issue in any European arsenal. 

Prior to the 1850s militaries around the world, as well as well as most civilian marksmen, still relied on spherical or ball shot, usually fired from smooth bore muskets, rather than conical or elongated bullets. 

Sharp pointed cylindro-conical bullets, similar in design albeit of a smaller size than Livingstone’s projectile, were only introduced into regular military service in 1846, when they were first adopted by elite French rifle corps. By 1850 their additional presence would otherwise have still been confined to a relative handful rifle companies in Austria and, at least as test munitions, Prussia and some of the lesser German states. 

Modern bullets and shells have become such relatively mundane objects that it is easy to overlook the fact that their development was once a puzzle that concentrated some of the brightest minds from Leonardo Da Vinci to Isambard Kingdom Brunel. 

They were also the subject of novel imagination, as well as cutting edge science. In Jules Verne’s science 1865 classic From Earth to the Moon the ballistics bobbins of the ‘Baltimore Gun Club’ fire a manned cylindro-conical bullet into space. 

Down to earth discussion of the advantages of conical over ball shot also surface in the author’s fictionalised African exploration literature of the period, notably including his 1873 novel Meridiana, where Verne narrates the adventures of a Anglo-Russian geodetic expedition across Botswana to the Makololo at Linyati, which in the wake of the actual 1852 Boer incursion arrives at Kolobeng-Dithubaruba with a state of the art French volley gun, as well as superior British hunting rifles. ENDS